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Tamara Drewe

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Now a knockout, a former plain Jane (Gemma Arterton) returns to her home village to fix up her childhood home.

Opens October 8, 2010

Runtime:1 hr. 47 min.

Interview with Gemma Arterton

(Q): Have you always been so witty?

(Gemma Arterton): No. Although I suppose the only similarity there really between Tamara and I, apart from our physical appearance, is our wit and also the fact that we were real losers when we were younger.

(Q): You were a real loser?

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah. I wasn't popular or anything like that. I was quite bookish and geeky. It's funny, when I was younger I don't think I was witty. I didn't really know what to say and then it was only when I left home and sort of fended for myself that I kind of developed my wit. I had to because London is a big bad place. But that's good, thank you for saying I'm witty. I love that.

(Q): What books did you read back then and what are you reading now?

(Gemma Arterton): God. My favorite book when I was little was 'The Alchemist'. It's so funny because that's one of those guidance books that everyone reads like five times in their lives. I read it first when I was like eight years old and it really made an impression on me and I think that I was quite advanced in my thinking for an eight year old in terms of spirituality and all that.

Now what am I reading? Well, I'm just about to start a play and so I'm reading a lot of stuff, like I'm reading Freud's dream psychology at the moment which is really strange. I'm just about to do this play by Ibsen and it was at that time. So I'm reading a lot of literature from around that time. It's a shame because often I read a lot of stories but they're always in script form rather than in a novel and it's never the same thing. I can't wait to sort of actually be in the middle of a job so that I can read a novel again.

(Q): Is the Ibsen play on The West End?

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah, it's in London. I start on Monday and I feel like I haven't done enough work for it even though I have been sort of working on it for three months, reading everything, trying to understand this play. Apparently it's one of the problematic plays but it's wonderful.

(Q): They're very intense –

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah, this one in particular is.

(Q): What's the name of this play?

(Gemma Arterton): It's 'The Master Builder'. So it's one of his later plays and it's a mixture. It's not literal. It's impressionism which he kind of made but that's what I'm reading.

(Q): When you got the script for this what did you think?

(Gemma Arterton): I was entertained and intrigued and charmed but also baffled because I didn't know what it was. I just knew that I liked it. I was actually quite apprehensive about doing it at the beginning because it could've been awful. If it was in the wrong hands it could've been just god awful and the reason that I'm so proud of this is because I think it's underestimated, this film. It's like Stephen Frears was spinning plates when he was directing it and had to keep each one, every character has a certain purpose in this film and a certain style. The girls are like this Greek chorus.

They're in control of the film and they're funny and they're loud and riff-raff. Then my character is the middle of it. She's in the middle of it. She roots the film, and then you have other characters are very caricature and very funny and dastardly. Stephen manages to do all these things and make it look effortless and that is genius. So when I read it I thought, me not being Stephen, was going, 'Oh, no. It's just going to end up being a bad TV film.' But only he can make it. He assembled exactly the right people to do that job for it. At first I was interested to see it and it's really interesting for me, and for all of us now, that it's done hugely well in France.

They love it there, more than they do in England. I don't know why. It's one of those films. Nobody really knew what it was going to be like and I think the criticism for it has been very positive, but there are some people that don't like it because they can't say what it is because it's so many different things and people like to put things into pigeonholes and bracket them. You can't do that with this movie. You just can't. You look at Tamsin Greig's performance and then you look at Dominic's [Cooper] performance and you just think, 'Well, how are they in the same movie?' But they are and it works and so it's strange.

(Q): Tamara being the center of the story, too, is interesting because she really doesn't know what she wants. Can you talk about that?

(Gemma Arterton): Well, that's the ultimate problem with Tamara as a character and in playing her because I did my very best to try and understand her and I think I did while I was playing her. In hindsight I think I still didn't get her. When I was playing her I was making up justifications and stories and trying to work  out why she does these things but even at the end of the film she goes, 'Why am I doing these things? Why? I don't know.' She doesn't know.

I love that, that someone has had the balls to write a character that is not explainable. It's the same as this character that I'm just about to play in the Ibsen play. He just wrote this character that nobody knows or understands her and that's exciting as an actor because you're going to be like, 'I'm going to be the one that understands her,' and it's hard and you're always questioning things. Also, a woman wrote this script who's utterly brilliant. Posy Simmonds. Well, the script writer is Moira Buffini who's utterly brilliant as well but Posy Simmonds wrote the graphic novel and is the most observant person I've ever met in my life.

She has this amazing ability to extract and see the tiniest nuances of character and is very, very accurate in her depiction of characters. They exist and we've all met people like those characters and I particularly knew or know a girl that is just like Tamara Drewe and I've always been intrigued by her. She has no friends apart from me because I'm intrigued by her. I'm using her as a character study –

(Q): Does she know this?

(Gemma Arterton): No. She doesn't know it but I was always interested in her because I thought, 'Why, why, why do you do these things? There must be something inside you,' and I've always felt very sorry for her. That's why I suppose I've always remained friends with her because I know she's not a bad person inside.

(Q): As a man I don't understand women all that well anyway, but in movies you can do that and this character is like people that I know. Can you talk about that?

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah, exactly. As I said, it's somebody that's had the balls to just commit to something. I've worked on films before where they screen them for tests, whatever they do, preview them or whatever or what the fuck, but they do that.

Then they go, 'Oh, well, the audience want them to kiss,' or 'We better change that relationship and they don't like it when her hair is down so we better put her hair up.' It's a lack of confidence in the material. This is not that film, where we did that. We said, 'This is what it is. You don't get this character. You don't like the heroine, that's fine. That's good. That's life.' I liked it for that reason.

(Q): Would you be a columnist? Would you do a blog? You're quite able to express yourself.

(Gemma Arterton): I get in trouble though because I always try to fight battles that I can't win. Then I get in trouble for it. So maybe not. I'd end my career maybe if I said what I felt. Nobody would want to cast me in anything. I've always struggled with writing. I admire writers and journalists. I can't believe I just said that. The confidence to say, 'This is what I want to say and here it is everyone, read it.'

But when I was playing Tamara I did write articles like she writes and I wrote a book. I wrote about five chapters of a book as Tamara and it was my way of getting into character everyday. I just wrote a couple of paragraphs and that would be it. I would be in her mind. When I was writing as Tamara I was like, 'Yeah, this is good stuff. It's funny. It's witty. It's inventive.' But when I write myself it's awful. I quite like hiding behind a character. Maybe I should have a pseudonym.

(Q): You're becoming quite the expert in many different genres, I've noticed. This is like your comedy –

(Gemma Arterton): Even though my character isn't very funny, but yeah.

Q): But you're still at the center of the film. You've had your horror film. You've had your superhero film. Are you developing a love or have an uncanny instinct for or getting a handle on all of this?

(Gemma Arterton): No. I don't know. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Even yesterday I was freaking out because I was like, 'I've got to do this play. I haven't acted for a year. Oh, my God, I might be awful.' I'm like every other actor in the world that's neurotic and doesn't think that they're any good. It's nothing new there. I quite liked the fact that after doing this job actually I realized that I took something that Stephen does; he only does work if he wants to do it. It's quite simple and I've thought, 'Why am I not doing that?

Why am I  not going with my instinct and reading a script and saying I don't know what it is but it's good and I'm going to do that.' Why am I listening to all these people who are telling me, 'Well, it's a great strategy. You should do this because it's the strategy.' I didn't get into acting to have a sort of strategy. I just like doing it. I don't have a sort of plan or anything, yeah. I'm just interested in whatever interests me. The play that I'm just about to do is completely different and then the films that I'm hopefully doing next year are so different, all of them are so different and that's exciting for me. I hope that it continues like that.

(Q): This was a nice switch after seeing you in 'Prince of Persia' and 'The Disappearance of Alice Creed' -

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah. I mean they're all very, very different. If you really love acting and that's what excites you then you should do that. It was scary because I feel like comedy is my forte and I did a play in London and it was a massive comedy. I felt like, 'Yes, at last.' It was kind of like standup and I felt very at home in that.

Maybe that's because that's the way my mind is, the rhythm of my speech and everything, but that's probably why I shouldn't do that for a while and I should do stuff that's scary like this play I'm just about to do, very dark and intense. It's very funny. Someone said to me the other day, 'What are you doing now?' I said, 'I'm doing this play.' They said, 'You can't do that! It's dark.' I said, 'Why do you say that?' 'Well, you're light and funny and sweet.' 'I'm going to do that then.'

(Q): I did love her nose in this –

(Gemma Arterton): Yes. The nose was great.

(Q): How was it wearing that?

(Gemma Arterton): It was really interesting actually because I had the whole thing, the nose, the hair, the bad skin. Everything was painted on and I had the school uniform and I was just the most fun and sexy, unappealing girl. I went on set and people didn't know that it was me. I went and made myself a cup of tea and someone told me not to because it was for the people making the film. I thought, 'That's interesting.' Then I went and said hello to Roger Allam who plays Nicholas and he walked off. I thought, 'This is brilliant. This is great.'

Then I had a conversation over lunch for about an hour with somebody that I thought was playing Gemma Arterton's younger self. It was really interesting the way that he related to me. It's weird because I was treated differently but maybe that's because actresses are always being pandered to on set. So I didn't know whether it was genuine, this kind of reaction that I had but it was very interesting as an actress to get both sides of it.

(Q): Was it refreshing to be able to do that?

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah, but it always surprises me because when I did 'Alice Creed' I pounced on that role. The director thought that he'd never find an actress that wanted to do it and I pounced on it because I thought, 'Great. I can do something that's not about being beautiful and polished. I can just do the performance and not have people judge me on that.' That's difficult because even with 'Tamara Drewe' it frustrates me sometimes when people…the one review that I read and I never read them but it was out on the table, it was a 'New York Times' review and it spoke about my ass practically the whole interview.

It was frustrating for me because if you really actually watched the movie the ass is a kind of device. She does it for a reason and it's so much more about other stuff. But that's what happens, people talk about things like that and you have to accept it. You can't complain about it.

(Q): It's sad to say but 'Esquire' mentions the shorts, too –

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah and it's on the poster. At least it gets people interested and then maybe they'll be like, 'Oh, I actually liked it. It's not just about a bum. It's about characters and lives.'

(Q): When you go from a character like this then do you have to play that differently, going from one to the other?

(Gemma Arterton): It's interesting because the outside, the look of the character always for me feels  like a mask. What I'm working at is the internal bit. It doesn't matter. The makeup artist, the costume, people do that stuff and then I just the other bit.

(Q): Right. Did you find that you had to play that differently then with your thoughts?

(Gemma Arterton): With Tamara, yes, because inside she's still the teenage girl. Ugly, not successful, unappealing and invisible. So inside she's always that character. So that's what I was playing. Then with anything else, at the beginning of the play she's this frothy, frivolous, charming, twinkling type character and that's a mask. That to me is like putting on the hair and the makeup.

So she's very aware of it and it's fake and then as the film progresses it falls away and then the nose breaks and that's kind of symbolic of the mask being shattered and there she is in all her glory. So, yeah, at the beginning of the film there's these two characters that are being played at the same time and that's why she's having an identity crisis which is kind of the crux of her character, I suppose.

(Q): Are you a fan of graphic novels?

(Gemma Arterton): No. I can't say that I am. Although, having read 'Tamara Drewe', that's why I had never read 'Tamara Drewe'. It's a huge cult thing, isn't it, these graphic novels. It's massive and I have to say that I'd rather read a book but it's nice to have visual stimulation and then finding out about Posy's work and feeling like I was being really snobbish and ignorant, that there's this very intelligent and clever side to it. It's all very intelligent and clever but it's just something that I wasn't aware of. I'm amazed at the cult of graphic novels. It's not comic, is it? It's graphic novel now.

(Q): Have you become much of a fan of the English countryside and cows?

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah. I didn't grow up in the world of Tamara Drewe. Very much the opposite. Actually, I've done two films now, two Thomas Hardy characters. So it's all based in Dorsett, that area and I've been there quite a lot now and I love it. Although I am a city girl and I do miss it and the mud gets a bit annoying. That part of the world is just beautiful and the film makes it look even more beautiful because it rained a lot when we were there. It was kind of like this weather and somehow they made it look gorgeous and glowing. But I always fancy myself as someone who will move there one day but I know I never will. I'll just be in the city.

(Q): Dominic was a great foil for you –

(Gemma Arterton): Dominic is brilliant in this film. I think it's my favorite Dominic Cooper performance actually. I remember when he was doing it he was really neurotic,  he's neurotic anyway, about, like, 'Am I doing it right? Am I doing it right?' And Stephen doesn't direct you unless it's wrong and so Stephen wasn't saying anything.

So Dominic was freaking out and he was doing all of these touches like the hair thing which Stephen actually said, 'Will you stop doing the flicking of the hair,' which is actually a really nice touch, I think. I think Dominic managed to create this pathetic, idiotic, egocentric character that you love. That's why he's done a really good job with it. It's kind of made him pitiful but charming at the same time.

(Q): His character had to work in order for the two girls to work –

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah. You had to understand why they were obsessed with him. He had to have some sort of sex appeal and suave but he is a loser and he is sort of ten years behind Tamara in the mind.

(Q): Did you have any rocks bands growing up that you were like those girls with?

(Gemma Arterton): I was never a groupie. I did have my crush. My first crush was Leonardo DiCpario and I had a poster of him on my wall. I was sort of twelve or thirteen around the time that 'Titanic' was out and that was huge. It's funny now. I've never had a big rock band crush. I think if I was a bit older maybe I would've, maybe Kirk Cobain or something.

(Q): Does Leonardo DiCaprio know that you had a crush on him?

(Gemma Arterton): I don't know. He probably doesn't know who I am. God. It would be awful if he found out and then I met him.

(Q): Wouldn't you like to meet him?

(Gemma Arterton): Yeah! I'd probably drool or something. I think he's an amazing actor as well, but because I was always into acting my crush was always on actors.

(Q): They're making a movie of the Paulo Coelho book –

(Gemma Arterton): Are they? Who's directing?

(Q): I don't know. You better find out –

(Gemma Arterton): I supposed they'd probably get some Spanish girls to be in it rather than some English girl. I do speak Spanish. I could do it. I wondered when they'd do that. Why did they not make it into a film when it's one of the most famous books of all time. 

(Q): I think you would perfect for that - 

(Gemma Arterton): In a Spanish rural fable.

(Q): I'll send this picture to Leonardo –

(Gemma Arterton): Oh, no. I so wish I hadn't have told you that. I'm so going to get found out. Just say that I admire him. I'm married. My husband is going to be upset [laughs].

End.