Transcription
To audiences feli and fem fatal, Selena Kyle might appear a bit morally ambiguous, but um, to what extent does she live by her own moral code, would you say?
I don't think Selena considers herself morally ambiguous. I think that she um, I think she's actually fairly consistent with her morals. They're known to her and it makes sense to her and she doesn't feel the chest to answer to anyone. So um, she certainly, it's hard to predict what she's going to do, but if you were inside of her head, it all makes sense.
And when we meet Bruce Wayne in the film um, at the beginning, he's really lost his mojo, hasn't he? I mean, that is a sad dinner that he's having. It's like miso soup and crud, the bit of the bit of sparkling room temp water. I thought he's going to be hungry after that, didn't look very much. But what kind of catalyst is Selena Kyle to him at that stage in his life?
I I I think Selena um wakes him up and reminds him that the world has moved on and that there are people out there who have been developing, honing their skills while he's been letting his languish. Um, I think he finds her exciting and different and surprising. I think he thinks she's funny.
And I fell in love with Selena from the moment she jumped up on that ledge in in Wayne Manor. Um, and I think your movement work is just brilliant in the film. How did you get in touch with your kind of inner kitty?
Um, I I I took dance lessons uh to help with the movement of the character. Um, I when I started to do my fits for the catsuit, I realized uh how important my hip swish was going to be and uh I didn't have one on my own. So I worked with a choreographer and movement coach and uh it took a few weeks, but then one day my hips unlocked and all of a sudden Selena had a walk.
And she's quite an observer, isn't she? At one moment, the camera, we don't give away the scene, but the camera sort of keeps going back to her face as she's observing something, which struck me as quite sort of feline. And I wondered if there were any other kind of feline qualities that you tried to incorporate into her character.
Um, I think because she's never referred to as Catwoman in the film, I didn't feel any great pressure to make her particularly feline. But I I what I wanted it to be was rather than have one distinct character trait that felt like a cat, I wanted her to sort of resonate in an overall sense. So that if if you saw a security video of her and you saw the way she moved and you saw the goggles turned up, somebody would go, "That cat burglar moves like a cat."
Um, the thing that I really focused on was grace and being very centered and being very sure-footed. She really, she doesn't make accidental movements and she's always looking for the exits.
And we've seen you flex your action muscles of course before in Get Smart, but um, what training regime and stunt work did The Dark Knight Rises require you? Of course, all in them, those Venus steel heels. I saw those yesterday up close. They're quite high, aren't they?
They were, they were some high heels, that's true. Um, I just had to get strong. So the first few months were just about building strength. And then uh about five or six weeks before we started filming, I came to London and that's when I started to learn how to fight and that's when things got really fun.
And what about the um, Batpod? I mean, did you get a chance to have a bit of a spin on it or how tempted were you to have a go?
I wasn't tempted to take it out myself because there's exactly two people in the world who can ride that and they're in the film and I'm not one of them. But um, I, you know, whenever Christian and I get to do it, they put training wheels on the side and um, and then you get to go. It's great. It's it's like your own private amusement park. I loved it. I just, I kept asking whenever we would go through it and Chris would yell cut and you would just hear me giggling because I was so happy.
You don't just sit on it, do you? Have to sort of kneel on it and really sort of lean over it.
Yeah, you have you have to. You have to give into it. It's not an, it it wasn't at first. It's hard to figure out where your body um uh your center of gravity is meant to go in it. But once you figure that out, it's okay.
And Christopher Nolan, of course, has consistently delivered some of modern cinema's finest work, I think. How important is it to you as a performer to be associated with talent of of that caliber?
Well, when I auditioned or met with Chris um for this film, I didn't know what it was for. I didn't know what the character was. I just knew that Chris Nolan had a part and I was kind of the right age for it and that was that got me on a plane and I flew across the country and I just basically sat outside his door waiting. He is such, it's it's hard to talk about him because when you use words like brilliant and important and genius, they get bandied about a lot and I think that they're overused. And so in a way, and that's a shame because when it comes to someone like Chris who earns them and and and and and so much more um, you feel like they they underserve what it is that you're trying to say.
I I think the best way to describe Chris is Hitchcock with an armory. He's so talented in so many ways. He's so, his his his technical skill, his imagination, his his just deafness with a story and his ability to work with actors. And he's a really, really great, great guy. Um, I think he's an important filmmaker because he keeps film exciting and ambitious and he keeps topping himself and pushing himself. And I can't think of anyone else who's doing it better.
And Hathaway, thanks very much.
Thank you.