Vera Farmiga has opened up about her Godzilla: King Of Monsters character, revealing that she is in charge with communicating with the creatures, and even has the power to control them.
“I play a paleobiologist,” Farmiga told me last month, when I sat down to talk to her about her recent comedy “Boundaries.”
“She has figured out a way to communicate with the creatures and potentially control them using their bioacoustics on a sonar level. So she is like a DJ for the monsters.”
“DJ for the monsters” is such a tantalizing character description that it should immediately shoot to the top of Farmiga’s CV. Although I doubt that she still uses one.
Farmiga’s above remarks is just the latest information we have on her “Godzilla: King Of The Monsters” character, who we already knew was called Dr. Emma Russell, is the mother to Millie Bobby Brown, is married to Kyle Chandler’s Mark Russell, and, most likely, works alongside Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins.
Farmiga stopped short of going into too much detail regarding “Godzilla: King Of The Monsters,” though, especially because, when I brought up director Michael Dougherty, she revealed, “I am still working with him. I still have another day of additional photography.”
But she did call Doughtery “very careful,” before explaining, “He wants to get it right. So countless takes.”
“I don’t mind it. Except for when there is cork being thrown at you and wind machines blowing down your ear and up your nostrils. I don’t mind it.”
“I like to have as many takes. Of course, it depends on the film and the emotional output of the scene. It depends on a lot. But I am not really ready to talk about the film quite yet, because I have such a one track mind.”
What Farmiga was willing to talk about, though, was how the rise of Donald Trump has impacted her career, as she admitted that her recent “choices have been little actions of social activism.”
“Whether it is ‘Skin,’ and working with Guy Nattiv and Jamie Ray Newman, his wife, who produced it. Jamie Bell stars in it, and it tells the story of Bryon Widner who was a violent racist skinhead.”
“It is a story about his awakening and emergence out of that culture of hate. It is a true story and I play the elder female in the racist skinhead group. So there’s that very socially relevant story that needs to be told right now.”
“I also just worked with Jason Reitman again on this Gary Hart film [‘The Front Runner’]. We need to question what is important to us as we make these decisions. What do we need to reevaluate in terms of how we vote? What are we looking for in terms of a candidate?”
“Trump has changed things for me, certainly. Also, I have worked a lot. I wanted to spend less time working and more time with my family. I don’t know if I am burning out. I have worked a lot. So it takes something incredibly relevant.”
That brought us back to “King Of The Monsters.”
“And ‘Godzilla’ to me isn’t a film about monsters. It is a film about saving the environment. When it comes down to it that’s what emerged to me off the written page, and so I find that there has to be a little parable in it that makes me interested.”
But, while Farmiga has become a little bit pickier with her parts, she is quick to recognize just how lucky she is, too.
“Across the board they are all just really incredible opportunities that waft my way. They are like little rides, and it is a ride on a merry go round. I don’t overthink it.”
“If there’s a bit of magnetism, I don’t know if it is a cosmic thing. I look at it, things choose me, it will even come down to camaraderie. I will just meet a director and feel there’s a kinetic friendship there that is just waiting to happen.”
Farmiga clearly has a deep respect for directors. So much so that she doesn’t expect to get back behind the camera any-time soon, despite making her directorial debut with 2011’s “Higher Ground.”
“No, I don’t want to direct more. The reason I directed was because of the subject matter, and I wanted to execute it as an actress.”
“I just thought the director that was attached wasn’t approaching the material in a way that I wanted it to be approached. So by default I took the reins on that.”
“I thought, ‘Oh, this is a story that I feel like I can tell.’ And that story hasn’t emerged again yet. And I like being directed. So we shall see. I just need to find the story. If it presents itself to me then we’ll see.”
