Q&A: ‘The Cabin In the Woods’ Stars Fran Kranz And Kristen Connolly Discuss Joss Whedon And Acting In Horror
The following interview originally ran on Starpulse.com in 2012.
When Fran Kranz and Kristen Connolly first signed on for the Joss Whedon-penned horror flick The Cabin in the Woods, they immediately knew they were going to be part of something special. Part homage, and part comedy, this film which is helmed by Drew Goddard making his directorial debut,
Recently Fran Kranz and Kristen Connolly were in Boston to screen The Cabin in the Woods, and I was lucky enough to participate in a roundtable interview with them. Below are some of the highlights of that conversation.
Q: What was it like working with Joss Whedon?
Fran Kranz: I knew there had to be more than meets the eye just from having worked with him [Joss Whedon], but it exceeded my wildest expectations. Honestly I think it’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. I’m a horror film fan, but I love movies and I really do think it transcends the genre. I think it incorporates action and comedy, and science fiction so well, that it’s just unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And the journey of the story, it goes someplace completely unexpected, and it escalates so well.
So reading it, it was just like I don’t think I could stop smiling for like days, but also I didn’t have the part yet. So I was freaked out for the whole period from having read the script to actually getting the part was just pins and needles [be]cause I realized if I don’t get this role, it’s going to haunt me forever. It was the coolest script I ever read, and it was the coolest part, and I couldn’t believe that this was so close to being mine. To all my friends I was like ‘I need to get this. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever read.’ So it was tough, it was very hard.
Kristen Connolly: Fran was like the first person cast, so literally…
FK: And a lot of people got the script, you got the script after being offered [the part]. I read with Kristen, and we had to do this scene that must have been so bizarre because she hadn’t read the full script, and I think we tried to explain it. Joss and Drew [Goddard] wanted her and I came into it, and Joss and Drew said ‘This is the girl, come in and read and we’ll put you guys on tape together.’ So I think they tried to tell you as much as they could…
KC: Yeah they did.
FK: But it was still just like ‘What on earth is this movie about?’
KC: It’s one of those movies that I’m glad is so shrouded in secrecy in what we’re allowed to say, because I don’t know how I would describe it to anybody. It’s almost impossible. It’s one of those movies where I think the more you try to describe it, the weirder and stupider it sounds. Then when you see it, it’s like everything is so awesome, but when you try to explain it, it just comes out…I mean I would try to explain it…
Q: At a certain point, it becomes a spoiler. You don’t want to tell somebody, and ruin things for them.
FK: I want to start saying that it’s about five kids that go to a cabin in the woods for a weekend and it’s a really fun weekend, and they make it back to class on time.
Q: What’s their casting process? Do you mail them a video or do you go into a room?
FK: They were typical auditions. They were standard auditions. But the original sides, it’s what they call; you know you get a few pages of script and they kind of mark out what you’re going to read. But they were fake sides; they were not from the script.
KC: And they were crazy. There was a scene with Curt [Chris Hemsworth] where we were running from pterodactyls and trying to get into these tunnels, and we keep talking about the tunnels. And he’s like ‘We’ve got to get in these tunnels Dana!’ And I’m like ‘Ok!’ Then we’re like diving into these things, it’s so intense.
FK: They’ve really got to find those and have them be a DVD feature because they’re so crazy.
Q: You both get terrorized pretty extensively in this film. Was it a fun movie to make?
FK: For sure, for sure. It was so much fun, but I did find out, since it was the first horror film I had done, that for a genre that’s not taken as seriously as others, I don’t know if any have been nominated for Best Picture. As actors you kind of have to go for it. If you want it to be at its best, I think you really have to play the fear and you have to do everything honestly, approach it as an actor playing the scenes. So I found it was exhausting at times and very draining.
There were moments were Drew [Goddard] was like, ‘You guys don’t look tired, you need to run around the cabin a few times.’ I found the best things were to really throw yourself into it, and Chris Hemsworth is just like a born action star. He kind of got that, I looked at him a lot, just on dailies, and normally I don’t like to look at dailies, but for this movie it was really helpful for the action sequences to be like ‘Okay, that was good. I really do look like I tripped up there.’
Q: This movie sat on the shelves for two years after it was shot. What was it like for the film to sit that long?
KC: It was really frustrating. I don’t know all of the details of why things happened the way they did, but it was definitely frustrating because we all loved the movie so much when we were making it and we all wanted to see it, and to have our friends and family and people we knew would love it just as much as we loved it, you just want it to be out there. But I think it worked out perfectly, to have the film be with Lionsgate, to have it premiere at South by Southwest. It was actually ideal.
FK: It’s very sweet. It’s very satisfying to have it come out now and have this sort of buzz around it. Any way it would have been worth it because I always had so much faith in the movie that as much as how long the delay was, I knew how good it was. From the moment I read the script I was like ‘This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever read,’ and we did it successfully. Once the hard work was done, it was just like a matter of time before everyone sees this and gets it, because it’s just too good. It’s so awesome. I had friends that kind of thought I was the crazy person talking about The Cabin in the Woods, like (in a patronizing tone) ‘Did you really shoot a movie called Cabin in the Woods?’
KC: ‘When’s it coming out?’ I don’t know…
FK: I feel like it was embarrassing because even like my mom would be like, ‘Are you sure honey?’ And I was like ‘I swear to God, it’s so good.’
Q: Fran I found an old interview you did when you first broke into acting in films. In it you mentioned that you liked acting for the stage better, since in movies basically the director was dictating your every move. Is that still true?
FK: I think in film you do what you’ve got to do on set and then you let go of it. It’s so often that you’re driving home from work and you’re like ‘Oh, I should have done that.’ In an audition or even on set you have your time there to work, and the more experience I get the more I realize that you’ve just got to throw it all out there. Richard Jenkins had this great line on set where he had this one take, and in the middle of it I was thinking, ‘I don’t know what he’s doing.’ And afterwards Drew was like ‘I’m not sure if that’s…’ and Richard cut him off and said ‘I can’t be afraid to fail. I’ve got to leave it all out there.’
The more I learned that, it’s your responsibility to give a wide range of choices and to make all the decisions you can think of, because it’s not in your control. Actors definitely don’t have final cut. There are so many people involved in piecing together the film that you’ve got to do your best to put it all out there. That’s something I’ve learned with my experience with film. At that point I had only done small roles, and you really are just a piece of a much bigger machine. Come in, do your job, and this is your part in this much bigger story so just do it.