Backstage - Rosario Dawson Interview
FANBOY FAVORITE
ROSARIO DAWSON DISCUSSES “WONDER WOMAN,” THE NEXT DC
UNIVERSE ANIMATED ORIGINAL MOVIE ARRIVING MARCH 3
Actress and fanboy favorite Rosario Dawson delivers
a knockout punch as the voice of strong-willed Amazonian
warrior Artemis in Wonder Woman, the next entry in the
popular series of DC Universe animated original PG-13
movies due from Warner Premiere, DC Comics and Warner
Bros. Animation on March 3, 2009. Warner Home Video will
distribute the all-new film, which will also be
available OnDemand and Pay-Per-View as well as available
for download day and date, March 3, 2009.
Dawson, whose voiceover experience was previously
limited to a single episode of Robot Chicken, completely
immersed herself in the warrior mindset to bring Artemis
to animated life. Dawson’s resonating take on the
focused, powerful tones and dry, no-nonsense (and thus,
unintentional humor) approach of Artemis perfectly
complements the work done by the rest of the stellar
voice cast, which includes Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion,
Virginia Madsen and Alfred Molina.
Fans in the
San Francisco Bay Area will have a chance to see the
West Coast Premiere of Wonder Woman at WonderCon on
Friday, February 27 at 6:00 p.m. in the Esplanade
Ballroom of The Moscone Center. The premiere will be
followed by a panel discussion of the film led by
Virginia Madsen (the voice of Hippolyta, Queen of the
Amazons), producer Bruce Timm, director Lauren
Montgomery, writer Michael Jelenic and moderated by DC
Comics Senior Vice President of Creative Affairs Gregory
Noveck.
In a career spanning just over a dozen
years, Dawson has managed to seamlessly glide between
fanboy features, big-time Hollywood epics, charming
independent and “smaller” films, and even a musical. She
is constantly in demand by the hippest of today’s
filmmakers from Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez to
Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Kevin Smith., Her
on-screen resume includes Sin City (and its upcoming
sequel), Eagle Eye, Grindhouse, Clerks and Men in Black
II, as well Rent, Alexander, 25th Hour, He Got Game and
the recent Seven Pounds.
Dawson is every fanboy’s
fantasy: a stunning beauty with a greater love and
knowledge of comic books than your average
Wednesday-at-Golden-Apple geek. She has her own comic
book series (“Occult Crimes Taskforce”), she hosted
Saturday Night Live just a few weeks ago, and she once
spoke Klingon as a guest on Late Night with Conan
O’Brien.
An interview with Dawson is only
challenging for your tape recorder – because she has the
capacity to answer a question for three minutes without
taking a breath. She is more impressive and endearing
than you’d ever hope to find, and she offered a
significant stretch of time to discuss her role in
Wonder Woman, the intrinsic attributes of a great super
hero, an absolute adoration of Neil Gaiman, some deleted
The Devil’s Rejects scenes, a hankering to play the
live-action version of Harley Quinn, and her love for
anything in the comics realm.
Enjoy the thoughts
of Rosario Dawson …
QUESTION: Would you describe the challenges of
bringing this character to life with this particular
voice?
ROSARIO DAWSON: I haven’t done that much
voiceover work., so it was interesting to prepare for a
character like Artemis who’s so strong and so powerful.
Then you have the language, the pronunciations, the
Greek mythology involved, the kind of accent they want.
She’s from a different land and such a different time.
I’m a New Yorker, so there are some aspects of being a
tough woman that I thought I could bring to the role –
but it’s such a different world as a woman who’s like a
warrior. This medium is very dependent on understanding
what the filmmakers want – so, ironically, listening is
really important part to doing voiceover work.
QUESTION:
Did you have preconceptions about doing this role versus
how you ended up doing it?
ROSARIO DAWSON: I
think it was her deadpan humor that I didn’t anticipate.
She’s definitely not one-dimensional. She’s very
one-track-minded about her strength, and about her
opinion. She’s very okay with the fact that the Amazons
have cut themselves off from the rest of the world –
she’s happy and secure in the way they live, and she
takes a lot of pride and honor in being an Amazon and
being Hippolyta’s right hand woman. But she’s so
steadfast in her ways all the time that it does lend
itself to moments of humor. That’s always an interesting
thing to kind of play with, especially for a character
like Artemis – she doesn’t have a funny bone in her
body, so it’s actually funnier just to play those lines
straight. I like the consistency of that.
QUESTION: What are the joys and the challenges of
playing a role like this?
ROSARIO DAWSON: Again,
I’m a New Yorker, so I have this sort of tough vein
that’s naturally bred into me. In general, I’m a nice
person, and that seems to surprise people sometimes.
I’ll be at Comic-Con and people will say, “I’ve been
watching you for three days and you seem really nice –
but you were really scary in Sin City. How did you do
that?” And I’m like, “Acting!” (she laughs) I’ve played
so many different roles that are very strong minded
women, and I think ultimately the key to that is (A)
because I come at it from such a different outside
perspective that I’m able to kind of appreciate exactly
what that looks like, and I savor the opportunities of
being able to play that in a character;; and (B) I think
ultimately that the key to it is not just playing
strong, but to understand the reasons that she’s strong,
and the situations in the world she lives. It’s about
knowing why she adopts that kind of behavior or
personality. For someone like Artemis, it’s very
different from someone like Gail (in Sin City). A
different background lends itself to different nuances.
It’s kind of interesting to play someone who is so
strong, but also very feminine. These Amazons are women
are very proud to be women. Artemis is strong, but she’s
not trying to be masculine. If anything, she just really
fully believes she is superior because she IS a woman.
So I tried to keep my voice very strong and sometimes
very gravelly, but still have a little bit of warmth.
It’s not like she hates men. It’s just that she believes
ultimately that the choices they’ve made as women in
protecting themselves are the best choices that could
possibly made. I like that it’s embracing womanhood, and
the strength that a woman has – as opposed to maybe
feeling like she’s lesser than men, and that’s why she
tries so hard to be strong.
QUESTION: Did
you have a favorite moment or line?
ROSARIO
DAWSON: Artemis has a few really great lines because she
plays everything – even the humor – very straight. The
one that made me laugh out loud when I read it was when
she tells Hippolyta that they shouldn’t have let Diana
go out into the outside world. Hippolyta asks, “What
could we have done to have stopped her?” And Artemis
says, “Well I could have shot her in the leg with an
arrow. Not in an artery, of course.” It’s just so
deadpan – she wouldn’t kill her, but she would’ve shot
her. It’s so dry, and it’s so honest. And I love that.
QUESTION: What are your overall impressions of the
character of Wonder Woman in perspective with this
script?
ROSARIO DAWSON: I really liked the change
to present day, with nuclear missiles and all that kind
of stuff. I think it really ups the ante, bringing real
discussions of what it would be like to have a super
hero in our world right now. We’re really delving into
so many stories that are comic book based, so I like
that we have a woman as part of that production. We
haven’t really explored that too much. Wonder Woman has
had so many different connotations over the years
because she’s so beloved as a character, and it’s been
interesting to see how she’s evolved – to see how her
outfits have changed, and going from having her
invisible plane to starting to fly herself, and sort of
be on par with the physical attributes of Superman. She
is like the female Superman. She has represented so much
for women and everything women were not traditionally
allowed to do, like embracing your sensuality and being
strong at the same time. They’re supposed to be in
contradiction, but she holds it with dignity and with
class. She didn’t look like princesses that you normally
saw, but she was a princess. There were so many great
things about her, and I’m very excited to see that all
of that is maintained.
Wonder Woman has really
evolved, and her character has been unique in many ways.
She was raised with this backwards perspective about
men, and she learned to kind of evolve her mind past
that. She’s able to separate and unite concepts – that
these are my lessons as a child, but these are my
experiences as a woman, and I can put the two together
and make sense of it all. She’s a great balance to
Superman and Batman. She has a very clear understanding
of everything, so she’s not afraid to maybe take it as
far as Batman would, which is very different than
Superman. She does understand that sometimes war is
necessary, and to that end she is like an angel with a
flaming sword. That’s an amazing character, and it makes
sense that we keep going back to her because she really
does resonate with each generation.
QUESTION:
Were you modeling your present character on any of your
past performances?
ROSARIO DAWSON: No, partly
because I’ve never played a character like this before.
Plus, I’m used to using my body a lot more, Even with
Sin City, as we were doing everything with green screen,
at least we still had costumes and certain markings, and
other people to work with. So being in an environment
where there’s just a script in front of you, and you’re
not really working off of someone, you try to milk it
for the mike. It’s a different kind of experience.
Mostly I was pulling from thinking of the warriors in my
life. My mom is six feet tall, and she was raised with
four brothers, so she’s the toughest woman I know. She
was in gangs when she was younger; she used to be a
plumber; she’s a singer and a great cook. It’s like that
song says, she’s a Brick House. It was an interesting
thing as a young girl growing up, to know that song and
think of that as your mother. So when I told her I was
doing this film, she was really excited because she’s
our Amazon. We’ve even gotten her a Wonder Woman mug in
the past. It’s nice because I know my mom will always be
taller than me – so when I have a bad day, she always
envelopes me in a great warm hug. I always feel like my
mom’s there. Even as she gets older, she’s always gonna
feel like a warrior woman who can handle anything. She
can take care of me. She can protect me. That’s a
wonderful thing. Ultimately, that’s what I wanted to
bring to the character.
QUESTION: Have you always
been a fan of comic books, and what characters or
writers/artists do you gravitate toward?
ROSARIO
DAWSON: To some degree, peripherally if not always 100
percent, I’ve always had comic books as part of my life.
My uncle Gus (Gustavo Vazquez) is a comic book artist
who dabbled with DC and Marvel, and he’s been a
tremendous influence in my life – he was an actor and a
singer, and he’s still doing all of that. I looked up to
him as an artist, and a performer. He was always into
comics – I think he’s been drawing since he was
4-years-old – and he always took his comics very
seriously. I couldn’t even breathe on his comics. I
could never touch his comics. I read his comics, but
only over his shoulder, and I would nod to him so he
could flip the page when I was done reading. He gave me
the feeling that comics were sacred texts, and my grubby
little fingers weren’t allowed to touch them. So I’ve
always had this really strong love and respect for
comics, and the way that the storytelling comes across.
The kind of characters that are developed, the issues
that are addressed, and the great stories. In the same
way that we can look at wonderful films and the journeys
they take us on, I’ve always really believed and trusted
in the same concepts with comics.
I know what a
collaborative effort it is between writers and artists
to create a comic. I’ve always had a true respect and
admiration for it. I love Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman --
I freaked out when I got to hear Gaiman speak for 15
minutes at Comic-Con, just because it’s like real
literature when he writes for comics. It’ll sound silly,
but I take such pride in the fact that I even know to
read them, and I’m so grateful that I have that as an
influence. It’s so interesting to me that there’s a huge
world of comic book fans, but it’s also still very
small. But it’s definitely reaching out and touching a
wider population today, especially with all the comics
being made into films. The influences of people like
Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller are reaching new
audiences, and that’s exciting.
Honestly, any
success that I ever have in doing anything with a comic
means more to me most of the time than anything else,
because I know if people in comics are approving, then
it’s actually really approved. There’s a fine toothcomb
that goes through any work in the comic book industry.
Because people within this world, if they don’t like you
or what you’ve done, they really have no problem telling
you that you suck. (she laughs) I don’t mean they’ll say
they weren’t interested or they didn’t like it, I mean
they will stand in front of you and tell you, “You
suck!”
I’ve been co-writing this comic book for
a while, and it’s been going really well. And it makes
me feel really excited because it was a big risk for me.
I think that was probably one of the scarier things that
I’ve ever done, co-writing on the Occult Crimes
Taskforce. You don’t do that very often, especially as
an actor. You act in this sort of vacuum, then it gets
edited and put into the theaters, and maybe you hear how
it does. But doing a comic resonates with people
QUESTION: As active as you are in fantasy films, do you
actively seek out roles in that genre?
ROSARIO DAWSON: It’s funny – I was at a
producer meeting for this really big movie and the guy
was saying, “I’m working on all these projects, and … I
did Rob Zombie’s first movie and I’m gonna do a second
one.” He said it like he was apologizing, like he just
automatically assumed it wouldn’t be something I’d be
interested in. And I’m saying, “Oh my God, Rob Zombie! I
love him! House of Thousand Corpses – I love that movie!
Are there any parts in (the new film) for me?” So while
we were filming Sin City, I ended up doing a day of work
on The Devil’s Rejects. I ended up being one of the
rejects of The Devil’s Rejects, because I only made it
to the DVD deleted scenes, but I got my throat torn up
by Dr. Satan and it was really awesome.
I think
it’s great to have very varied experiences, because that
makes me who I am. I grew up listening to Bowie and
Queen, but also Billie Holiday and Joni Mitchell and Jim
Croce. But people don’t know that. They watch one of my
films, and think I am that character. Most of the time
they’re going to be surprised that that’s not me. I’ve
had some really interesting experiences in my life, and
luckily it’s been able to be reflected in my work. Big
budget or small budget films, Spike Lee to Robert
Rodriguez to Frank Miller, and I’m excited to continue
doing that, The fanboy stuff will always be prevalent –
it really has added to my life. I can appreciate it in
pop culture in a deep way. It’s a cool thing to be a
part of.
QUESTION: Do you realize what a hit
you are in the sci-fi comic book fanboy arena?
ROSARIO DAWSON: That’s only because I spoke Klingon on
Conan O’Brien! (she laughs very hard) I love Star Trek.
I just bought my brother all the series, every single
disk, full of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We will
sit there and go over all of that stuff, and my brother
remembers everything right down to the code that Data
says in episode 114. It’s bad. So it’s great when I get
to kind of do anything in that fanboy/fangirl world. The
fans are totally passionate about it, and I get to let
my inner geek out.
QUESTION: If you could
play one comic book character on screen, who would it be
and why?
ROSARIO DAWSON: Harley Quinn. Now THAT
would be fun. I’d have to really transform myself, which
could be really, really fun. You don’t see too many
female villains that aren’t like Poison Ivy, where
they’re just really sexy but not much otherwise. Harley
is such an off-base kind of girl, she is in that same
sort of Batman/Joker insanity.
I love playing
women who are strong, and characters that have these
great convictions and do the right thing. I’m always 100
percent behind that. But I also like to challenge myself
to kind of go in the other direction and really explore
what the opposite sort of incarnation would be, to look
at a situation and think, “What’s the way I can reap the
most harm.” You hit the most conflict when you’re
approaching a situation trying to be good, and it would
be really interesting and I think really freeing and
liberating in some ways. The physicality of doing it
would be an interesting exploration because you really
can’t be too big or too full or too expressive when
you’re creating mayhem and embracing chaos. There’s a
flow that evil characters seem to get into sometimes
that would be fun to play with, like when you’re playing
a video game and you choose to be the character that’s
most destructive. I wouldn’t want to be that in real
life, I don’t want that legacy, I don’t want that
reality, but it would be interesting to explore it in a
manner like that, to see what it would feel like when
that inner voice shuts off and you just kind of go with
it. That would be a safe environment to explore the
darker sides of myself.
QUESTION: How do you
think fans will react to the final film?
ROSARIO
DAWSON: I was really excited when I was reading Wonder
Woman. Michael Jelenic wrote these long paragraphs every
once in a while in the middle of the action sequences,
things about Wonder Woman beating up a villain in the
mall and her destroying the mall being a metaphor for
women who are only supposed to just look cute and kind
of parade themselves around but actually feeling like
being superior to it and showing their strength and
femininity at the same time. And then he’d write, “Okay,
I’ve said my peace, back to the story.” There were all
these little moments where he kind of spoke out to the
people who were reading it about just how serious he was
taking it, not just the origin stories but really
getting the characters across and really setting up
Wonder Woman for the next projects. That was cool and
it’s a great set-up. The whole story has a strong
resonance, the dialogue is very strong, the violence is
very real, there’s great strength in the characters and
the issues that they’re facing, and there’s all this
Greek mythology and the parallels in the two worlds.
It’s a very strong script and I really liked it. It’s
very respectful to the legacy of the character. I want
to see these characters again, I want to see where
they’re going to take this next.
Please visit
the film’s official website at www.wonderwomanmovie.com
Images/captions:
Artemis-battleready.jpg Artemis, the Amazons’
lead warrior, prepares for battle in “Wonder Woman,” an
all-new DC Universe animated original movie to be
distributed March 3, 2009 by Warner Home Video. Rosario
Dawson supplies the voice of Artemis.
Artemis-scared.jpg Artemis is pinned between two
swords in the heat of battle during “Wonder Woman,” an
all-new DC Universe animated original movie to be
distributed March 3, 2009 by Warner Home Video. Rosario
Dawson supplies the voice of Artemis.
Artemis-sword-extend.jpg Artemis wields her mighty
sword in leading the Amazons against the forces of Ares
in “Wonder Woman,” an all-new DC Universe animated
original movie to be distributed March 3, 2009 by Warner
Home Video. Rosario Dawson supplies the voice of
Artemis.
Trademark information for the images: "Wonder Woman" (c) Warner Bros. Ent Inc.
"Wonder Woman" and all related characters and elements
are trademarks of and (c) DC Comics. All Rights
Reserved.
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