For the second time in three years, director Peter Bogdanovich casts a glance at a Hollywood life that ended in a mysterious death. The Cat's Meow--which was released in 2002 and starred Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies, Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin and Jennifer Tilly as Louella Parsons--followed the line of persistent rumors of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst's guilt in director Thomas Ince's death and an ensuing cover-up. The Mystery of Natalie Wood takes a much broader view of its iconic subject, but the whole movie can't help but be colored by our inescapable knowledge of her untimely death by drowning off Catalina Island in 1981.
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British actress Justine Waddell was chosen by Bogdanovich to play the lead in the film, scheduled to air March 1 on ABC, with Michael Weatherly as Robert Wagner and Matthew Settle as Warren Beatty. Born in South Africa and a graduate of Cambridge, Waddell--who has starred in theater productions of Chekhov's Ivanov (opposite Ralph Fiennes) and The Seagull, and played the leads in the popular British miniseries Wives and Daughters, _Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Great Expectations --flew to the States on her own dime to audition for the role of Wood and landed the part. Her performance covers Wood's life from 16 to 42--no ordinary feat.
We asked Peter Bogdanovich to interview his star for Hollywood Life, but instead got a lively, informal conversation where two voices interweave like an engaging impromptu duet--a poignant reminiscence about the three-time Academy Award-nominated (but never Oscar-winning) star and the making of a film that both captures the essence of Wood's life and depicts a Hollywood that Bogdanovich knows only too well.
PETER BOGDANOVICH: What was like it for you playing a film icon? Terrifying?
JUSTINE WADDELL: Terrifying. But also exciting, because we very much moved away from dealing with Natalie as an icon and were dealing with her primarily as an actress and a woman. I mean, we went behind the films so that you know what Natalie feels like when they get Marni Nixon to dub her singing voice in West Side Story, or why she didn't want to go to the premiere of Rebel without a Cause after James Dean died, or why she wanted to do Splendor in the Grass with Elia Kazan. In terms of playing an icon, it was very much about how her work related to her life. So we kind of quietly sidestepped that--didn't we, Peter?--in an interesting way.
PB: It's sort of there, but it's not spelled out. What we were trying to do was to get some sense of what she was like--what her life was like and what contributed to the enormous sensitivity of her performances.
JW: What was your favorite Natalie movie?
PB: I think Splendor in the Grass--and Love with the Proper Stranger.
JW: My favorite is Love with the Proper Stranger. Although as a non-American, I just adore West Side Story.
PB: Yeah, and she was wonderful in Inside Daisy Clover and in This Property Is Condemned. I don't think she gave a bad performance.
JW: Did you ever meet her?
PB: Maybe three, four times. All at public gatherings, so I couldn't speak to her. Once was at a screening of a Cary Grant movie; she was with Warren Beatty. I don't think much more happened than I said hello, Warren said hello, and that was about it. And then I saw her I think twice more at parties, in '62 and then in the 70s when she was back with Robert Wagner. He was very kind of ebullient and she was sort of quiet and a little bit suspicious. So I couldn't say I had any real experience with her.
JW: You very much brought a sense of what Hollywood could have been like at that time and what the pressures on a young woman like Natalie were when she was making her most major films. It's all very humorous, but I mean, there is a real sense of this kind of glorious life. I mean, she really lived her life in the limelight.
PB: Oh God, yes. Natalie had to deal with fame at a very young age. She didn't really have a life; from the time she was 4 or 5 she was in the movies.
JW: A strange reality.
PB: It's a real life, but it isn't real in terms of what other people know. Generally I feel biopics are difficult to do because it often doesn't feel as though the people are in show business. It seems like it was written and acted by people who don't really know what it's like. And I think we tried to overcome that.
JW: Well, you were very determined to make things as low-key as possible, which was wonderful.
PB: The other thing that we dealt with a lot was the relationship between her mother and her, how it affected her from the time she was very young through the end. You can say that everything she does in her life is majorly affected by her mother.
JW: Having her sister, Lana, executive produce was really helpful. I had a couple of great conversations with Lana about what she thought was going through Natalie's mind at any particular point in the script. And Lana had dresses of Natalie's that I could wear, anecdotes to tell and mannerisms of Natalie's that she thought might be use ful. It was so reassuring to know that she was keeping an eye on things. I'm not sure how I would react if I was involved in the making of a film about my sister, but she was just so generous, humorous and gracious.
PB: Getting her approval, or getting her to feel that we were on the right track-- not only with you, but with Alice Krige playing Maria, your mother was very helpful. That she could say, "Yes, that's what my mother was like," was very helpful.
JW: One of the most fascinating things for me, just not knowing much about Natalie's life before we started filming, was the issue of Natalie being Russian-American. What was her great name? [Pauses] Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko.
PB: That's something that people don't really know about her. And of course, she spoke Russian fluently.
JW: You know, she was first-generation American, and there was such a strong Russian influence in both her personality and the way she was brought up.
PB: Yes, the Russian aspect of it was very, very interesting.
JW: And, of course, I was terribly concerned about the American accent because it would be awful if Natalie sounded English, and we were filming in Australia, so it would be even worse if she sounded Australian! Let's just say I took a crash course in dialect coaching.
PB: The funny thing is I never met you as an English girl until we wrapped the picture.
JW: And then, what did you say?
PB: Suddenly, you started speaking with a British accent and I didn't know who you were! "What happened to Natalie?!"
JW: I got rather shocked, too, actually-- I'd spoken with an American accent for so long, it was like losing a personality.
PB: Well, I know you had to struggle to keep the American accent--you spoke it all through the picture whether we were shooting or not. Your sister lived in Sydney, and your parents came to visit, and they were all very upset that you wouldn't speak to them in your normal accent.
JW: Well, who can blame them?
PB: What would you say was the most difficult thing for you to do besides the accent?
JW: I think it was the singing that killed me! It was definitely the embarrassment of having to sing in front of 400 people on the set. And singing in a bikini--that was quite tough, too.
PB: You did awfully well. You had extraordinary confidence with it.
JW: What did you find was the toughest scene to shoot?
PB: The ending. The most painful was when she falls in the water and she is trying to save herself. I thought that was emotionally disturbing because I, by then, had sort of fallen in love with Natalie, with her persona. I felt terrible for you because it was difficult to do all that and terrible for the character, realizing that she'd been through something so horrible.
JW: I just remember watching the interview tapes that you sent me in London and being impressed by just how strongly the people in her life felt about her-- about her work, the way that she lived her life, the decisions she made as a wife and a mother and what great friends she really had.
PB: Of the 15 people or so we interviewed, about 10 of them cried on camera talking about her. The emotional connection is still very strong.
JW: And how sad some of these people were when she died--her untimely demise.
PB: And, how she died. My feeling is that we sort of did the legend of Natalie Wood. We tried to get as close as we could to the original story, and I think some of the specifics are very real and honest. But I don't think we can absolutely say this is the life of Natalie Wood. It's a suggestion of the life of Natalie Wood. I think you did a great job covering the ages from about 16 to 42. There were days when you were playing one age in the morning, a different age in the afternoon and yet another age in the evening. How did you prepare yourself for that?
JW: There were different people involved in Natalie's life at different times, so it was just a matter of opening up to that and being guided. I felt completely different at each particular age. When I was 16 I just seemed to giggle a lot, and when I was 42 it was too traumatic to even look in the mirror. And we did have a couple of conversations like, "Peter, what age am I at?" "You're 29 now." "Peter, what age am I at?" "15." "Where am I know, Peter?" "38!"
PB: You know, I was most kind of quietly impressed with how that all cut together because you had to keep it in your mind scene to scene, age to age. I just hoped it would work!
JW: I had great fun filming the scene with Matthew Settle, who plays Warren Beatty. And we had this one line when she was nominated for Splendor in the Grass...
PB: "It's my luck the first time in Oscar history the best actress award goes to a performance in Italian!"
JW: Yeah! Who was it? It was Sophia Loren, wasn't it?
PB: It was. For Two Women. Everybody said Natalie really wanted an Oscar. I don't know who doesn't want an Oscar. But she seeemd to really be disappointed that she didn't get one. The way we do the movie she seems to have resigned herself to not having it--and to be very happy to have her children. At one point, she referred to them as her Academy Awards.
JW: What I loved about that scene is it was played for comedy.
PB: When in doubt, play it for comedy. Well, I think we've covered it. How much longer are you in town, Justine? JW: Oh, about a week.
PB: Well, we'll talk then, surely.
JW: We will.
PB: I have your number.
JW: Yes, cool.
PB: All right, darling.
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