After spending four years and five movies playing Bella Swan's vampire sister-in-law Rosalie Hale in the Twilight series, Nikki Reed understandably has a bittersweet perspective on the billion-dollar franchise coming to a close in this week's Breaking Dawn Part 2. On the one hand, she won't miss the hate mail from fans who have taken her character's onscreen iciness to Kristen Stewart's heroine to heart for four films. But few of Twilight's central figures have been as close to the saga as long as Reed has, dating back to even before director Catherine Hardwicke had cast Stewart and Robert Pattinson in the roles that would skyrocket them, the films, and all of their cast, to global fame.
"Catherine called me seven or eight months before it was happening and she was like, 'Hey, do you like the vampire genre? Because there’s this thing I’m thinking about and there are actually some books, and some fans — I don’t know if you’re into it...' It was that sort of conversation," said Reed, who at the time had acted in a handful of indie films including 2003's Thirteen, which she co-wrote with director Hardwicke.
Tempted by the role of Edward Cullen's disapproving adopted sister Rosalie, Reed decided against early retirement from acting and took the gig, joining Stewart, Pattinson, and their fellow Twilight cast mates at the film's Portland shoot — the first and last time the cast would be able to make a Twilight movie in relative anonymity. "We were just kids, and no one knew who anyone was," Reed remembered. "There were no stars, there was no celebrity. We were just people together."
Fast forward to 2012: Reed has four non-Twilight films in the pipeline, including turns in Empire State with Liam Hemsworth and Dwayne Johnson and In Your Eyes, from producer Joss Whedon. She recently launched her own jewelry line, Mattlin Era, featuring designs inspired by her mother and grandmother. And with musician husband Paul McDonald — who she met on the red carpet for Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood, another cosmically unpredictable byproduct of the Twilight saga's success — Reed recently debuted her first album anchored by "All I've Ever Needed," an original song they wrote for the Breaking Dawn soundtrack.
PHOTOS: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson & Co. Premiere 'Breaking Dawn 2'
How do you feel right now about Twilight and your experience with this franchise now that it’s coming to a close?
Having us all together is such a special thing. As the movies have gotten bigger it’s become more rare. In the beginning when there wasn’t this kind of success or fan base for the films, we were all together more. Now there’s more isolation and we don’t get to all hang out in the same room like we used to. It feels really sad, and there are not many moments in your life when you can consciously close a chapter. You reach a milestone like you’re graduating college, and you’re like, oh — I’m aware that this is going to completely change my life when this is done. You normally look back on things in hindsight, but with this we’ve known that it’s been coming to an end since the beginning. It’s really sad for me. I feel really sad. Everyone else is like, “No, it’s fun and exciting!” and it’s all those things, too. But it’s hard to know what an experience this has been, and be conscious of that, and still know that it’s done. And don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about this film and I want it to come out so that the fans can see it. It’s a lot of mixed feelings.
Is that why you’ve been driving by Elizabeth Reaser’s house, sending her photos when she’s not home?
Isn’t that funny! We both live outside of Hollywood on the same mountain, but I live one mountain over and she lives on the street that I take to get into town. So I drive by her house four times a day, and sometimes when I’m feeling goofy I’ll pull over and get out and take a picture of her license plate and I’ll go, “This is how close I was.” It’s just silly! I see her all the time.
Rosalie finally gets some nice, warm moments in Breaking Dawn Part 2 – she’s become basically like a godmother to baby Renesmee, able to exercise her latent maternal instincts. How happy were you to bring Rosalie to this point as a character?
I think one of the greatest challenges with this franchise for me has been knowing that Stephenie [Meyer] wrote such multifaceted, dynamic character but only getting to play one aspect of that person. It sort of makes everything look a lot more superficial than it is; there’s so much depth to all of the characters she wrote. They all have incredible back stories. If you sit down with her and ask her questions, she has answers to everything — this is her world.
Also, even if the fans have read the books and know the character and connect with the character, what we bring to life is so different than what’s in the books sometimes, and it’s almost impossible to portray. So I think I’ve been waiting for this moment, not just for myself but for Rosalie. It’s been so hard defending her for so many years and defending who she is – No, she’s not that, and she’s not this, and there are all these feelings inside! Subconsciously people in general have a hard time disassociating an actor from a character; people who play the villain — you look at John Lithgow on Dexter, playing that character on that show has changed my whole perception of him. Every time I see him in something else now, I can only think of that, and you don’t even know you’re doing it. If I had known going in that playing the outcast and playing the least-liked character was going to… how you’re perceived by the fans is different from how the rest of the cast is perceived because of how they connect you with your character. So I’m happy I didn’t realize that going in, because that would have given me a lot of anxiety about the next four years of my life. It’s interesting to see how the fans will connect with you more now that Rosalie is on Bella’s side. Now you’re playing the hero.
That’s an interesting, unexpected drawback to being a part of the Twilight franchise — especially considering how much the popularity of the franchise has changed your lives, with screaming fans at events and paparazzi out in public.
It’s bizarre, but I can’t cry about that because my mother would kill me. I’m so blessed to be in the position I’m in, and this is today — I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring, but I can tell you that being in this series, there’s no golden ticket here. Any of us who think that are crazy, because you have to constantly work hard. You’re constantly proving yourself. And even when you’ve done a great job, you have to do something else to show people that you can do something great in some other role. We’re always trying to grow and better ourselves, and I feel like I can’t complain. There are so many perks and so many wonderful things about being a part of this. Any time I get down — which I do, by the way. When I get hate mail I get really down on myself and I read it to my mom and my mom is like, “So what? Who cares? These people don’t know you, so you can’t take the praise or the hate to heart.” All of it comes from a very distant place, so you have to receive all of it that way. Even the love, you have to appreciate it but from a distance, because you don’t want that to be absorbed either.
People actually send you hate mail?
People send everyone hate mail. That’s the way the world works right now, I’m nothing special. [Laughs] Trust me. It’s just the way that the world communicates now, the way that everyone functions. I love this quote, and it was a friend of mine who told me this and I think about it consciously whenever I’m feeling like this: “If it’s not personal, you don’t take it personally.” If that person doesn’t know me, it’s not personal. Whatever you have to say about me doesn’t actually exist because this relationship doesn’t exist. You don’t know me.
Slight change of topic: You have a song on the Breaking Dawn soundtrack. Congratulations, because that process must be extremely competitive.
Thank you! Can I just say, we fought so hard for that. Everyone who was involved – Bill Condon, Erik Feig, the studio, Eric Kops, Nancy Kirkpatrick — they’ll all tell you this was not handed to us. There’s room for 16 songs, and there were people that really went to bat for me behind this, and really believed in this song itself and wanted to make this happen.
How did you begin campaigning to get the spot? Did you write the song first, or write it for the film?
I love music, and I had just met Paul. We were filming, this was two years ago, and I said to Bill Condon, “I’m dating this guy who’s a musician and we’re doing music together! It’s a whole new chapter of my life. If I wrote something for the movie, would you just listen to it?” And he was like, “Of course, I’ll listen to anything you send.” But that’s as far as it goes. So we actually wrote something. I let Paul read the script so he would actually understand the storyline and we wrote the song together about these characters. There were a lot of yeses, and nos, and of course the politics of it all — there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen and Bill doesn’t just make the decision, the studio doesn’t just make the decision, the music supervisor doesn’t just make the decision, there are so many people.
But it finally happened. And honestly, I didn’t care if it made the soundtrack or the film — I just wanted it to go on a DVD box. I didn’t care if I made $5 from it. The fans write fan fiction, they write songs for us, and I just wanted them to see that I also connect with this on a deeper level, and I’m inspired enough by this series to want to do something like that. I’m so happy that it made it. Then Paul and I decided we wanted to record our album — it’s called The Best Part, and it’s very basic folky music, just us singing together with an awesome guy playing upright bass and some lead guitar. It’s like a whole new chapter of my life that’s opening because of the ending of this, if that makes sense, in a weird way.
It seems as though you take all of the twists and turns of your career and life as a whole, because they all led you to where you are now.
I don’t have a lot of perspective on this series yet because I’m so in it, but I do have perspective on what the journey of a career looks like. You’re up and you’re down, and you’re important and then you’re not, and you’re in the spotlight and then you’re gone, and it really does happen like that. To be a part of something that for so many years has grabbed people’s attention… the fans have really floated this whole thing. I’m aware of that and also grateful for the experience, because it’s success by association, too. Right now I’m in Twilight and I go around to signings and there are people screaming and crying, and it’s so surreal. I know that when this is over in a month or two and whenever Twilight’s no longer relevant, that doesn’t live on for me. It’s because of this. It’s not very often that this happens for people.
Of all the people involved in the Twilight film phenomenon, you’re in the unique position of having been there, in a strange way, from the start; Catherine Hardwicke cast the first Twilight, which launched this entire franchise, but she probably got the job because of her work on Thirteen, which she wouldn’t have made without you. So you have been at the root of this franchise before it was even a franchise.
Absolutely — I think if I wasn’t the first, I was the second person to know about this. Catherine called me seven or eight months before it was happening and she was like, “Hey, do you like the vampire genre? Because there’s this thing I’m thinking about and there are actually some books, and some fans — I don’t know if you’re into it,” and it was that sort of conversation. I was living in Hawaii, I was going to school, I had decided I wasn’t going to act anymore, and I got that phone call and thought, I’m going to just have a look here and see what I think. In the beginning it was as simple and superficial as, yeah, Rosalie seems like a real challenge and I’d love to look so different — I’d love to have blonde hair for something. It was actually more of a physical transformation, if you can believe it, because I thought, When will I have the opportunity again?
Catherine casts films so differently; look at Peter Facinelli, he looks nothing like Carlisle. He’s Italian! And Kellan — Kellan’s whole look goes from tan, blonde Calvin Klein beach model to Emmett. Catherine was a production designer, which is what my dad does, and she goes into an empty room and can fill it with a vision that goes beyond what she’s seeing, and I really feel that’s her casting process. Nine times out of ten I go in for a film and they’re like, “God, you were great — but they want a blonde.” And it’s like, can you not see that maybe I could do that, or I can change what I look like? Catherine casts based on who you are. If you know Peter at all, he’s so like Carlisle — he’s the most compassionate, fatherly and protective, and he really took us all in. Ashley [Greene]’s incredibly girly and into her fashion and things. I think I have a strong personality and I’ve been very outspoken in my life and career, and I think Catherine sees those qualities in you. It’s not about what you look like.
Looking back now, how much has the media attention impacted life for you and the Twilight cast?
I think the attention on the cast has changed the dynamic slightly. I think that if you ask the cast as whole what their favorite film was to make, most of us go back to the first one. I think the reason for that is not even about what the first movie looks like aesthetically or any of those things, but actually because somewhere in us it evokes that nostalgic emotion. That was a really specific time for us. We were just kids, and no one knew who anyone was. Maybe once or twice someone stopped me in Portland and said, “Are you the girl from Thirteen?” And maybe Kristen got that with Into the Wild. But we were just a bunch of kids roaming the streets exploring who we were and learning about the Portland culture.
We were going to shows all the time — I remember I went to my first Black Keys show with Kristen, and Jackson [Rathbone] would come to my room and we’d play music, and Jackson and Rob would go down to the bar next door because there was an open mic night, and Rob would sing… there were no stars, there was no celebrity. We were just people together. There is no negative or positive feeling that comes from what it became next; no one is upset about it. It was just different. And that was inevitable, because we were suddenly under lockdown. We were filming under tents and there were helicopters all the time, and anything you did or said would be twisted in the press. We were getting phone calls from each other going, “Who said this?” It just all became a different creature. I feel like in a sense, that almost links itself to the feeling that people get when they watch the movies and think, “That reminds me of my first love,” so that’s why they’re so connected to it — it’s like a distant, unattainable feeling now, that they’ve been through it and it’s done. That’s the feeling I have when I think about the first movie. I remember that, and I love it, but because I’m aware of it it’ll never be able to happen again.
Does this experience make you hesitant to dive into a Twilight-scale phenomenon like this again?
I would be a fool to ever say no. The good has outweighed the bad so much, and that’s where we’re talking about perspective — when you’re in it, you might feel like that, but what this film has done in my life and career, and who I am, I don’t feel like I could ever turn this kind of opportunity down. With everything great comes a price, always, right? So we’re paying it, and you have the choice to say “Boo-hoo” or you have the choice to look at all the positive things and say it’s all worth it because of that. You know, I just bought my mom a house — a tiny little baby house, and I spent five years saving enough money to just put a down payment on a house for my mother — but I did it. And to be able to say that when you grow up poor — my mom was a single mother, she made $19,000 a year cutting hair from the back room of our apartment — and now that I have that kind of relationship with her, how could I ever feel that this wasn’t worth it? And not just financially. That’s just a small piece of what’s come for me from all of this, but I’m grateful for all of it.
You've got a new album, a new jewelry line, and looking forward beyond Breaking Dawn, you’ve got a very busy schedule ahead of you.
Let me just say too, everyone in my team has watched me with the amount of frustration that I’ve had. Why am I not booking jobs? What’s going on? I’m putting so much work into this, shouldn’t things be coming to me? No, you have to fight, so hard, and I’ve had many junkets where people have said, “What’s going on with you next?” and I’ve had nothing to say, it’s almost embarrassing and painful. So this year as I rattle off the million things that are going on, I just want you to also understand the amount of appreciation I have for those things, because I know the other side of it, and I know that that could also be tomorrow. I did four really cool films this year — two in particular that I’m really excited about. One is called In Your Eyes, and it’s written and produced by Joss Whedon. I play opposite Zoe Kazan, who was just a dream to work with. And I did a movie called Empire State opposite Liam Hemsworth. Those were two films where I play characters who were such a departure from what normally gravitates towards me. And I have my jewelry line, which launches November 7. I’m in such good company, it’s on GlamHouse.com… and I designed it all myself. My name is not big enough for people to go, let me throw money at you because you’re so famous! This was about me saying, love me for the design aspect because I might not be famous enough to support this.
READ MORE ON THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART II:
REVIEW: Enjoyably Over-The-Top 'Breaking Dawn - Part 2' Lacks A Certain Je Ne Suck Quoi
The 'Twilight' Scream-O-Meter: Notes From The 'Breaking Dawn 2' Premiere