By Tracey Barrientos
With the Blu-ray release of “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II”, Tracey got to speak with Rami Malek and Andrea Gabriel about making the film.
How does it feel to be a part of the saga and what did you do when you found out you had a role in the film?
Andrea: Well I had scene the movies before and I really didn’t know a lot about the last book and so once I got it everyone was like “oh my God, your a part of that coven and oh it’s a huge thing” and people were telling me basically what I was going to be doing in the movie before I even picked up the book. It was really exciting and I was just imagining going to go off to vampire camp for the next couple months of my life and meet a bunch of people I didn’t know before and it was just this chapter I look back on and it was awesome.
Rami: I remember getting the audition and wondering if it was something I really wanted to do and being kind of worried about it because you never know what’s going to happen when your part of a Twilight film. I still don’t know what’s going to happen, but in the end I remember being really excited when I got the phone call that I got the job and that I was going to be a part of film history. Good or bad.
What sort of things did you do to research your characters?
Andrea: I actually didn’t do a lot about it until I got there, the part of the book about the Egyptian coven doesn’t tell you a lot. Once we were on set Stephanie was actually there like every day and I was really intimidated at first but everybody said she was cool and that I should go up to her. Me and Omar who plays my mate came up with a little back story. Once we were on set I went to Stephanie and asked her about it and it turns out they were actually pretty similar. My history was a little more violent then hers though.
Rami: Stephanie was pretty invaluable and so was Bill Condon. We had to do a very early camera test where you come in and they put you in costume and they put you in makeup and they parade you in front of a camera and I got to talk to Bill during that about the character and Stephanie gave us a lot about what she thought was their story and her door was always open. She told me that he would have been a street performer back in the day and I remember in New Orleans I saw this little kid on the street doing magic tricks. I remember thinking that’s what I need, that kind of energy that kind of mischievous thing going on inside. I remember that I just kept giving him money so he would keep showing me tricks. I remember having Renesme’s hand in a scene and I was doing something and it was one of the things I learned from him. I ended up giving him like a hundred dollars and asking him “if you were to create this whirlwind in someones hand, how would you do it” and he showed me.
Did anything get trimmed out of the movie that involved your characters that we didn’t see?
Andrea: As a matter of fact yes. Me and Amun don’t fight as you know we take off and we actually filmed this entire sequence where Amun goes up to Aro and says “we didn’t come to fight we came to witness” and a whole sequence of me deciding if I was going to leave with him or go with the coven. It was a little moment that was wonderful to film. It would have pulled focus though because when you look at it, there is already so much going on.
Is the transition from television to film difficult?
Andrea: I actually enjoy it because even though I wasn’t playing a huge role in this film you just get to focus so much more time on the characters and the story. When you have an episode or two episodes or even a finale your going to be working on that for maybe two to three weeks and you just don’t get the time and you also don’t know what’s coming. With a film you get the entire script and you really feel more like a part of a story with a beginning a middle and an end. In a TV series they don’t even know what’s going to happen or how long it will go for or if it will get canceled and it leaves things open ended which can be a little frustrating for an actor because you don’t know what direction your headed and what your character is anticipating.
Rami: I don’t differentiate you know; acting is acting weather it be on stage, television or in a film I just like it all. Some things may require more subtlety than others and you could do crazy things in a sitcom that you may not be able to do in film but then again it depends on the character.
Out of all the locations in the Twilight films where would you most likely want to visit and why?
Rami: I have to say Rio right off the bat. I would want to go for the beaches and the food and the beautiful people.
Andrea: I’d want to go to Egypt, Italy and France. They had a french coven with two vampires that was not part of the book and was supposed to be in the movie but sadly it was cut.
What has been your strangest reaction with a Twilight fan?
Rami: There has been some blood curdling screams that we get sometimes at huge events like at Comic Con. I also have had to sign a pregnant woman’s belly once and it was kind of odd.
Andrea: For me nothing crazy Twilight related, at the premiere I was with my sister and we were going to the party and I guess because I didn’t have an escort the guy didn’t know I was part of the movie. I told my sister you know don’t worry nobody ever recognizes me but all of a sudden this guy comes up with a bunch of my pictures and then all of these people came up to me with my pictures and it was kind of weird but flattering.
