Exclusive Interview with Disney’s Alice – Mia Wasikowska #ThroughTheLookingGlassEvent

Walking into the grand Montage hotel there is always a feeling of excitement when knowing that jus upstairs you will be interviewing the star of a major film. This film in question, Alice Through The Looking Glass and the star, Mia Wasikowska who is reprising her role as the iconic Alice, in the follow-up to Alice in Wonderland. In this film her character returns  to the whimsical world she once fell in love with but hasn’t been back to in a very long time, to rescue the Hatter (Johnny Depp).

Mia arrived looking lovely and as she greeted the 25 bloggers, myself included, I saw a glimpse of Alice herself…a strong woman indeed.

Speaking about how it felt to reprise this iconic role, she spoke about how much Alice had changed since the first movie.

I really love Alice and I like seeing her journey. I think in the first film, she was  still a little uncomfortable and trying to bridge that gap between knowing who she is on the inside and then being able to be that on the outside.  I think that was sort of her journey in the first film. In this film she’s just spend three years as the captain of her own ship, and she has a really strong sense of who she is.  She comes back into this story with a really strong sense of that, and despite the fact that expectations of her are really low in her society, she manages to sort of hold on to that sense of being worth more than what people want of her, which I think is really great and important for young girls and boys, obviously, everywhere.

RELATIONSHIPS

In the movie there are a lot of very important relationships that have continued from the first movie into this one. Mia went on to tell us about her relationships with not only the new characters but the new actors on the film like Father Time played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

I do like the relationship with Alice and Time. I think Sasha plays a confident idiot very well. He’s like this old powerful loser in a way that Alice is the only one that isn’t scared enough to pull him out on how he just doesn’t make any sense at all. I like that she sort of has no fear in approaching anyone.

On working with Sacha..

It was great. I  think there’s like a six hour version of the film because he improvises a lot, so and he’s quite ambitious about it. It was just very entertaining. Every day was something completely different. I would say he’s very ambitious and very smart and really funny.

Working with Johnny Depp this time around…

It was great! I guess like the main difference was that I knew him before and with all the cast I had that level of familiarity with them and, um, that was really nice. So we all sort of knew each other and that always helps stepping into a project like this, which is quite abstract. He’s such a wonderful person, such a lovely, sensitive person and I love that he’s so kind of creative. All his characters are very, very different, but they’re also distinctly his own characters.

Her favorite relationships within the film ……

I did really like the relationships between all the characters a lot, like Alice and her mother, and the Hatter and his father, and then the root of the rivalry between the sisters. Your own relationship with your mom changes again and again as you like grow older and you go through different stages in your life, and that kind of like reestablishing that relationship and how that happens like constantly. Alice and her mom like kind of learn from each other and are able to like really appreciate each other again. It’s really sweet in this and I really liked that.

FILMING

This filmed contained a lot of CGI green screen moments that seemed quite challenging to all of the actors, especially Mia.  There were challenging physical moments.  and MW : I had like a two week period before we started filming, um, with the stunt coordinators, which is really great. They were really

 I had like a two week period before we started filming with the stunt coordinators, which is really great. They were really brilliant group of people. Um, but yeah, there’s no illusions to the fact that I, I mean, I did the like quite a lot of the physical stuff, but I had a wonderful like stunt, um… [INTERVIEWER COMMENT], double, yes, stunt double, who did like a lot of that really difficult, painful stuff. So I would come in and do like the fun, whimsy bits, and then she’d be like thrown across the room.

ALICE AS A ROLE MODEL

I think  she (Alice) has to have this innate sense of who she is and even though she’s got all these challenges and people always questioning her, she manages to hold on to that really strong sense of herself, even when she goes to the ball with the oriental costume and she just doesn’t’ even seem to notice the judgment. I guess just that sense of not caring so much about what other people think, I think, is really important.

BEING A STRONG FEMALE LEAD

 It’s really great. I mean, it’s not something like I ever considered until like you’re doing a film and then you see that it has an impact on people. It’s not something that I really ever thought about until after the fact. I’m excited for this film because I think, for all sorts of reasons we’ve come a long way and especially in terms of this film, we are kind of satirizing the idea of female hysteria, which only a hundred years ago was taken very seriously.

So it’s a big step to be able to be like well, this is so obviously ridiculous. Whereas not so long ago it was so serious. So that’s a big step, and there’s obviously a long way to go before things are entirely equal, but I’m like excited that slowly it’s more normal that there’s a lead character in a big summer movie that’s a female, and such a feisty one, and she’s not in a way a love interest. I think that’s really important.

TIME AND ITS MEANING IN THIS FILM 

The film contains many, many wonderful and memorable quotes, many that will resonate with the audience. The main message that I took away from it was that time is precious. Mia explained how she loved the message of from Father Time played superbly by Sacha Baron Cohen…..

You can’t change the past but you can learn from it

I think even though we kind of know that, I think really deeply understanding that is really important to being able to kind of live your life and be in the moment, to accept what’s happened in the past and move on into the future openly and not be sort of fixated on trying to change something that’s already happened, which I feel like we can get a bit caught up in.

When she is at home in Sydney, Mia enjoys her garden, reading, going for walks and being with friends. She is currently working on her next film HHhH, which will be out sometime next year and would love to do a comedy in the future. You can see as Alice in Alice Through The Looking Glass on May 27th when the films opens everywhere!

Stay Social with Alice 

Website / Facebook / Instagram /Twitter (Walt DisneyStudios)

Disclosure:  I am being provided with an all-expense trip to LA by Walt Disney Studios to attend the Red Carpet Premiere of Alice Through the Looking Glass. All opinions are 100% my own. This is accordance with Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of. Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.