Chris was involved in that casting process. It was a different feel because New Moon was the first time that the Wolf Pack got together. With Eclipse, we were already established, so I didn't have that same bond or connection with David. It was very technical. He had a vision and an idea of what he wanted to do.
Even though she's dealing with a scar, Emily just carries on with life. It's not a big deal. While we were shooting the scene, I tried it different ways. I tried it where I was hiding my face, and Chris [Weitz] was like, "Let's try it where she doesn't care," and that's who she is. She doesn't care what anybody else thinks.
Whereas, if you have a longer scene, then you have momentum to build it up. I thought I sucked, but Chris Weitz is an actor, so he understands that process and that you can get nervous in it, and he can look beyond that. Or, it was just me and I was over-thinking the entire thing.
I just read that one scene for Emily in New Moon, and it was pretty simple and straightforward. They liked that I did it really natural. They were like, "That was great!," even with what little I had. Sometimes just having those little scenes are a lot tougher than if you have five pages because you have to go from 0 to 100 in a snap.
I was sitting on top of people and it was just really uncomfortable. There was no place to move. And, I don't like auditioning, anyways. With auditions, you can get so nervous, or other things get into your head and throw you off, and it doesn't really reflect what you can do, as an actor. The whole thing was just really nerve-wracking, but I ended up getting it.
There was one female role, which was Emily. When I did the audition, I flubbed up. It was my first audition back from Christmas break, and I flubbed up and was devastated. In the audition room, they were like, "Oh, you did great!," but you never really know. So, I left the audition in tears.
But, yeah, it was just the regular audition process. There were a couple people telling me about it and that they were looking for the actors, but my manager is pretty good at sorting that out. And, (casting director) Rene Haynes cast me in Into the West, and she's always kept in touch and been a real big supporter of my career.
I met this girl who had a huge scar on her leg from a car accident. She was talking about how, after it first happened, she would always wear long pants and cover it up. But, as she started to grow into it, she decided that that's just her now. It's just a part of who she is. She wears skirts and she shows it off now.
No matter what happens to you in life, you just roll with it. And then, when we went back to shoot Eclipse, I went to Quileute and taught some acting to the kids, and just got to spend some time in the community, which was great because it gave me an idea of where Emily came from.
Yes, there was a massive difference between their styles. David is a very technical director and Chris is an actor's director, in the sense of emotion. With David, he's done horror films, so Eclipse is much darker, whereas I found New Moon really light and poetic. I didn't have as much interaction with David because the casting process was already done.
They're a handful, but Emily deals with that all the time and, as an actor, I deal with that all the time, so you just ignore it. When Julia [Jones] first came on set, she was like, "How do you deal with it?," and I told her, "You just tune it out after awhile." They were competing with each other, doing push-ups and just being ridiculous, so you just have to zone out.
I've developed a way to separate myself from me being me, to me being the character. I can separate watching me, Tinsel Korey, from watching Emily
hat made me feel uncomfortable. People would be like, "Woah, that's crazy!," or they'd look at me really funny, but it also helped because that's how people look at Emily. I was like, "Come on, be sensitive! I have a scar on my face. It's not nice to just stare at somebody." That was really interesting.
Kristen is really focused and really quiet, as an actress. She just does her thing, but she's cool. I like her. I know a lot of people have mixed comments about her, but I think she's a rad person. She's just focused on what she's doing, as an actress, and she wants to pick the right roles, and she's committed to her craft. She's really cool. We got along. There weren't any tensions or anything.
After the make-up process, I was like, "I never want to do a sci-fi movie where I'm in make-up for seven months." It's interesting. It was my first time ever getting prosthetics. They put this goopy stuff all over your head and they tell you it's like a facial, but it's actually very claustrophobic. All they have are these places where your nostrils are and I kept thinking that they were closing up, but they were like, "No, we're looking at it." So, they made a mold of my face.
Most of Emily's backstory is written out between New Moon and Eclipse. I'm reading them as we're shooting the films. I haven't read Breaking Dawn yet. It's just too crazy. There's too much going on that you need a map. I just try to focus on one movie at a time. When we were doing New Moon press, people were already asking about Eclipse. I didn't read it until I was ready to go, so that it was fresh and I wasn't jumbled with all this other stuff.
I also went to the Makah Nation 'cause that's where Emily is originally from and spent time with them too. Seeing the whole spectrum of who she is as a being was cool. And, I miss it. It's beautiful. I miss the kids a lot. I miss everything about that whole entire adventure.
I was in the car driving back, after having done a scene where I kill somebody, and I just said to the driver, "I can't talk right now. I'm too emotional." The whole car ride back, I was just crying.
I didn't want to be around anybody because it was just too much for my brain. But, as an actress, you hope you get those meaty roles that push you into the extremities of that psychology. I like doing independent films because there's more room for you to be creative, and the director allowed me to just go wherever I needed to go. It was emotional. I had to cry a lot.
There's so much going on, with child abuse, not having the right relationships and being in abusive relationships, that play into her, and that energy was constantly in my body for a month. I was the lead character and it was very, very intense.
Stained is about a lonely bookshop keeper, and her past comes back to haunt her. I play a femme fatale, schizophrenic serial killer. They offered me the part and I was like, "I'm just curious why you thought I would be perfect for this role," and the director (Karen Lam) said, "You have this look that, when you're smiling, you're really sweet, but when you're not smiling, you look like you could kill somebody."
It was a very, very intense film for me. I almost lost my mind because there are scenes where I have to kill people, and that energy is absolutely overwhelming. At the same time, as an actor, you never play a character with judgment. It's not my place to judge the fact that she kills people. It's for me to look at her psychology to see what makes her do that.
