Ahead of its release on DVD and Blu-Ray next week (April 8th), Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain sat down to talk about working on Christopher Nolan’s epic Insterstellar – from the space suit to the film’s strong female characters – plus Matthew’s Academy Award and space exploration. Read on:
What were the challenges of acting through a space suit? Did it help with the helmet on? Did it hinder any emotions or anything like that?
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: Oh, did it help, did it hinder? The suit was actually only 40 pounds. Is that correct?
ANNE HATHAWAY: Only 40 pounds?
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: Well, I’m saying that because I think a real space suit is closer to 100 lbs.
ANNE HATHAWAY: That’s right.
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: So they did a lot of work to make it as light as possible. It was easy to maneuver in. You couldn’t break out into a sprint, no. [Laughs] You couldn’t jump as high, no.
Once you had the suit on, a lot of it, as far as what you could express directly, was from the neck up, and sometimes through the mask. But, for me, it was just part of the story that made sense. It was physically more challenging in Iceland—in a space suit on a glacier with the elements, absolutely. [Laughs] A couple of helicopters, 50-mile-an-hour winds.
ANNE HATHAWAY: On a good day. [Laughs] Yeah, I don’t think it hindered it. The first time I put it on, I made up my mind that it was my favorite costume I have ever worn. And thanks to this man [Nolan], I’ve gotten to wear some pretty spectacular ones. But this was the closest I’ve ever felt to feeling like a kid at Halloween, if you can stretch Halloween out for several months. And I love that feeling.
This is a film with very strong female characters, which is great to see. Matthew, as the father to a daughter and someone who has to go off and film movies, how did that affect your approach to your character?
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: Let me say this: I’m in a fortunate position because my family gets to come with me when I head off. It’s something I’ve thought about, because Cooper’s chasing a dream that was taken from him; he’s sitting there on a farm, and that dream is reintroduced to him. Boy, if I did have to go off—because I will probably have to go off for a month at a time, leave the family—that’s a much more minor situation than we have with Cooper in Interstellar.
Let me bring it back to family real quick. If you take a snapshot of this panel, we’ve got some Nolan lineage up here, and they all are experts in their own part of what they did on the film as writers and producers. And Chris has a daughter. So, it was apparent to me early on that this was about family, and about parents and children. And I think that’s obviously where the aorta of the film emotionally sits. Even if you’re not a parent, you have parents and you’ve been in those situations where there’s a certain kind of goodbye—nothing, hopefully, as extreme as this. But that’s what I think everyone latches onto. It’s the common denominator that runs through this film, which everyone can understand.
Matthew, did winning the Academy Award have an effect on your career and your life? And do you have a bucket list of things that you still want to do?
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: I’ve got some things that I want to do that I won’t share. They’re for me. [Laughs] Has it changed? Look, I’ll say this: this is something that Chris and I talked about very early on in our approach. We talked about being obsessed, and that the job that you’re doing right now could be the last one, or to at least approach it like it is the only one. That’s a great reminder and a great way to go into everything. So, with respect to what’s happened to me over the last couple years, I have more obsession even over what I’m doing at this moment. It could be the last one. I hope it’s not, but it could be.
Did any of you come into this film thinking space exploration was a nice thing to do but not necessarily critical to humanity? And how did working on the themes that this film presents change your perspective on space exploration as a critical nature?
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: I’ll answer really quickly on my end. It was something I didn’t consider as much in the vernacular of thinking of it as the new frontier out there as we evolve. And if it is, why? I just didn’t consider it or think about it that much. One of the things I got from this film is that mankind’s expectations have to be greater than ourselves and that, as Chris said earlier, the further out there we go, the more we find out and learn that it’s about you and me, right here.
So it’s much more of a tangible idea and an attainable thought. I’m in no way an expert on it. I could have conversations about it now that I couldn’t have had a year ago before getting on this film, but I have a much more four-dimensional outlook, as far as where we’re going and which way to look, what that new frontier is.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: I remember, when I was a kid, my first real confrontation, I guess, with space travel, was when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. I was very young, and I remember how traumatic that was for me because I was watching it on the news and all of the children in [U.S. astronaut Christa McAuliffe]’s class were watching.
I had never, ever imagined that it was something I wanted to do. But I think that we, as human beings, need to always conquer our fears and reach beyond our grasp. I think it’s very important that we don’t become complacent and stagnant. The wonderful thing about being an actress is that I get to act those explorations beyond what I myself am physically capable of.
ANNE HATHAWAY: Picking up on something Jess just said—one of my first experiences with the space program was with the memorial that was built for the Challenger. When I was in seventh grade, my class spent the entire school year preparing to launch a spaceship all together. We all had our different jobs that we had to learn how to do and we learned the math that you needed; we learned the practical skills that you needed. I thought that was really cool.
Even though it was such a tragedy, if you can find ways to move forward, that’s great. And I’m hoping that the suspension of the space program is just that—a suspension—and that it’s not the final say in the matter. Because I think we need it.
Matthew, can you tell us about that incredible scene when Cooper breaks down in tears?
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: That was one of those scenes for me, as a guy playing Cooper, that I read and put a proverbial tack in it, thinking, ‘That better work.’ [Laughs] ‘That’s really got to work.’ We shot that right after I’d gotten back. It was on a Monday morning; I’d gone away in a very public weekend doing something with The Dallas Buyer’s Club and I was wary about that being scheduled at that point, because I’d been living a very private life with Cooper and a private family on the set and that was my focus each day.
But I came back that morning, and it was all about relaxing. As my friend says, ‘Hey, it’s called relaxation for a reason. Quit trying to make it hard.’ That’s one of those ones when I stay ‘relaxed’ to be able to then receive. One thing is I didn’t see any of the footage beforehand on purpose; I didn’t want to. And we didn’t rehearse. We said, ‘We’re going to shoot the first one up.’ So, on the day, I just remember it was about relaxing and receiving. And not planning out. It can be easy for an actor to go, ‘Boy, I really have to do a lot,’ and then to just say, ‘No, you don’t have to do anything. You’re not committed. You’re not bound to do anything.’
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Interstellar is released on DVD and Blu-Ray on April 8th.
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