PAGE 6A
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2013
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FILM
Sarah Wright discusses production of '21 and Over'
ALEX LAMB alamb@kansan.com
Actress Sarah Wright stars as love interest Nicole in the raucous college comedy "21 and Over," helping out party boys Miller (Miles Teller) and Casey (Skylar Astin) as they wildly celebrate the 21st birthday of their friend Jeff Chang (justin Chon). Here, Wright explains improvising with the guys, playing party games and the travel experiences that inspired her character.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN:
What sort of behind the scenes high jinks happen on the set of a movie about partying in college?
Actress Sarah Wright comes to save the guys in "21 and Over." Courtesy Relativity Media.
SARAH WRIGHT: I think the boys parted a lot off set and then also on set. But while we weren't shooting we went to a lot of concerts, and we shot in Seattle so we went to a music festival then art festivals and stuff like that around town all the time. It was a wonderful city to work in. We had a blast shooting the movie and the boys were hilarious.
UDK: How was working with them? You have a strong chemistry with them in the movie, especially Skvlar.
SW: It was great! We did a couple chemistry reads together, so Miles was cast and chemistry read Skylar, then Skylar was cast and he chemistry read me. So in those scenes, we were able to sort of play around and get know each other. (Co-writers/directors) Jon (Lucas) and Scott (Moore) were very open to us improving and trying our own stuff in there, and I think when we did that we were able to learn what each of us was capable of. We could sort of pick at each other, our scenes were sort of snarky, in a fun way, like be sarcastic with each other. But it was nice, it definitely bonded us by doing those first few chemistry reads together.
UDK: Talk about your 21st birthday. Do you have any particular stories about how you celebrated?
SW: I wish I had some cool story about my 21st birthday, but I don't. I lived in Chicago when I was 18, 19, 20, and I traveled to different places in Europe, and I lived in Greece, and I lived in Japan for three months. So I feel like I kind of had those times, like at a concert all night long, and then coming home and eating pizza rolls and ranch dressing, and nursing a hangover at a diner. There's this amazing diner in Chicago called the Palace Grill, and we would go there early in the morning after a night out and we would eat like, french fries with feta cheese on them, and hamburgers, and fish sandwiches, and anything that would help. And that was sort of my partying experience when I was living there, but my 21st birthday was very boring! I was just eating sushi and drinking sake. It was sort of past the time of my partying stage.
UDK: What were you doing in Japan at that time?
SW: I was modeling. I traveled around modeling when I was young, like 16, 17, 18 years old. I did Japan, Greece and a number of other places. That's what I was doing in Chicago as well.
UDK: Okay, so I can definitely see how that plays into your character wanting to travel the world.
SW; For sure. I felt like I related a lot to Nicole because of that. My parents were always very open for me to do whatever was thrown at me. And when I told them at 16 that I wanted to go live in Japan for three months they were like, "Umm...well okay" and they tried to find some sort of traction with that. So my dad took me there and was there for four days, and when he left I was balling my eyes out. Then I had three months ahead of me and at 16 that's pretty scary. So I fell in love with traveling. I think I spent the first month partying and the second month going to concerts, and then the third month I was learning about the culture. There was a whole transition. Then
that made me sort of fall in love with Nicole, this character, because I spent a lot of time when I was growing up traveling, and sort of trying to find out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life out there.
UDK; And the other part of your character certainly seems to be about embracing that spontaneous side. How have you done that in your own life, besides modeling? In career and acting opportunities?
SW: I auditioned for my first show ("Quintuplets") when I was living in Chicago, and they asked me to come and test in L.A. So they flew me out to test and they told me that day that I booked the role in the room. And our pilot got picked up
for 22 episodes on the air for FOX and immediately was rushed into press and red carpets. And I'm from Kentucky, I grew up on a farm, so it was so weird. I was totally game though. I went through a transition, at first, I didn't really know what I was really in for. So I was never nervous when I was auditioning, like "I don't know, I guess I'm just happy to be here, and this is great! And if I get this, awesome!" And then I went into a phase of, "Oh I'm so nervous, I know what this means." But now I'm back to more a place of, "Whatever happens, happens." And I love it. Doing comedy is a passion and it makes me so happy, and if it happens, great, and if not, I'll find something else. So yeah, I definitely have that spontaneous side where
obviously I've been able to keep up with this career and not need a specific structure.
UDKi Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have plenty experience as writers ("The Hangover"), but they're first-time directors on this. And yet it really seems they knew what they were going for and how to achieve their tone effectively. How was working with them?
UDK: So what's next for you? I see you're going to be in the comedy "Walk of Shame."
SW: Yeah, we just wrapped "Walk of Shame" (last week). So that's what's been going on for me from December to just yesterday. And there's a couple pilots I have my eye on this year so maybe I'll do a pilot, we'll see.
SW: Since the first moment I met them, I knew okay, these guys are gonna crush it. They each bring their own thing to the table, and I think because they're so close, and they wrote this together. They've been writing partners for years, and I think they just knew exactly what they wanted to do with it. I don't have this household name from doing some other movie or something, so I was surprised that I was given this opportunity. And so were Skylar and Miles and Justin. We were all kind of
like, "Wow, it's so cool we get to do this movie, and we're not really big name people." Because normally a movie like this, especially this caliber, kind of goes to that. But they wanted to cast who they wanted to cast, and they were able to do that. It was so fun to have this experience and be able to do something that you really love with two people that you really respect so much.
Edited by Brian Sisk
CHICAGO — Michelle Obama says it was "absolutely not surprising" to her that her satellite appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony provoked a national conversation about whether it was appropriate, after some conservative critics accused her of selfishly crashing the event in an attempt to upstage it.
She attributed the chatter to a culture shift that has spawned legions of bloggers, tweeters and others who talk about anything and everything all the time.
First lady takes Oscars criticism in stride
ACADEMY AWARDS
"Shoot, my bangs set off a national conversation. My shoes can set off a national conversation. That's just sort of where we are. We've got a lot of talking going on," the first lady said only somewhat jokingly Thursday before an appearance in Chicago, her hometown. "It's like everybody's kitchen-table conversation is now accessible to everybody else so there's a national conversation about anything."
Americans have long been fascinated by their first ladies, scrutinizing everything from their clothes and hair to the issues they promote and how they raise their children. Mrs. Obama acknowledged that she and President Barack Obama have added appeal, and perhaps sometimes are subject to extra scrutiny, because they are the first black family in the White House but also a young couple (she turned 49 last month; he's 51) with young children (daughters Sasha, 11, and Malia, 14).
In what was not the first-ever Oscar appearance by a first lady, Mrs. Obama was beamed live from the White House into Sunday's ceremony in Los Angeles to unseal the envelope and announce that the night's final award, for Best Picture, would go to "Argo." In 2002, Laura Bush appeared at the ceremony on videotape.
She said she doesn't give a second thought to critical comments about what she does as first lady.
Associated Press