He’s become somewhat notorious for his brutal roasting of the films and books, never missing an opportunity to poke fun at the story or his character. He once famously said: “If Edward was a non-fictional character and you met him in reality, he’s one of those guys that would be an axe murderer.” Speaking about the first time he read the book, he said: “When I read it, it seemed like it was a book that wasn’t supposed to be published. I was convinced (author) Stephenie (Meyer) was convinced she was Bella. I was just like, ‘This woman is mad. She’s completely mad and in love with her own fictional creation’.” While he clearly detests Edward and has spoken about how he feels weird about being the face of something he doesn’t like, he did recently say that now that the hype around the movies is less intense, he only has warm memories of filming it, and he thinks it’s cool that the series is having a second wave of popularity with Gen Z teens who didn’t see it the first time around. Joseph Quinn is best known for his star turn as cult favorite Eddie Munson in Netflix juggernaut Stranger Things, and it’s a role he loves as much as the fans. Heck, the love for Eddie even got him through US border control! “I was held up at immigration yesterday,” Quinn told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. “I was taken into, I guess you could call it, more of a dungeon. And I was asked to wait there for about 20 minutes, and then I was summoned to this desk where someone asked me; ‘What are you doing in the United States, sir?’ I said, ‘I’m actually here to meet Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.’ And he didn’t believe me.” Shortly after, another officer looked at him, turned to the officer conducting the interview, and said, ‘Leave Eddie alone!’” The interviewer then turned his interest to Eddie’s fate, threatening that he has to come back in Season 5 before handing over Joseph’s passport! Joseph has been very open about his love for the character, saying that he loves the response Eddie gets from fans and that the fact that people are missing him feels very gratifying. He said he’d obviously love to return to the show, but feels the character has a great beginning, middle, and end, forming an arc that every actor wants. “I always felt really grossed out by that. I was like 18 years old. It was just gross,” she told Marie Claire. Every time she enters the lobby of her apartment building in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the doormen shout, “Do the voice!” She smiles as she tells Marie Claire that she always gives in and does the deep, signature voice of Elizabeth Holmes that she replicates eerily well. In the past, Seyfried has done a series of comedies and romance movies, usually starring alongside the kind of Hollywood heavyweights that absorb most of the media attention when the films drop. But with The Dropout, Seyfried is front and center, and her own talent has ensured that people are definitely paying attention to her now. Talking about how she could fly somewhat under the radar before the show’s success, she said: “Fame is weird. I’ve never been super famous. I’ve always been somewhat recognizable. It’s been the healthiest trajectory. [The level of fame from The Dropout] is not a scary spike. I have my priorities. I know who I am. I know where I’m going. I know what it means. It means that I’m getting to do what I love. I’m actually not afraid of it now.” Speaking about his role in the series, he said: “I used to worry a lot about what people thought about me, and about the kind of actor I was because of the movies I’d made. I just felt very corny, and I felt like I had to prove to everyone that I was a serious actor. I felt terribly misunderstood.” He also talked about the struggle of balancing getting a break in the acting industry with his own personal acting goals, saying of starring in a straight-to-Netflix teen movie: “I’m a purist and love the movie theater, so I had this weird moral battle of ‘What am I aiding and abetting?’ Am I the face of this robotic, terrifying new age? Am I murdering this thing that I love?’ But there was this mentality of, ‘I’ll do whatever the f–k I’ve got to do to get to the United States and do what I love.” While many of the cast have commented on certain aspects of the film that simply wouldn’t be allowed if the film were to be produced nowadays, Coolidge relishes the attention she gets from playing the movie’s notorious cougar. Talking to Variety, she said playing America’s most famous MILF got her a “lot of sexual action” and that there would be “like 200 people that I would never have slept with” without it! Talking to GQ about his involvement in the rebooted trilogy, he said: “It’s so difficult to manoeuvre. You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything. [But] what I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up.” Discussing the reordered character hierarchy of The Last Jedi, he said: “Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver. You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all. So what do you want me to say? What they want you to say is, ‘I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience…’ Nah, nah, nah. I’ll take that deal when it’s a great experience. They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley. Let’s be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. Everybody knows. I’m not exposing anything.” While Boyega describes his tenure with Disney as “an amazing opportunity” and “stepping stone” for his career, he’s made his feelings for the House of Mouse and his character’s trajectory very clear. As well as loving his unique niche as an actor, Rogen says he is “honored to be associated with weed” and that he’s “as proud of it as anything,” even starting a cannabis company with Goldberg in 2019. She said: “I’m so ashamed of the parts I’ve done in the past. I resent my career in a lot of ways. I feel so unfulfilled by the roles that I played and felt like it was the most cheesy, embarrassing. I did the shows that I was on from like 13 to 21, and by 15, I was already embarrassed.” McCurdy said she felt “very different” to her character, Sam, and talked about how her mom pushed her into acting, as well as the struggle of being forced into the shoes of someone else for such a long time during her formative years. “To be known globally for this thing that’s not really me, it was just like, ‘what the fuck am I doing?’ How do I even find myself when I’m 19 and I’ve been famous for all the years that I would normally be stumbling through finding myself, yet I’m known as a thing that I’m not? It just was…hellish.” Since quitting acting, Jennette has started to explore writing, directing, and podcasting, recently releasing her hugely successful debut book, I’m Glad My Mom Died. She said: “I’m living a life that’s in accordance with who I am, and that feels a million times better.” She said: “To be a part of that show has been such a blessing, and it definitely opened up doors for me, because people wanted to talk about it when I went into auditions and it broke the ice straight away. That was the one thing that I really used to struggle with going into auditions.” She told TV Week: “If I’d known how important it was in the U.S, or how long it would be on TV, I may not have chosen to do it. It was a lot of pressure if you look at it in the way that it will be around for 20 or 30 years. [My son and his friends] know me as Janine LaCroix and they are always like, ‘Oh you know, Cy’s [mom] she is on Friends. They haven’t figured out it was nearly 20 years ago.” She said: “I could be one hundred years old and in my rocker, but I’ll still be very proud that I was part of the Harry Potter films.” Despite her love of the films, Watson has recently made it clear she does not share the same beliefs as the writer behind the tales, J.K. Rowling, who hit headlines for her anti-trans Twitter rants. Similarly, he’s often talked about his open dislike of the butchered version of his favorite character, Deadpool, who was originally seen in the Fox-owned X-Men: Origins. Ryan ensured that variant of the character got the same treatment as the Ryan who accepted the Green Lantern in his new definitely-not-Fox-owned Deadpool movies! He often talked about the cultural weight of Black Panther and the importance of representation, telling Good Morning America: “It’s important because I didn’t have this growing up. I’m still a kid, you know, there’s a kid in each one of us and so I just know what it’s going to mean to you when you see it, that it can give you a certain type of confidence when you walk through the world. It also makes people that look like you see you in a different light and not judge you in a particular way.” In a live Q&A before the release of Captain America; Civil War, he said: “I’m proud that kids of African descent have another superhero to look up to, but I hope that kids of many different races look up to the character.” She described the film as “a little sexist,” saying that it “paints the women as shrews, as humourless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys.” She also said: “It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days.” When asked about the show being viewed as an anti-capitalist allegory, she told i-D Magazine: “It means something very different to me as I played Sae-byeok. I realize the show is about the power of love.” The experience of playing Sae-byeok, who risked her life fleeing North Korea with her little brother in an attempt to improve his life, made her conscious of wanting to give back, and she began to look into supporting children’s charities. Jung said that while researching the lives of North Korean defectors to understand and flesh out her character better, she began to feel like “a kind of spoiled child,” as she took for granted her access to the internet, ability to get whatever food she wants quickly and easily, or the fact she could hop on a plane and visit wherever she wants whenever she wants. She said: “It’s very cheesy to say it, but you know, as Hoyeon, I never led my life for other people. I only cared about my career and my wellness, and maybe some of my closest friends. I never had that kind of experience to live for somebody else as my whole life’s purpose, like my brother or my family. I never thought to live for other people.” Viola Davis was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Aibileen Clark, but she echoes the criticism given to the film, saying that The Help is on her list of films she regrets doing. Talking to Vanity Fair, she said: “There’s no one who’s not entertained by The Help, but there’s a part of me that feels like I betrayed myself, and my people, because I was in a movie that wasn’t ready to [tell the whole truth].” She also said that the film was “created in the filter and the cesspool of systemic racism,” stating that Hollywood is geared toward tailoring the Black experience onscreen to a white audience as opposed to showing narratives that are invested in the humanity of Black people. She told Page Six that she’s grateful to be remembered for the role, and was honored to be considered a sex symbol at the time. But she adds, “If this had come out after the #MeToo movement, there would definitely be a problem. I think that it would have gone down differently.” Talking about G.I. Joe, Tatum said: “I’ll be honest, I fucking hate that movie. I was pushed into doing it. The script wasn’t any good. And I didn’t want to do something that I was a fan of since I was a kid and watched every morning growing up, and didn’t want to do something that was, one, bad, and two, I just didn’t know if I wanted to be GI Joe.” Referencing Sharon Stone’s villain and her evil plot to sell women a face cream that locked them into a lifetime of reliance unless they very literally wanted their skin to fall off, Berry said she always knew that the “story didn’t feel quite right.” “I remember having that argument: ‘Why can’t Catwoman save the world like Batman and Superman do? Why is she just saving women from a face cream that cracks their face off?’ But I was just the actor for hire. I wasn’t the director. I had very little say over that.” She took on the role because she was eager at the prospect of a woman of color being a superhero, and hoped that it would diversify the superhero genre. Talking about the negative reviews of the film, she said: “It was ahead of its time. Nobody was ready to sink that kind of money into a Black female action star. They just weren’t sure of its value. That’s where we were then.” She hated the role so much that she is one of the few actors to accept her Golden Raspberry Award (a parody awards show for cinematic under-achievements) in person. Mocking her own Oscar acceptance speech before moving on to “thank” her manager, she said, “He loves me so much that he convinces me to do projects even when he knows that it is shit!” She also “thanked” Warner Bros for casting her in a “piece-of-shit, god-awful movie.”
