Witchy Women: Interviews with Cast of "Bewitched"
By Scott Huver, Hollywood.com Staff
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Friday, June 24, 2005
Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman star in Bewitched |
Audiences are about to be Bewitched all over again, this time on the big screen, as Nicole Kidman headlines the feature film re-imagining of the classic '60 sitcom.
And you'll bewitched, bothered and possibly even bewildered as well by Kidman and a coven of her female collaborators--co-star Shirley MacLaine, director and co-writer Nora Ephron and co-screenwriter Delia Ephron--as they talk to Hollywood.com about their craft, witchy and otherwise.
Nicole Kidman, on getting Bewitched...
"I was at my girlfriend's house having kind of a buffet dinner party, and another friend of hers and I were standing in the kitchen, eating the dessert before it had been served, and out of that came a conversation: 'Gosh, one of the series they haven't ever made was Bewitched and why haven't they done it?'...I think the way Nora wrote the script is that she kind of incorporated, quite cleverly, the series, but was able to invent new characters for us, rather than trying to mimic Darren and Samantha." (Get full story)
Shirley MacLaine, on channeling Agnes Moorhead, the original Endora...
"I talked to her last night." [laughter from the room] "She's doing very, very well. She's doing fine. She says 'Hurry up and see the movie,' which I haven't seen. So I have to see it. I never met her, actually. But Nora gave me--at the end of the movie--her autograph. She got it online. It was really cute. I have it framed. [But] I didn't think about her at all. No, because [my character] Iris is an actress playing Endora. Agnes WAS Endora…I just got dressed, but on my makeup and my wig and went in and went [she strikes a spell-casting pose]. That's basically my day." (Get full story)
Nora and Delia Ephron, on casting Nicole Kidman...
Nora Ephron: "The truth is that when I got this momentous telephone call from Columbia Pictures saying 'Help! We're about to have a meeting with Nicole Kidman and she wants to do Bewitched and we have no plot, and you have until 11 o'clock tomorrow morning to think of something,' the instant thing I thought of was not Nicole Kidman, but Elizabeth Montgomery's nose, and how Nicole has the same nose...Wouldn't it be funny to cast her as someone who gets cast in Bewitched solely because of her resemblance to the nose, this disembodied nose.' And everything sort of came from that very quickly."
Delia Ephron: "I always think that when you do a movie of a television show that's so loved, so beloved, if you just do sort of an imitation of it, everybody-it's a pale version, in some ways. I mean, Elizabeth Montgomery is quite perfect. And she's a perfect television star...And so I loved Nora's take, which was to use the show, but to use a story around it. Then you still respect the show, without ripping it off. I loved that about the whole take that she had." (Get full story)
Bewitched opens in theaters June 24.
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