A lot of actors talk about making movies as if they've been dragging coal out of a mine shaft, griping about endless, long days, often working under extreme conditions. Yet as Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson recall their experiences on the latest Merchant/Ivory production, "Le Divoce," their stories from the Paris set read more like postcards from the beach -- complete with shopping trips and dinners out on the town.
"At one point we kind of looked at each other and said, 'This is the funnest thing ever. We come to work for an hour and we have the rest of the day to play,'" laughs Hudson. A little over three months pregnant, the actress looks positively glowing in a deep orange strapless jumpsuit, accessorized with jeweled gold bangles on her wrist.
"I just really felt a lifestyle over there," adds Watts, wearing a Chinese-style silk peach skirt with black trim and a black tank. "The French are very civilized in their hours; we go to work at 8 a.m., you finish at 8 p.m., you go to dinner and you start all over again. It really felt like work plus life. Whereas here when I work I feel like after 15 hours all you want to do is sit and stuff."
Directed by James Ivory based from the novel of the same name by Diane Johnson, "Le Divorce" starts as Isabel (Hudson) travels to France to visit her pregnant sister Roxy. Only the day she arrives, Roxy's French husband Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud) leaves his wife and child, to run off with a married Russian woman. As Roxy starts painful divorce proceedings, Isabel starts up a couple flirtations of her own. Added to the mix is Charles-Henri's family, headed by his mother (Leslie Caron), and the girls' parents (Stockard Channing and Sam Waterston). The ensemble cast also features Glenn Close, Romain Duris ("L'Auberge Espagnole"), Jean-Marc Barr ("Europa"), Thierry Lhermitte and Matthew Modine.
In person Hudson and Watts could easily pass for the sisters they play in the modern comedy. In fact, as they talk to the press they seem especially close, often finishing each other's sentences and laughing together at inside jokes.
"I arrived late on the set and right from the moment I got there I felt her warmth," says Watts, who revealed that she first met Hudson a couple years ago when she crashed a Christmas party at Hudson's house.
"You climbed the fence, crashed my Christmas party and I was like, 'Who are all these crazy people?' And I went, 'Oh, hey,'" Hudson laughs to Watts recalling the incident.
While the two actresses found that they had much in common, Ivory and producer Merchant say they cast them because of their differences, specifically Kate's character.
"She had to be in contrast to Roxy, because Roxy goes around three-quarters of the film pregnant, weeping, depressed, suicidal and all this kind of thing and you needed to have a balance," says Ivory of casting Isabel.
"Goldie Hawn is a great friend of ours, so we've known Kate for quite some time and she's has this buoyancy and this very wonderful quality -- always upbeat," adds Merchant, who says that Hudson was their first choice to play the role.
The directing/producing film, who have made 46 films in 41 years (including "A Room With a View," "Howard's End," "Remains of the Day," "Jefferson in Paris" and "The Golden Bowl"), found Watts "almost accidentally" after Ivory watched David Lynch's "Mulholland Dr." in London. "I loved the film and thought she was tremendously good. So we got together with her and she wanted to do it," he says.
Hudson wasn't the only first choice that Ivory and Merchant secured, the other is Leslie Caron, best known for starring in the musicals "An American in Paris" and "Gigi."
"We've known her for a long, long time and we've always talking about, 'We must work together' and this kind of thing and she's exactly that kind of person in life and she enjoyed playing that part because she said, 'I've always wanted to play a witch and at long last I'm getting to,'" says Ivory.
The film tackles many themes, including the nature of love, greed, inter-family relations, but also the cultural differences between France and America, especially concerning love, relationships and divorce. Despite reported anti-French sentiments in America after the Iraq war, Hudson doesn't believe that differences in political opinion will have any effect on the success of "Le Divorce."
"When you go to France, French people don't all believe the same thing -- a lot of people disagree with their government, or agree -- it's the same thing as here," she says. The people aren't the struggle, I hope. I hope that's not what as a people we're turning into because that's just pure hatred, that's just hate, that's not politics. So, I hope it really doesn't affect the movie, if anything I think people will be kind of fascinated to see what the comment is and then be able to make their own decision. That's what art is for, right?"
"Le Divorce" opens Friday, August 8, 2003.
Warning: include(/home/buffybot/public_html/kate/footer.html) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/katehuds/public_html/kate/press/2003-zap2itLD.php on line 81
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/buffybot/public_html/kate/footer.html' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/katehuds/public_html/kate/press/2003-zap2itLD.php on line 81