Chasing the dream
Kirsten Dunst tells Rick Bentley how she channelled her anger into her latest role.
Whether she’s playing a beauty pageant hopeful in Drop Dead Gorgeous or the love interest for aweb-spinning superhero in Spider-Man, Kirsten Dunst uses what she calls ‘‘a witches brew’’ for playing the character.
This includes a pinch of what shewill do with the character and a dash of what she won’t do.
Dunstwhipped up another batch of acting elements for her work as awater park employee with big dreams in On Becoming a God in Central Florida.
The Showtime series, now screening on TVNZ OnDemand, has Dunst playing Krystal Stubbs, awife andmother who will not be denied her part of the American Dream.
That journey has her conning and scheming herway up the ranks of Founders American Merchandise – the multibilliondollar pyramid scheme that drove her family to ruin in the first place.
She found her inspiration for creating the character in the movies and music of the 90s, plus watching episodes of Honey Boo Boo to help her balance the deeprooted anger Stubbs is feeling.
‘‘There’s somuch ragewithin Krystal that I feel like I don’t necessarily always get to express in characters, but that I think us as women have a deep threshold. So I feel like a lot of things I could let out, and having just had a child and all of it,’’ Dunst says.
‘‘I was so tired and we worked so hard, but I was like, ‘Krystal’s
working so hard. She’s so tired’.
‘‘You just kind of put everything you have into it and be the most emotionally vulnerable you can so that you connect with your audience and each other whileworking.’’
Dunst, who is also an executive producer on the series, had some very specific ideas in regards to her character from her overly tanned look to having Stubbs be amother.
The excessive tan was to make Stubbs look like she had worked somuch in the sun that
her face was showing the signs of too much exposure. Keeping that look meant getting a spray tan everyweek, a process that was tough because Dunst couldn’t touch her own children after a day of filming.
She was insistent on Stubbs having to deal with a baby because she liked the way the infant in Raising Arizona was such a big part of the story. Working with a baby is not easy as there are always time restrictions on how much they can be in front of the cameras, but Dunstwas willing to deal with those limitations because having the infant added another layer of comedy.
She didn’t feel the same way when one of the episodes called for her to dancewith a real snake.
‘‘I hate snakes. I couldn’t even move like this holding a snake. I just would be petrified. So I was, like, ‘you gotta get a rubber snake. This ain’t happening’.
‘‘And then the director of episode 2 [Jeremy Podeswa] was, like, ‘I can’t shoot you basically holding a rubber snake. This is never going to work’,’’ Dunst says.
The solution was to get rid of the snake and have Dunst’s character do a dance with two life-sized puppets attached to her on sticks.
Not only did the change eliminate Dunst having to deal with a snake, but during the rehearsals with the puppets Dunst became very emotional when she realised if someone was forced to do something so strange in real life, it means that the person is trying desperately hard just to improve their life even a small bit.
This is not the first time Dunst has played a character looking to find away to improve their life. She starred in Drop Dead Gorgeous in 1999, a mockumentarywhere her character saw a beauty pageant as her salvation. Dunst sees the focus on success as being similar between the projects, but says her role in On Becoming a God in Central Florida is a lot more burned out and cynical.
Dunst has played a variety of roles since landing her first professional job at age 7. Her film credits include The Bonfire of the Vanities, Jumanji, Wag the Dog, Bring It On, and The Beguiled, while the New Jersey native’s TV work includes ER, Fargo and The Siege at Ruby Ridge. Picking roles has been a simple process, even if getting the project made was a lot more complicated.
‘‘Mostly, I always looked for [a] director or things that I would want to see, basically, or characters I’d like to play. And I have to say this material was just so special to me. It’s been three years now, andwe’ve really had a little bit of a rollercoaster of how this show actually got made to now being at Showtime,’’ Dunst says. ‘‘We worked hard. There were so many timeswhere I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this’. I just had a baby. Andwe all did it.
‘‘So it was a lot of hard work, but I knew reading that first episode I was like, ‘this is one of the best things I’ve read’. So I guess, to me, it’s half intuition of what I want to play and then also what I’d like to see personally.’’