Dropping back into the magic of ‘Alice’
BEVERLY HILLS The tea can wait, because it’s Alice’s turn to save the Hatter.
“I love seeing her grow up,” says Mia Wasikowska, 26, who returns as the heroine in Alice
Through the Looking Glass (in theaters Friday) Today she shares a couch with Anne Hathaway, who resumes her role as Alice’s ally, the White Queen.
Imbued with more humor under director James Bobin, who takes over for Tim Burton from 2010’s fantastical Alice in Wonderland, the sequel rejoins Alice after she has spent several years as captain of her father’s ship. Disembarking in Victorian London, Alice is shocked to learn her boat is being repossessed “and she’s told she’s going to become a clerk and that’s it,” Wasikowska says.
Lured to the looking glass, back to Underland she goes.
“It’s a very important message that Alice is very keen to define the world on her own terms. She wants to make her own choices,” Bobin says.
Based on the books by Lewis Carroll, Looking Glass brings back Johnny Depp as a freshly forlorn Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the easily enraged Red Queen, the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) and the rotund Tweedles (Matt Lucas).
But the tea parties in Underland have lost their luster, thanks to the Hatter’s worry his family might be alive and imprisoned by a foe. He implores Alice to find them, and Alice must face Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) himself.
“I really wish that my 9-year- old self could have seen this movie,” says Hathaway, 33. “Because it would have inspired me to be strong and have a backbone in moments when I was afraid.”
Screenwriter Linda Woolverton ( The Lion King, Maleficent) calls Through the Looking Glass counterprogramming to the summer’s superhero movies. Alice’s decisions aren’t “violence-based,” Woolverton says. “She’s operating out of love for a friend, and a love for a world.”
Wasikowska, fresh off a plane from Australia and fighting a cold, is inching down her black Valentino dress, jokingly wishing it were a blanket. It’s Hathaway’s first day back to work after she and husband Adam Shulman welcomed their son, Jonathan, eight weeks ago.
“I feel very lucky. I’m a new nursing mom and they make accommodations for my child’s eating schedule,” she says. “I can’t quite go at the pace that I used to go at and I will in the future.”
Both actresses say an Alice sequel feels like a fairy tale, arriving six years after the original film.
“I thought a sequel would happen really quickly and then it didn’t,” Wasikowska says.
Hathaway acknowledges being cynical about another Alice film being a Hollywood cash grab — until she read it.
“So many of the messages went straight to my heart,” she says. “I thought I was too old for Disney movies now, that I would see all the strings.” But watching it, “I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I believe in this! This is crazy. This movie has actual magic.’ ”