Elle Fanning raps on ‘Mary Shelley,’ ‘Parties’
Tiffany’s ad brought out a new side
There are worse ways to spend your summer than with Angelina Jolie.
Elle Fanning recently reunited with the actress for Maleficent 2, in which she reprises her role as fairy-tale princess Aurora in the follow-up to Disney’s 2014 fantasy. But she’s careful not to let any spoilers slip.
“Oh, gosh, I think they would kill me,” says Fanning, laughing as she calls from the movie’s rainy London set. “I’ve never done a sequel, so it’s really exciting to get to revisit a character now that I’m older. And to have Angelina there back in her horns, it’s pretty cool.”
Until Maleficent hits theaters, you can catch the prolific young star in two other very different films: In Mary Shelley (expanding to select cities and on digital platforms Friday), she plays the author of the 1818 horror classic Fran-
kenstein, which was inspired in part by Mary’s tumultuous romance with poet Percy Shelley. And in How to Talk to Girls at Parties (expanding to select cities nationwide Friday), she co-stars with Nicole Kidman as a naïve alien who falls for a punk rocker in 1970s London.
Fanning, 20, chats with USA TODAY about Shelley’s resonance in 2018, latex alien costumes and making her hip-hop debut for jeweler Tiffany & Co.
Question: You read Fran
kenstein back in high school. Revisiting the book for Mary Shelley, what surprised you most?
Elle Fanning: In high school, we didn’t learn very much about (Mary’s) story. It was more like, “Oh, she’s the inventor of science fiction.” She’s such an interesting woman and tragic in everything that she went through. When I read the script, I was surprised this was a story that hadn’t been told before, because it was also a very modern one. The way (Mary and Percy) lived was this free love, ’60s hippie lifestyle, which was frowned upon, but their ideals were very ahead of their time.
That struck me, and also how young they were. I didn’t realize Mary was only 17 when she (eloped with Percy), which is insane. I was 17 when I filmed the movie as well, so I was thinking about everything she had experienced in that short amount of time, how that shaped her to write Frankenstein and become the woman that she was.
Q: Mary’s work and opinions were continually undermined by the men around her. Have you ever experienced that in the film industry, where you’ve felt that people haven’t you taken you seriously because of your age or gender?
Fanning: Yeah, I think women experience that on a regular basis. I started doing films when I was very little, and being in your teen years and being a young woman, people dismiss your ideas very easily. But because I have grown up on these film sets, I have worked with a lot of great directors and learned how things should be. Also, teenagers’ voices are starting to be heard more. Young people look at things from a different point of view and treat problems differently, and it’s so important to not dismiss that just because of age or gender.
Q: I also wanted to talk
about How to Talk to Girls at
Parties. I was at the premiere at Cannes Film Festival last year, where a ton of people were dressed as aliens from the movie. How was that?
Fanning: That was so fun. Sandy Powell did all the costumes, and they were major. My character wears all that latex, and you basically had to get lubed up to put these costumes on. Very protective, we were. We couldn’t get them dirty.
Q: Did making the film turn you on to any punk bands?
Fanning: The Sex Pistols, Johnny Ramone — (director John Cameron Mitchell) played us all those songs. Alex (Sharp) was the one who really had to know everything punk, and I was playing the alien who didn’t know about that world, so John kind of kept me sheltered from it. But it was still fun to feel that rebellious nature on set. It was very free. Very punk.
Q: You also just recorded a remix of Moon River with A$AP Ferg for your Tiffany & Co. ad campaign. Did you ever imagine that you’d release a single, let alone be featured on a rap song?
Fanning: No, I did not! I think it was because they heard me singing on (the Tiffany) set one day. There was a remix of Moon River playing that was just a beat we could dance to. I was singing along kind of quietly and they were like, “You should sing on the track!” It was actually on that “New Music Friday” playlist that Spotify does, and my friends were texting me like, “You have a song?” And I’m like, “I guess I do?” It was cool, because Audrey Hepburn sang Moon River in ( Breakfast at Tiffany’s), so it felt very cinematic to redo Holly Golightly and make her more modern with Ferg. Who would’ve thought?
Q: Would you ever consider doing a musical?
Fanning: I actually just finished a movie called Teen Spirit where I sing a couple songs. I’ve always sung around the house and really enjoyed it, but lately there’s been a lot more singing in my life. People are always surprised, like, “You sing? I didn’t know!” So it’s fun to surprise people with that.