THREE’S THE CHARM
Actor and director Elizabeth Banks on why it is time for another Charlie’s Angels reboot.
A new Charlie’s Angels film is set to hit screens, but do we really need another reboot? Actor and director Elizabeth Banks makes the case for a new iteration. By Danielle Gay.
BRITISH ACTOR ELLA Balinska was the third and final Angel to read the script for the 2019 reboot of Charlie’s Angels – not that she knew it at the time. “I got the casting breakdown through my agent and it was under a different name,” Balinska explains. “When I was reading [it] I was like, this seems really exciting.” For Balinska, it was simply an action-packed tale of female empowerment. “Then they said: ‘By the way, this is the Charlie’s Angels continuation.’”
Balinska’s reaction speaks to what the film’s director Elizabeth Banks set out to achieve in her own take on the franchise. At the moment, ‘reboot’ is a buzzword in Hollywood and Banks (of Pitch Perfect fame) wanted this movie to pack a punch. “I like making stories about women working together and celebrating each other. When I look around Hollywood for stories like that, it turns out Charlie’s Angels is at the forefront of that mission statement,” she tells Vogue.
It’s true that 2019 has been heralded as the year of the revival. There has been the live-action version of Lion King and Men in Black with Chris Hemsworth, and among the films set for release next year are Top Gun, Coming to America and Ghostbusters.
For Banks, working on Charlie’s Angels was also a strategic move, given Hollywood’s love affair with making old new again. “It’s really hard to get a movie green-lit,” she explains. “Hollywood is afraid of new ideas, but I was able to work with something that already existed and that reflected my values as a filmmaker.”
Approaching the project, Banks wanted it to be seen as a continuation rather than a rerun. “It takes place in the same universe and in the same timeline as everything that’s come before it,” she says. “I felt like the DNA of this series is about honouring everything that came before. There’s a strong sense of history, sisterhood and sorority that the television show and then Drew, Cameron and Lucy’s movie also had. I wanted to draw from that and bring to bear a new story about three new Angels.”
In choosing her cast, Banks focussed on the modern woman and made it her goal to be as representative as possible. Actor Kristen Stewart, who plays no-holds-barred Angel Sabina Wilson was “key to the entire endeavour”, Banks shares. “I think she represents how modern young women want to live, which is as authentically themselves with no labels. She’s totally surprising in the movie and really fun and funny.”
English actor Naomi Scott, who plays Elena Houghlin, is the heart of the trio, according to Banks. “She’s the real and relatable girl-nextdoor.” In searching for what Banks says is “the Terminator of the trio – a serious physical person who is the straight man in terms of comedy”, she stumbled upon Balinska, who had submitted an audition tape.
“Ella is a unicorn,” Banks says. “She’s beautiful, she’s talented, she’s down-to-earth, and she already knows how to fire a weapon. She is trained in combat and rides motorcycles, and she wanted to do all of her own stunts. She was a total find.”
Balinska hopes this will be her breakout Hollywood role. As the daughter of English chef Lorraine Pascale, a contributing editor to British Vogue, Balinska is at home in London’s creative circles and is a rising fashion It-girl, sitting front row at Valentino’s haute couture shows and calling Edward Enninful a familial figure in her life.
“People say it’s my breakthrough year, but I’m in this state of always learning, always searching, always wanting to discover more,” she says. “I couldn’t think of a better way to break into the industry: with a film that’s so inspiring and empowering.”
For viewers expecting to see the film they fell in love with in the early 2000s, rest assured this one takes over from where Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore finished up and is a similarly high-octane showcase of women doing badass things. This time round though, there’s a global organisation of Angels featuring multiple Bosleys to run the networks of women, one played by Banks herself, who reveals she snuck in a few nostalgic references for long-time fans.
“Suffice it to say I was very cognisant of making sure that there was a direct line from the previous iteration to this movie. Some of the major costumes that were worn by Drew, Cameron and Lucy are in the closet. We went through the archive and tried to pull things here and there.
“It had to feel like a celebration of women and all that women can do,” she continues. “There are not enough examples of strong women doing masculine things in the world. I think Hollywood has a responsibility – because we help create culture in the world – to better represent the abilities of women and the fact there should be no limits on what women can do.”
Charlie’s Angels is in cinemas from November 14.
“It had to feel like a celebration of women and all that women can do”