Juliet Landau

In the second part of her exclusive interview with iF Magazine, actress Juliet Landau talks about doing voices for the new GREEN LANTERN animated film and the STAR WARS videogame, acting in MONSTER MUTT and her projects as a director.

iF MAGAZINE: You’ve been doing a lot of voice work with animation. Has working in that aspect with graphic art helped in any way with writing for the Drusilla comic books?

JULIET LANDAU: I don’t know if it’s exactly helped in that way. I love working with animation. It’s really a blast. You often get to sit in a semi-circle in a room full of actors in front of microphones and have a good time developing a character and playing off each other. What I found really interesting with the comic, was that it was like storyboarding, figuring out the best way to tell something visually, and it was an incredible template for me in terms of the film that I’m going to do. Because of my acting background, I think I generally gravitate to emotional content, what the overall emotional arc is and what the character would be going through. For me, with the comic book, the object is to get that emotion through the visual – the visual being the elements that we are working with and that really made it interesting.

iF: You’re a voice actor in the new animated comic book-based film GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT. Did that come out of your previous animation voice work?

LANDAU: I worked with Andrea Romano and Bruce Timm on JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, in which I voiced a number of characters. I also worked with Andrea on BEN 10: ALIEN FORCE, where I also played various characters. I keep coming back with a character named Helen. They sent me the script and a drawing of Labella for GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT. I read it and her voice just came to me. I thought, ‘I have no idea if it’s what they will have in mind, but she just has to sound like this.’ Usually, if I come up with something bold, I’ll also come up with a backup [laughs], in case they don’t want to go in that direction, but I couldn’t think of a backup for the life of me. I figured we’d just have to work it out in session if they wanted an alternate. But they really loved it! Labella is a new character [in the GREEN LANTERN universe]. I got to work with [writer/producer] Bruce Timm again, who is fantastic – an incredible artist, as well. One of the times I was working with him on JUSTICE LEAGUE, they had me do an additional character that wasn’t anticipated, and it was just like, ‘Here, let me show you what she’s looks like with this sketch.’ He did this unbelievable drawing in about thirty seconds. I said, ‘Oh, I get it – how about this voice?’ And he said, ‘That’s great.’

iF: Were you a fan of the GREEN LANTERN comics before you got the job?

LANDAU: I hadn’t seen them before getting to do the film, but then I checked them out. I recently did a bunch of other voice acting for videogames as well, BIOSHOCK 2, STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC and the BEN 10 video game.

iF: Is the Godhead video you and Deverill Weekes directed up online already?

LANDAU: It is up already. The link is: godheadhero.com

iF: As far as your involvement with the video, did Godhead see your Gary Oldman documentary short TAKE FLIGHT and get excited about working with you?

LANDAU: That’s exactly what happened. The band actually came to the advance screening and got really excited, and basically that was the basis for them asking if Deverill and I would co-direct the music video. It bloomed from there into a really creative, fun process.

iF: Were you already a fan of Godhead?

LANDAU: Yeah. When we were working, we did a lot of rehearsals for the video, and Jason Miller was singing a cappella. I am really taken with the beauty of his voice.

iF: Did documenting Gary Oldman directing his music video, as you were making TAKE FLIGHT, give you any ideas about how you would go directing a music video?

LANDAU: Oh, I loved watching Gary work. One of the things that I think is so incredible about him is that he really comes from a very fluid, almost childlike place and I feel like that is the best place to start from, to just roll your sleeves up and play.

iF: Who came up with the content of the Godhead ‘Hero’ video?

LANDAU: Deverill Weeks and I listened to the song, really loved it and got the idea how we wanted to shoot it. We shot it on the RED camera, like a nineteen-thirties black-and-white movie. We wanted the lighting to be incredibly luminous while the subject matter is a relationship that is dysfunctional. We wanted that to be at odds with this beauty and effervescent quality of the lighting.

iF: Did you decide to costar in the video because you wanted to perform that part, or because you felt that was easier in your timeframe than trying to enlist someone else?

LANDAU: It was really at Deverill’s urging. When we first started talking about the concept, he said, ‘I think that you and Jason would be really great together in it.’ At first, I said, ‘Oh, no, we’re [Landau and Weekes] just directing it,’ and then we began to talk about it more and more. The three of us [Landau, Weekes and Miller] got together and then it just seemed like it was a fun idea. We brought my friend Roxanne Steinberg in to choreograph it. We hadn’t initially thought that it would be so movement-based. We did always want it to feel almost like it was one take, which it isn’t, but the video is not ‘cutty.’ We’d pulled all of these paintings that had two characters in them, as reference material, and during the first rehearsal, Roxanne said, ‘Why don’t you put them in an order, a progression?’ Then she said, ‘Let’s link the movements/positions from one to the other.’ And it grew in this incredibly fluid way. The three of us went to work and I came up with the end, the whole point of the end being the reiteration of the beginning. You don’t know how long these two characters have been doing this dance. It could be the first time and it could be, most likely, the millionth time. We’ve had an amazing response from it. It’s been really incredible.

iF: What else is going on?

LANDAU: I just wrapped the adorable kids’ movie, MONSTER MUTT. I’m playing the slinky blonde Russian baddie. MONSTER MUTT was created and produced by four-time Academy Award winning Drac Studios [BENJAMIN BUTTON, HANNIBAL, DRACULA, MRS. DOUBTFIRE].I’m about to start a Web series called OPERATION NIGHTSHADE. And there’s my short film, in which I’m going to play seven different characters, called IT’S RAINING CATS AND CATS. This is the project that I’ve been raising money for by selling autographed merchandise on my website; julietlandau.com. Drac Studios is designing and doing all of the make-ups. I’ve already a done head cast and I’m very excited about that.