Anna Kendrick & Bryce Dallas Howard Interview For ’50/50′

Inspired by personal experiences, ’50/50′ is an original story about friendship, survival and finding humor in unlikely places. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen star as best friends whose lives are changed by a cancer diagnosis. Rogen also serves as producer, along with Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin. Jonathan Levine directs from a script by Will Reiser. “We worked with Will on Da Ali G show, and it was shortly after that we learned he was sick.” Rogen recalls. “As shocking, sad, confusing and generally screwed up as it was; we couldn’t ignore that because we were so ill-equipped to deal with the situation, funny things kept happening. Will got better, and when he did, we thought the best way to pull something good out of the situation was to get him to write a screenplay. Ideally we wanted to make a film that would be as funny, sad, and hopefully as honest as the experience we went through. As soon as the script was completed, it quickly became a passion project for all of us. It helped us come to terms with Will’s struggle as well as our own experiences.” ’50/50′ is the story of a guy’s transformative and, yes, sometimes funny journey to health. ’50/50′ draws its emotional core from Will Reiser’s own experience with cancer and reminds us that friendship and love, no matter what bizarre turns they take, are the greatest healers. Alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen, ’50/50 ‘ stars Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall. The film is set for release September 30th in the US, and January 6th in the UK.

Katherine is a therapist helping people with their problems, however she obviously has her own set of problems, Adam really helps break down a wall for her.

Anna Kendrick: Yeah, she’s had two patients prior to Adam. I imagined them to be much older, that they were just happy to have someone to talk to, and that she did fine with those two patients. And then she meets someone who really challengers her, and since he’s close to her age she feels like she can’t pull the wool over his eyes. So he ends up breaking down their relationship to a much friendlier place, and that’s when they get into a place where they can really help each other. That’s the great thing about their relationship, Adam really helps Katherine as much as the other way around.

She’s got some interesting contradictions, she’s a secret hoarder in some ways with her office and car.

Anna Kendrick: (Laughs) Yes, she’s sort of a mess, that’s what I really like about her. I think that’s great, that she’s coming from a place of wanting to help people, it’s not like she’s just a type A personality, therefore she thought, ‘I’m gonna be this fantastic Doctor,’ she falling apart at the seems (laughs), but at the same time she has the capacity to do this really well, she just has to learn to get organised before she can do that I think.

Bryce, you get to play a really unsavoury character in ‘50/50.’

Bryce Dallas Howard: It’s interesting because the way I got into doing this was I read the script, I was so moved by the script I was balling at one point – which really took me off guard because I was expecting to read just a comedy. It’s hilarious, but once I got into it, it was so incredibly profound in such an honest way, I just really wanted to be apart of it. The role that I play is definitely an unsavoury character, but interestingly enough I could kind of empathise with her dilemma. The way I imagined it was that she’s this girl who was dating Adam, probably for a couple months, she’d decided it wasn’t going to work out, called all of her girlfriends and said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to break up with him, I’m just waiting for the right time.’ And then he comes home and says that he’s got cancer. I really felt for her in those circumstances – but I have no respect for the choices she made after that (laughs). It was a very interesting and truthful circumstance. My character is completely the wrong person to go with through a struggle like that.

Was it fun to be mean, or were you feeling conflicted?

Bryce Dallas Howard: I felt, in terms of playing the character, it was really fun to play a character that was so oblivious. That’s sort of how I played it, there was never a real spark between them, she’s a little ill-suited to be in a relationship with him. Then when he gets cancer and she’s taking him for his first treatment, I mean to be like, ‘No, I want to wait in the car,‘ and then to roll down the window and be like, ‘Good luck,’ it’s like……it’s his first round of treatment, what are you doing?! That’s the worst thing you could do, she’s kind of an idiot. It was really fun to play a character who wasn’t all there really.

With the role you play, what was it like working with Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

Anna Kendrick: Joseph is fantastic, we had very little time to rehearse or get to know each other before we started shooting – we had about twenty minutes actually (laughs). I was so impressed with his warmth and his openness, I couldn’t have asked for a better person to work with.