North by Northwestern sat down with Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum, the stars of Dear John, to hear their take on surfing, poetry, pizza and what it took to get into their characters.
Read our review of Dear John here.
Amanda Seyfried
NBN: How are you?
I’m okay. I just ate half of a frozen pizza. See what I did to it? I take things apart, that’s how I eat. It’s really weird. I ended up eating the whole thing, but I eat the parts that I like first.
NBN: What did you find most challenging about this role that you played?
Aging. You have to really rethink your character when you’re playing somebody that the audience hasn’t seen for 7 years. That was very difficult, I had to really wrap my head around making her seem exhausted. I guess I just kind of gave her a heaviness to hope that would come across as her being older and having all the life experience.
NBN: How was it?
Amazing, it was so romantic. Charleston is romantic in itself, just Charleston in general. But driving 45 minutes to ride a horse through the forest for three hours every Sunday is kind of one of the best things I’ve ever done to myself. The connection you have with the horse — if you trust it, it trusts you — and that’s a beautiful thing. So many people use that as a source of therapy.
Also, I had my neighbor’s piano in the house that I lived in Charleston — I still want to buy that house actually, it’s the most beautiful place I ever lived. I would play piano every night after work and play guitar. I tried to learn the viola but didn’t have time. I did so much in Charleston it’s ridiculous.
NBN: What was it like behind the scenes of this movie? Any interesting anecdotes?
It was so funny… I have a lot of interesting anecdotes that I can’t actually tell you.
Channing is… I know he’s hot, charming, and he plays these big strong characters, but he is the most grounded, honest, loving human being that I have ever worked with in a film. And it’s almost depressing – he’s almost too perfect. He really is — there’s nothing dishonest about him. In order to do all these love scenes and to portray these two characters that are passionately in love, without being in love, you have to respect and really trust each other. It’s hard to portray that when it’s not real. So we took all the seriousness out of the day and really threw it all into the scenes when the cameras. And when the cameras cut, we just fooled around, and it was so playful. I’m surprised we got anything done.
Channing Tatum
NBN: What was it like working with the military adviser on set?
It was great. You know, he was actually a Special Forces (SF) soldier. And there were a lot of SF guys on the film — pretty much all my unit, except for maybe four actors, were real Special Forces guys. But we didn’t want the movie to feel like a war movie or a soldier film, it doesn’t want to be that, we want it to be a movie about two kids falling in love for the first time. And really having to deal with life during that time.
NBN: In the scene with Richard Jenkins at the end, where John is reading his letter, was that really difficult for you to portray on-screen?
I wouldn’t be truthful if I said it was easy, because it wasn’t easy. But it’s not a hard scene, as in you’re frustrated – it’s all emotional. Every take you do is emotional. Which one feels right? Which one feels the most honest? And I think I owe that scene to him, cause he’s an amazing actor, and he just – I can’t stress the amazing enough.
NBN: You learned how to surf for this movie, how was that?
I learned how to surf in California — the waves are entirely different there than the East Coast, and a lot harder to surf on the East Coast.
NBN: How so?
There’s shorter waves, they close out really fast, and they’re not as big. And there’s not really any – I don’t really know how to explain it without going into weird terminology – waves in California are long and rolling. In the East Coast, the waves are very choppy and come from all different directions. It’s just a different water.
NBN: Your character in the movie is an avid letter writer. Amanda mentioned you actually write poetry – did you bring any of that background into the role?
[laughs] I like to write. I wouldn’t call myself a poet, by any means. I like to write. And you know, whatever comes to my head, whether it’s abstract and beautiful or just a simple statement. I think both of them can be just as important in literature. But I did bring that into John as far as, you know, everybody was joking, “Why don’t they email? Why don’t they call each other?” Other than inconvenience of having internet or the phone lines where John was at overseas, I think it would be more John’s speed to want to take his time, and be really specific about what he wanted to say to Savannah — because he’s not the most social and eloquent person with his verbal skills.
NBN: Your career has really taken off, you’ve done a wide range of movies with a wide range of roles. Do you ever have those days where you’re just like, wow, how did I get here?
Every single day. Every single day. This morning, actually. I was thinking, “what am I doing?” I’m going to go downstairs and talk like I actually know what I’m talking about, and I don’t. And it’s really weird.