Everhip

Carmen Ejogo co-stars in “Away We Go” opening tomorrow. She plays a pivotal role in helping her sister (played by Maya Rudoplh)  on her journey to find “home.” We had a lovely chat and were completely charmed by Carmen. Enjoy our interview below. 

Q-How did you feel about working with Sam?

I was really traumatic at the idea at first. I was very aware, being from England, with theater credits and being involved with the theater.  He’s revered very much in England, as he is here, for American Beauty and other works he’s done.  But any good director, and I’ve worked with a few that are very good, know how to disarm any anxiety rather quickly and he’s one of them.  He understands that that’s the first thing that discourages good acting, so he’s a pro that way.

Q-Is it intimidating at all to work with someone like Maya Rudolph, who is a known improviser?  (She laughs) Were you ever afraid that she was going to go somewhere?

That was very different on this movie because I am more of a person who learns the movie in more of an emotional way, and doesn’t rely on humor.  I would not be doing this movie if I was expected to match Maya or John or anyone else at their level.  But the kind of moments we had really are about gravity and brevity and weight, so I was not hired to be the comedian on this one.

Q-You have a wonderful rapport with Maya. Did you get to spend any time together before you shot together?

We didn’t. Sam was very good about having us do a lot of work with the text to begin with, so we really spent a lot of time with backstory, but other than that, no.  We have somewhat similar backgrounds in the loss-of-a-parent, which was in a weird way a connection, but it wasn’t something that we talked about particularly or dwelled on.  I think Sam was just smart in understanding that there was an inherent energy about us that was shared.

Q-Were you familiar with David Eggers work?

No. I really had no idea who they were to be honest.  I knew that they were brilliant just from reading the script.  I really just went with what was on the page and wasn’t terribly concerned about what their backstory was. I’m hugely admiring of them as a couple though, and their charity work outside of writing.  And I love their humility about the fact that they really don’t understand how a script is written.  They are very self-admitting about the fact that they had to sort of look up the facts, how many pages should a script be…how long should a film be.  That sort of thing.  So they’re very humble that way and I’ve come to have great respect for them.

Q-Were they involved with the production at all or on-set? 

No, they weren’t.  I don’t know what the arrangement was, but I do know that they felt, and rightfully so, secure in the knowledge that Sam was going to be so diligent about respecting every word that they’d written.  I really don’t think we changed a lot with going back to them and conferring about whether that would be okay.  So, I don’t think they really needed to be there to protect the agreement, because they had this sort of unwritten agreement before the film was made with Sam that it was going to be respected fully. Which was a relief because that almost never happens when you make a movie and get a script…that’s not really the movie that gets made and it’s completely different.

Q-How did you audition for the movie?

I actually live in Brooklyn, so I was in the area.  Sam’s also based here at the moment so it was a fairly… I’m a working actress that has to audition like anyone else and I went on tape and he responded to that.

Q-Why did you decide to call New York home? 

Oh, my husband is American and I came here to be with him.  And, I can definitely relate to the film in that way, not really knowing where to call home…would we go back to England, but then what would that England be, I don’t even know, and I don’t even know what that is anymore…it’s been so long since I‘ve been there and, um, to be here in 2001 was a really testing time to sort of make this home.  But I think that’s when we crossed in to Brooklyn to be a way from the craziness a little bit, and then you have kids and then you can’t really leave.  You’re sort of in the moment.  The big decision to get up and move to Iceland and these romantic notions are sort of in the past.  So here we are and still in Brooklyn.

Q-Where did your passion for acting come from?

Gosh, it wanes.  It comes and goes.  It comes back when you get material like this and you have an experience like this.  And you get to work with a really, really brilliant director and it’s not about his ego.  And he understands it as a collective experience, he understands what it takes to make something really come to life and have madness, and rhythms and colors that are special and I really felt this on this project.  I’ve been on projects where that wasn’t the case and I’ve thought “This is my last project and I’ll never work again gladly, couldn’t care less if I didn’t.”  But this is the sort of thing that gives you excitement again about being in it

Q-Have you seen the film and how your scenes fit in? 

I have.  I wasn’t expecting it to be different.  I think it serves its purpose exactly as it’s written on the page.  There’s lightness and obviously comedy to begin with, but you know she represents something that’s hurt and I think the placing of the scene is exactly right. I was really struck with just the colors and the rhythm of the movie, which was sort of something that I didn’t expect, and that’s something that Sam.  In all honesty, with all of the characters, again the placement and proximity as it pertains to Grace and seeing her and having that incredibly brash Alison Jannney character appear just before that, and it’s all theses sort of ebbs and flows that go throughout the movie that are really playful but are really honest about the messiness of these peoples lies.  And it was on the page, but it’s really something that Sam attacked and made real.

Q-Were there any funny moments on set?

I was really anxious about the scene about my boyfriend and I not working out and I’m trying to find my way into it but I’m not fully relaxed yet, and I don’t know if  Sam told John to do this, but he’s like making faces and being really goofy and I actually wonder if a lot of the scene is a lot less of me and becomes about him, because he had me in tears to the point that my makeup was ruined and there wasn’t time to get it back together again and so I think it really shifted the focus of the scene to be mostly on John. (She laughs) Maybe that was a ploy.  A tactic on John’s part!  So he could hog the camera. Well, it worked!  Maya actually had some moments between the two of them. It was like a little club that they had and they understood each other and their humor. And then I was like the little puppy dog sort of trying to make a joke or two and falling flat every time but they definitely had a little something going on in terms of their comic relationship.

Q-Being in New York, do you think you’ll do some theater?

No, I’ll leave that to my husband (Emmy winner Jeffrey Wright). That’s not my thing. I mean film, where you get to work with really magic directors, I just love the medium more than anything.  It just happens so few and far between, sadly, and with no constraints that prevent one from making a decent movie these days.  It becomes a rarer and rarer treat to have it be the way you hoped it would be when you became an actress.  So who knows when the next one will be that matches this.

Q-Do you and Jeffrey want to do another project together?

We’ve done it a couple of times.  The right thing…sure.  But, it would have to be something really really bizarre.  Like a strange perverted brother and sister or something. (She laughs).  Something really peculiar.  You know, we’ve played husband and wife and now we’ve lived that.  We’re both sort of strange fish in this business in that we’re not living in LA.  We’re not really that enamored of it, but the experience has been fab when we have done it.

Q-There’s a scene where Grace talks about her guy taking her to Long John Silver’s. Have you ever been to a Long John Silvers? What’s the worst date you’ve ever been on?

I didn’t even know Long John Silvers existed.  Would an equivalent be a TGIFriday’s? (Editors note: Everhip says, yes, we have a match)  But I actually quite like the cheesy pastas, so maybe I’m admitting that I’m not quite as highbrow as I might appear

Q- Sam had previously mentioned that there was this interracial theme in the movie that was never touched on. How did you feel about it?

Love it.  I was watching the Sound of Music the other night with my kids and I was thinking about the roles that I would have loved to play that go past a cliché conversation about race.  Growing up in London with a hippie mom.  I’m mixed but I’m defined black.   I’m just excited that in a film like this, that it doesn’t matter if you’re black or mixed or whatever, that you’re given the chance to be idiosyncratic and have a breadth of emotions, and that its not about how that is informed by being black.  And it’s really liberating to see a piece of material like this out in the world.  I just hope there is more of it.  I’ve been craving this stuff my whole career and there has not been enough of it, and I just feel that as an artist, you feel so defined.  There’s so many categories you’re put into, and there are so many things about me as an artist that have never been explored in film, and I don’t see myself in so many characters in film and I think that’s changing with films like this.

Q-Do you think you might write something for yourself?

Who knows.  I’m not sure that’s my skill-set.  So I hope that people who are will be doing more of it, and it gets financed.  I don’t know how it came to be that Maya got that role, if it was Sam.  You hope that when you go up for a role that there is going to be a broader vision of what the role might be like, not just the same old five people.