Zoe Saldana covers the January issue of Flare magazine to promote Out of the Furnace, which looked really good (great cast including Christian Bale and Woody Harrelson) but bombed at the box office. This photoshoot is basically “Zoe posing weirdly with various chairs.” She’s a beautiful girl, but the angular poses she chose for this shoot are a little awkward looking. Maybe the photographer wanted her to pose this way.
Before we get to the interview, I wanted to mention a discussion that Zoe did with Collider that’s been itching at me for a few weeks. Zoe went off on a rant about awful blockbuster movies are compared to indies. She said, “There’s a lot wrong with doing blockbusters. Let’s be real. And I’m a part of a lot of them, but these are stories that are great.” Zoe was attempting to talk up her roles in low-budget films that are “artistic” as opposed to “entertainment.” Still this is the same actress who starred in Avatar plus Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, which fit the very definition of “blockbuster” and cumulatively earned over $3.6 billion. Zoe doesn’t mind taking blockbuster-sized paychecks, does she? She needs to sit down.
Zoe’s similarly full of herself in this interview with Flare. I appreciate her points about being a strong woman, but the way she says things rubs me the wrong way:
She’s a lady: “I’m a lady. My mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother raised ladies. We don’t breed skanky, coquettish, giddy little girls. We breed women.”
She lost her dad at age 9: “My mom was sad a lot. Losing the love of your life when you’re young, and you have three freakin’ kids…At the end of the day, that warmth that fills your bed is not there.”
On girl power: “Women aren’t wimpy. They don’t complain all the time. They can open up jars! They can f—ing save the day! They can support their whole family. They can support their men. Half of my friends make more money than their male partners.”
Stop whining, ladies: “Women who are very whiny annoy the f—ing crap out of me. It’s impossible for my sisters and me to hold a conversation with a woman who is incompetent. It’s one thing to be uncertain, a little insecure and scared, and another thing to be lazy. I can’t deal with mediocrity and incompetence. And you see it in people’s eyes.”
Don’t take work home: “I’m an artist. I love going to work — researching and conceiving a character with my director is my favourite time — but as soon as I get home and open up that bottle of wine or sit down with my family, I’m not talking about work.”
Standing up for herself on set: “You’d see all the boys together, and they’re discussing the scene and what’s going to happen. You just go, ‘Yeah, but…’ and they say, ‘Oh, but we already discussed that.'” There are three possible reactions, she says: rolling your eyes, “because men think they know better”; laughing; or, she says, “sitting and watching while everybody feels uncomfortable around you, and feeling really good about yourself because you stood up for yourself, you mattered, you voiced your presence.” Saldana has no problem pulling a mentor or male authority aside, she says, laying out for me her usual plan of attack: Her “heart racing and sweating buckets,” she declares, without blinking, “I’m not happy.” And then she states her case: “I understand everything you’re saying, but these are the terms we agreed on, and that is why I got on a plane and came out here, and I decided to have your back, and now I don’t feel like you’re having my back. This character is invisible. She’s completely irrelevant, and she should be more.”
On criticism: “There’s nothing anybody can say or think about me that I will give a sh-t about. Honestly.”
Her Nina Simone movie still has no release date: “It’s very abstract. It was sort of like a love song to Nina. At the end of the day, no matter how the movie is received, I’m not going to regret anything.”
On New Year’s resolutions: “I stopped doing them It’s like heading to a party and telling your friends, ‘I’m not going to drink, you guys.’ Meanwhile, you’re the one who blacks out! Let’s be real. Oh god, it’s usually me.”
[From Flare]
On the point about women earning more than their men, I assume Zoe is referring to her own quickie marriage to artist Marco Perego. I think it’s great that Zoe earns more than her man, but she needs to realize that in a lot of professions, men still earn more than their female counterparts. That’s just a reality. It sucks.
Zoe’s remarks about not caring what other people say arrive after the journo mentioned criticisms of her Nina Simone role. I think Zoe does care because who wouldn’t? Especially when one is such a sensitive “artist.” Oh well. It will be interesting to see if the movie ever sees the light of day.
She has a point about New Year’s resolutions though. They never stick.
Photos courtesy of Flare
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