|
Your upcoming webseries Carrot Happens - in a few words, what is it
about?
It’s a comedic series: Two former nerdy girls in
their mid twenties decide to take their delusional visions to another level
when they take revenge on their High School crush.
To ask something obvious: Why carrots?
One
of the characters in the web series does not like to swear, so instead she uses
vegetable names like “What the tomato” for „What the heck“ and
“Carrot Happens” stands for „Shit Happens“.
What were your initial motivations to get a project like this off
the ground?
We are very passionate about our careers and always
take it one step further. We wanted to create a quality product and
be fully involved in all of the aspects of filmmaking to have a better
understanding of what is expected of us. In our career as actresses we
have read hundreds of scripts whose quality levels were more than
unsatisfactory and would only hurt an actors reel.
With this web series we decided to create our own
quality product to star in, in order to engage the audience with a fun and
intriguing series and turn our career in the right direction
Your inspirations when writing the series, and honestly, was any
of this based on personal experiences and/or wishful thinking?
The story is not based on
personal experiences but maybe a bit of wishful thinking. The characters
are similar to our personalities but enlarged for comedic purposes. For
instance Lizzie, played by Anja Lill, always has reminders set in her
phone. And Jasmine, played by Julia Rees, has OCD.
How
would you describe Carrot Happens' brand of humour?
It is a more innocent PG-13, slapstick kind of humor with a lot of physical
comedy, accidents and mishappens. What
can you tell us about your characters in Carrot Happens, and how do
you approach them, acting-wise? Both
of the characters we portray are very lively and rich in their odd
behaviors and related to us as stated above. From an actor's perspective we
have to mentally put ourselves into the quirky situation of kidnapping
someone and to play the characters at different ages. Playing them in
their High School teen years will require us to physically change and act
more childish whereas when Lizzie and Jasmine are in their twenties they
have grown up quite a bit and seem more mature. A few words about your
director Nardeep Khurmi, and how hard will it be to, to a degree, handing
over your own project to someone else? We
fully believe and trust in our director Nardeep Khurmi. He is very
talented and knows what he is doing and we cannot wait to see him bring
our vision to life with his imagination. Nardeep has finished a great film
school in New York and has worked on numerous projects before. We truly
enjoy acting, and when it comes to set, we do not want to have to worry
about anything else but that.
Anja Lill |
I know you have
worked with each other before - so how did you meet up in the first place,
and what made you to ultimately decide to collaborate on this web series?
|
Julia Rees |
We
went to Stella Adler together and have worked on plays and short films
together. Ultimately we did not only just become friends but also
roommates. Since we know each other extremely well we can coach each other
on set. Our creative minds never stop so we’ve developed a lot of
different projects and two minds can write better than one. What
made you two go into acting in the first place, and what can you tell us
about your training as actresses? Both
of us have wanted to become actors since we were little girls, but our
families were never affiliated with the entertainment industry so we
didn’t pursue acting until we were in our teens. The fact that we
don’t like to act in German brought us to Los Angeles. We chose the
Stella Adler Academy for our training because we truly believe in the
Stanislavski technique and Stella Adler is based on the imagination, which
enables you to play any role truthfully. What can you tell us
about your filmwork prior to Carrot Happens? We
have both worked on numerous shorts like the thriller Mirage, where
two girls are being pursued by a killer, another web series called The
Couch, several regional commercials, infomercials and feature films
like The Extra. Also we have been in many theater productions prior
to coming to Los Angeles. Our theater background made it easy to
transition into film. Besides
acting in movies, the both of you have also done quite a bit of theater.
What's the difference between acting on stage and making a movie, and
which do you prefer, actually?
We
definitely prefer acting in movies, that’s why we decided to move to Los
Angeles instead of New York, which is more known for theater. The main
difference is that for the stage you have to project your voice and your
emotions/actions have to be big to be seen by the audience. In film
everything is tuned down and simplistic. The expression of the eyes is
very important and the smallest facial movements are exposed on the big
screen. Any future projects you'd
like to talk about?
We
just finished filming the short thriller Mirage which is currently
in post-production, and we want to submit it to film festivals. Another
short thriller is in pre-production called The Quija Board and will
be filmed in June. Also the web series The Couch will be featured on
YouTube and starts filming at the end of April. We always have new
projects coming up. If you are interested in keeping up with us, visit our
websites:
www.JuliaRees.com and
www.AnjaLill.com.
Your approach to acting as such? When
we get handed a script, we use the tools we got taught in school, such as
Script Breakdown. We explore the bigger theme of the script and then go
into character work, meaning creating a background story, researching their
occupation and living as the character in some every day situations. The
choices should be extremely specific to bring the character to life and
the actor should always find a way to raise the stakes. Actresses
(or indeed actors) who inspire you?
 |
Feeling lucky?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results?
(commissions earned) |
The links below
will take you
just there!!!
|
|
 |
Meryl Streep is a big
inspiration to the both of us. She is able to portray so many different
characters and puts on accents convincingly. Edward Norton is such a
chameleon that you don’t even recognize him in most films. Amazing
acting skills! We both hope to have such careers some day.
Your favourite
movies? We
like movies that inspire us to think with a twist in the end with amazing
cinematography like The Butterfly Effect, The Shining or The Matrix. But we are also a fan of comedic movies such as
Bridesmaids or sitcom series like Friends, How I Met Your
Mother or The Big Bang Theory. ... and of course, films you really deplore?
Swingers is a movie we really disliked. The content,
the dialogue, everything about it was boring. We are not interested in
movies that have a slow pace and no new insights. We want to be inspired
or laugh uncontrollably.
Your/your
series' websites, Facebooks, whatever else?
Our official website where we
will also release our episodes is:
http://carrothappens.moonfruit.com.
On Facebook you can follow us
and always find out the newest information and episodes immediately:
www.facebook.com/CarrotHappens.
Thanks
for the interview!
|
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
