The following interview originally ran on Starpulse.com in 2012.
Whether you’re into television or film, you probably know Elizabeth Banks. On television the actress has had memorable turns on 30 Rock and Scrubs, while her film credits include a mixture of comedic and dramatic efforts like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Next Three Days.
In the thriller Man on a Ledge, Banks plays a police negotiator named Lydia Mercer. When a disgraced ex-cop Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) climbs up on a New York hotel threatening to jump, Mercer is tasked with talking him down. What she doesn’t know is that the stunt is merely a smokescreen to hide his true plan. Certain shady characters discover his motives, so they set attempt to stop Nick, causing chaos to ensue.
I had the chance to sit down for a roundtable interview with Banks about the movie. Below are some highlights of the conversation.
Q: One of the cool things about your character in this movie is that she’s a “police officer” and not a “police woman.” There’s not anything mentioned about her being a woman in the movie. Was that important to you to just play a character where it didn’t matter?
Elizabeth Banks: I really, I was very drawn, (pauses) thank you for noticing, I was drawn to the fact that she was nobody’s wife or girlfriend. I also felt the same way. I felt that gender really didn’t matter. It definitely goosed it a little that she’s a woman, but it could have easily been a man. It felt to me like a younger John McClane. That definitely drew me to it.
And the other thing is that I met with some actual NYPD negotiators and I asked specifically to meet a woman. And I said, ‘They have women right?’ And they were like ‘Oh yeah we’ve got a few.’ I met this great lady from Staten Island via Ireland, so as you can imagine her accent was incredible. She was very girly and she was like 42, a mom, wore a cute Banana Republic suit, and carried a cute purse that had her piece in it.
Q: That’s what makes it fun for you to go toe-to-toe with Ed Burns. It’s just cop-on-cop and it’s not anything else.
EB: Yeah, exactly. And we were really intent on presenting that camaraderie. It’s a very serious job the negotiator I met has. She has talked most people down actually. She has a very good track record, as they mostly do. In all honesty, their whole motto is ‘Jumpers jump.’ In other words, if you want to off yourself, you go to the top of the building and you jump off.
If you’re still standing there by the time I pull my pants on and get in the taxi, go uptown, get a coffee and start talking to you, your rational mind has hopefully taken over and you may want to get saved. But the problem is, if you then go over, it’s really on them ‘cause then they really take it as their fault, because they couldn’t figure out a way to get you in.
Q: Did you actually go out on the ledge?
EB: I did…We were 220 feet, 22 stories above Madison Avenue, straight down, nothing, 14 inches of ledge. And one string, two string size wire holding us there in a harness.
Q: So you don’t have vertigo then?
EB: Everyone has a little bit of vertigo. Vertigo is like your body’s notion that you should get to your center of gravity as fast as possible. In your body that means let me hurl you off this building to get you to the ground really fast…But I don’t particularly have a fear of heights, I’m a bit of a thrill seeker actually, so I thought it was going to be really fun, and it was. And that’s the view (pointing to the poster). That’s what it looked like right there.
So we went out there on the wires, I’m not afraid of heights particularly, but you still get that pit in your stomach and your adrenaline going crazy, and your heart’s racing, and you have sweaty palms because your instinctual reaction in a place of danger is fight or flight. Your engine just starts running. So every 45 minutes the stunt guys would be like ‘You know, let’s come in, let’s take a few minutes,’ and at the end of a long day, I was only really out, I was in the window mostly. I was only out, out for a total, like the hours of it, like a day and a half really.
Q: In a way that does add to your performance because it’s not like faking it with green screen.
EB: That’s right it’s like total gift for an actor. You don’t have to figure out ‘What would it feel like if that happened?’ You’re out there. It’s clear on your face exactly what’s happening you know?
Q: You have a nice balance between funny roles and serious ones. You’ve done a lot of great comedy stuff but you’ve also done stuff like this film and The Next Three Days.
EB: I think that you are best remembered by your last piece (Laughing). Because you know, I started out in comedy; I did a total cult comedy called Wet Hot American Summer. Then I did Seabiscuit was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and Seabiscuit was like I could not get arrested to do comedy. Literally it took being in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and by the way they were gonna give that role to Amy Adams; she almost stole it from me. But literally it was like a last minute, my agents begging them to see me. Then it sort of took that to reset how, and oh yeah, I was sort of in Scrubs on the side. So my point being, some people only know my dramatic work. And some people only know that I’m on 30 Rock.
Q: Do you have a preference for comedy over drama?
EB: I do, I prefer comedy. But I like great roles, I’m always just looking for a great role. Unfortunately in comedy, in all honesty, it’s mostly wives and girlfriends. Believe me, you’ve all seen several comedies that I could have been in, but I was like ‘Eh, I’ve done this. I’m not that interested in repeating myself over and over again.’ So I would love to do more comedy. Making people laugh is very addicting. It’s much harder. This drama stuff isn’t that difficult. I mean it’s difficult. I mean this movie, you can tell it’s a lot of great editing. (Laughing)
The Next Three Days was hard, it was very physically exhausting. I was in jail, and I spent most of my days separated from the cast and crew like sitting in a corner crying. It’s not that fun to make those. You really have to go there, and I love to really go there. If I’m going to do it, I try to do it 110 percent. The comedy, you’ve got to have a real instinct for it. You need timing and it requires a certain skill set. You can absolutely fix jokes in edit. You absolutely can, but you know whether someone is a funny person or not.
Q: You’ve worked with a lot of people like Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Ed Burns, is there someone that you’d love to work with that you haven’t had the opportunity to?
EB: I would love to work with Woody Allen. I’ve almost worked with him twice. He’s chosen other people.
Q: But you’ve gotten in the door.
EB: I’ve met him a few times, yeah. It’s a very fun meeting, mostly because the expectation is that he’s gonna like…literally someone was like, a friend of mine who had met him on a meeting, because he doesn’t audition anyone. You just go, and he just goes ‘Mmm…yes/no.’ A friend of mine met him and said the room he sat in was very dark. It’s the same place on the Upper East Side where he’s been living for a hundred years. And all the rooms were dark, and it was like a hand came out of a shadow and went ‘It was nice to meet you,’ and that was it.
So the first time I met him he actually came out and was like ‘Hi! It’s me!’ like in the full light. I still was like in a weird spotlight in the middle of the room, but he actually came out and shook my hand and spoke to me. And I was like ‘All right! I’m in! He came out of the shadows.’ I didn’t get it but he did come out of the shadows to talk to me.
Q: How do you feel about your career right now?
EB: It’s gone really well in the past. Will it go well in the future? We’ll see. Works for today.