The 1967 best-selling suspense novel, 'Rosemary's Baby' heads to the small screen as a modern 4-part mini series starring Zoe Saldana and Patrick J. Adams.
Read on to find out how Hollywood darling Zoe Saldana tackled one of her most demanding role to date.
Transcript courtesy of Thrill
Qn: What was the first thing that went through your mind when you were offered the role?
Zoe: When I first got the script, I was like, are you kidding me? All this blood? All this sex? This is awesome.
Qn: Have you watched Rosemary’s Baby before? What was it like when you first saw it?
Zoe: Yeah, I’ve watched it before, and I was with my mom. It was in our apartment in Queens, and I don’t know if it was dubbed in Spanish, I don’t know if it was on Univision or something, but I remember feeling so scared. I didn’t really understand I cause the whole thing about Roman’s movie is he leaves it all to the imagination, it’s not graphic. So I think at that time, I was a little too young to understand that I needed to just let my imagination go. I remember watching and thinking, ‘What’s in the crib?!’ But you never see the baby! With Agnieszka Holland, she pushes it a bit, but leaves it a bit back.
Qn: We understand the remake of Rosemary’s Baby is a mini series version for television. For someone used to acting in movies, how was it working for television?
Zoe: Television is great too, for us actors. With a four-hour miniseries instead of the usual 90-minute movie, we could explore more thoroughly the complex relationships between our characters.
Qn: As an actor, what did you want to do different in comparison to Roman Polanski’s version?
Zoe: The thing about this modern remake, which really had me was that we were going to have the opportunity with having a female director and a very opinionated New Yorker, to bring to life what we felt would be a more realistic woman, that is less subservient. Kind, light spirited, innocent, but not a slave to a marriage or to a man or overly obedient. She loves her husband, she’s very much committed to her marriage, but she’s inquisitive and she will raise concerns and even when she’s not heard she’ll try to the best of her abilities to be heard and that to me was much more natural for me to channel that.
I mean, I wouldn’t even know where to start – I would need months of preparation to play a subservient woman, I mean it’s inconceivable to me.
Qn: Be honest, how was it like working with Patrick J Adams? Were there any concerns about Patrick being too young for the role of Guy?
I was very adamant about us casting an actor that was closer to me in age, especially to play my husband. I didn’t want an older actor cause for me, if Rosemary was married to a professor that was much older, it would probably give you the idea that it wasn’t his first marriage, it was definitely her first marriage, and that it would be easy for him to sell her out. As opposed to them being this young, vibrant, starry-eyed couple together coming into an ancient world of lust and malice, it was going to be a much more enticing scenario.
Qn: We love the crop hair do you did for the series, reminiscent of that Mia Farrow [the original Rosemary] also did. But Mia actually did chop it all off. Would you consider the crop for good?
Zoe: I loved the hair do but I wasn’t going to really do it, because I have other obligations. In this day and age with all the great wigs out there… I don’t know. I didn’t want it to be about a fashion trend. What Mia did was a very bold decision and I’m pretty sure she was following her character’s trajectory, because as a person who has been around so many pregnant women, sometimes your hair gets fuller and sometimes your hair gets really thin. So some women do have to have a little bit of a makeover. I was trying to focus on that as a character, and not pressure myself going ‘what am I going to do?’ because I didn’t want it to be about the hair. And I found the less and less I would think about those things the more I would create a distance between the original Rosemary’s Baby and this retelling. It’s not a remake. I didn’t want to touch what Mia did.
Qn: Now that you yourself are pregnant, has acting in Rosemary’s Baby influenced your pregnancy period? Have you gone through anything odd?
Zoe: Throughout my pregnancy, I wouldn’t say anything spooky but I've definitely been watching a lot of crime shows like murder mysteries. So here I am at like 2 in the morning solving some case. It’s kind of like a gift of being pregnancy, especially at times when you just can’t sleep. Sometimes my husband wakes up, and I’m just like, “He totally did it.'"
[About Rosemary’s Baby]
Based on the 1967 best-selling suspense novel
by Ira Levin, this modern 4 part mini-series adaptation of "Rosemary's
Baby" centers on a young married couple who escapes New York and moves
to Paris with hopes of leaving their sad past behind. After a series of
unfortunate events, Rosemary (Zoe Saldana) and Guy Woodhouse (Patrick J.
Adams) are presented with an offer they can't refuse - an apartment at
the most prestigious address in Paris. Things seem to be picture perfect
when Rosemary becomes pregnant and Guy's career takes off. Problem is,
the new home comes with a haunted past and the couple learns that it
also comes at an immeasurable price.
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Rosemary’s Baby Part I & II will be showing on 8 November and 15 November respectively at 11PM on Thrill (Starhub Cable TV Channel 618 and SingTel mioTV Channel 415).