LOS ANGELES: Twilight author Stephenie Meyer brings her romantic futuristic thriller The Host to movie fans on Friday, trading the vampires and werewolves for aliens who invade planet Earth, taking over human bodies.
The film stars, Saoirse Ronan as Melanie Stryder, whose body is taken over by an alien soul called Wanda. Eventually, the two-in-one female team work to save the human race from total annihilation.
Meyer, 39, who was raised Mormon and attends church regularly, talked about The Host, working as a producer on the project and how her life has changed since the first Twilight film came out in 2008.
How did Saoirse Ronan play Melanie and Wanda in the same body?
They have conversations throughout the entire film, but she plays two different characters that have different chemistry with two different guys. She’s one person, but emoting a separate person when she’s with Jared and another when she’s with Ian.
How did things evolve for you that you are now producing your adaptations? It didn’t start that way on Twilight.
It’s not normal for an author to be very involved. With each movie I was able to be more involved.
I worked really closely with The Twilight Saga: New Moon director Chris Weitz, especially with the cast selection of the side characters.
Did the success of Twilight give you producing clout?
After Twilight did really well, I think my opinion had more weight. With The Host, from the beginning, producer Nick Wechsler came to me and said, ‘Let’s do this together.’ All our opinions were valued by each of us.
You live in Arizona, just north of Phoenix. Do you ever think you should move to Los Angeles and work full-time in Hollywood?
I would never live there. No offense to the people that do, but I can’t imagine raising kids in Los Angeles. There are a lot of plastics, even kids getting plastic surgery. The materialism — that overwhelming sense of what you look like — being the most important thing; that would be difficult to live with every day. Every day you start feeling less, because everyone’s so beautiful and polished.
How has life changed for you since your film success?
People let me make movies, which is kind of cool. That certainly wasn’t something anyone was going to let me do before. I’ve grown a lot in my confidence and in my ability to do interviews. I don’t freak out as much about all these people taking pictures. I do have to be away from my kids more than I’d like, but they’re so cool and mellow about it.
Have you been able to fulfill any personal wishes since Twilight brought you to the pop culture forefront?
I’ll tell you a story that’s in the first Twilight book, where a little piece of me sank through to the novel. When Bella sees Edward’s piano for the first time, she vows if she ever had a windfall, she would want to get her mom a piano like that. Well I was able to get my mom a piano like that. It was really exciting to get to do that.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 29th, 2013.
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