Twilight Lexicon had an interview last week with Peter Facinelli and he talked about his new iPhone app, Vampire Transformer. You can download it at the app store for just 99 cents.
Lori: So outside of your work with the iPhone apps and – oh my goodness, you’re humanitarian efforts with Alex’s Lemonade Stand – What other projects can we look forward to you getting involved in? You’re so busy already!
Peter: I don’t know. I take it one day at a time. Right now I’m looking forward to the holiday break. Next year there’s a couple of movies I’m looking at doing in the spring. There’s a movie that I wrote that I’m trying to get off the ground. I’d like to do a movie in the spring to early summer and then hopefully, you know, if we do Nurse Jackie III I’ll be back in the fall. And if we do Breaking Dawn I’ll be back in the fall/winter hopefully. Everything’s kind of up in the air with the end of Nurse Jackie III and Breaking Dawn. So that… I have to sit and wait. But right now I have a window between January and August that I can stuff. Right now I’m just seeing what I want to do.
Lori: Well awesome. We look forward to it. You mentioned that you kind of got involved with the iPhone apps because of twitter. What has been the biggest plus of being on twitter and the biggest drawback?
Peter: Wow. I can’t think of any drawbacks. I enjoy being on twitter. I enjoy connecting with the fans – hearing what the fans have to say. I enjoy being able to share information that I want to share. It used to be where you had something like the Vampire App or I’m doing a charity event I had to go to news papers and radio stations. Now I can reach a broad amount of people and tell them what I’m doing.
Laura: You can tweet it to the world and you don’t have to worry about being edited by anybody. You can get your message out there.
Peter: Exactly. So for me, I love having that in my hands and being able to have control over – cause a lot of times it’s true. You do an interview and what you said isn’t exactly what appears in the papers. It’s frustrating. So for me, I can voice whatever I need to voice and people know that I said it. There’s no denying it.
Laura: There you go! That’s great!
Lori: Or that you didn’t say something.
Peter: Or that I didn’t say something. I’ve actually used it for that. I know that my wife –
Lori: Or that your wife didn’t say something!
Peter: Yeah. Jennie got called out saying something that she never said and I had to go on Twitter and make sure that people knew that that wasn’t true. And actually by me going on Twitter Perez Hilton actually retracted his story because he found out what my wife did say. And that was validated, you know, so he retracted his story. It’s a good tool for me. I love being able to interact with the fans and hopefully my fans will come with me to my next project.
Lori: Ok – can we ask you some Twilight questions?
Peter: Sure.
Lori: I’ve wondered this for a while because your cast mates are pretty much close to you in age and yet you have to play the father figure. Now, you are a father in real life so it’s easy to tap into that father figure mode, I would imagine. But is it difficult to do it with several cast mates who are so close to you in age?
Peter: On set or off set?
Lori: On set.
Peter: They treat me like a friend or a big brother, but I wouldn’t say that I’m very parental towards them. But on camera everyone’s into their characters, so I buy into them being my children and they buy into me playing their father and there’s an established hierarchy in the family so everyone’s playing their parts. For me my daunting task when I was doing Twilight was how do I bring 350 years to the screen? So for me, what I did, I did a lot of research on Carlisle and where he was born and where those 350 years took him. So I researched his travels to Italy, the time periods, what was going on in those time periods, what wars were going on, what plagues he would have seen, what kind of entertainment was going on, the political status. So I had a long map because he had been so many places in 350 years. A lot of that informed me on who Carlisle was, and some of it actually ended up in the movie. There’s a whole thing in the baseball sequence where I raise my bat to center field. That was my homage to…
Laura: Babe Ruth?
Peter: Babe Ruth, yeah. And I had imagined while I was doing his travels that he ended up in Chicago. And baseball was big in the early 1900’s. He probably met Babe Ruth and probably went to see him play baseball. And so that was one of the reasons why he loved baseball so much and brought it to his family. By doing all that research, that little bit ended up in the movie.
Lori: I love that!
Peter: And then what I did – I worked on Carlisle, how he spoke and how he moved, because I felt like he came from a different time period. So even though it’s been watered down through the ages he should still have some reminisce of it. So I didn’t want him to have a full blown English accent since he’s been gone from England for so long, but I wanted him to have a very proper speech pattern and a very soft voice. Just in the way he moves. His movements are very small and he is a very a calming force. All that helped me build who Carlisle was and all that knowledge made me feel like I know more than everybody else. So I felt like that would help the audience see that I knew more, and so that’s how I brought 350 years to the screen.
Lori: That is amazing. Did you spend equal amount of time or any at all with other cast mates building back stories or back relationships – like with Elizabeth Reaser. Did you talk about the Carlisle/Esme relationship at all.
Peter: I don’t like to encroach on other people’s processes at all. Some of that would come out in rehearsal, but mostly I did my own homework on my relationship with Esme and why I thought that she was for me and what our relationship was. There were some discussions with Rob about out characters. I remember when we did Twilight I actually wrote him a letter in character from Carlisle to Edward basically explaining to him why the life he has is so superior than any other vampire’s life. Because I remember having conversations with Rob – you know Edward is this tortured character and he doesn’t understand why he lives this way – why aren’t we really being vampires. Because in the movies the nomads are the bad vampires, when in reality they’re just doing what vampires do.
Lori: Right.
Peter: We’re the odd birds that are actually doing something completely against our nature. So when these nomads come around they’re like, “What are you guys doing? We’re supposed to be feeding on humans here.”
Lori: Right.
Peter: It’s kind of like trying to domesticate a lion.
Lori and Laura: (laughing)
Peter: We’re like lions that are running around trying to be like house cats. And Rob, when I was talking with him, he was like, “I don’t understand why we’re living this way.” Basically having these in character conversations with me and, “Why did Carlisle change me?” So I felt obligated to explain myself and I’m better at it on paper. So I wrote him a letter saying why I thought – Because what he thought – he was looking at the Cullens like, “we’re weaker.” And I, as Carlisle, felt like, “No, we’re stronger than any other vampire.” Because in choosing not to do what they do there’s strength in that – because we have a choice. They have no choice, you know what I mean? They wouldn’t be able to stop. But the strength that it takes for us to stop makes us far superior than any of them.
Lori: Showing restraint.
Peter: Yeah, showing that restraint. And you know, it’s Carlisle’s way of trying to hold on to any humanity he can because he genuinely loves humans. I always felt what Carlisle was trying to create was a human that could live forever, as opposed to being a vampire.
Laura: That’s a great analogy.
Lori: Yes. And living the most normal, human-life life.
Peter: Right.
Lori: by having a home and a family.
Peter: Exactly. So if you can have that – if you can live this human-like life and you don’t feed on humans and you don’t live the vampire, nomadic way, then what you really are is a human who can live forever which is a fantastic thing. So I wrote this little letter and I gave it to Rob. So there are things when you’re building characters that you talk about in rehearsal. And like I said, a lot of that comes out of that and get put on screen. Like my scarves.
Laura: Oh that’s right! Like the building up of the scarves! Which actually I went looking for specifically in New Moon, because I had heard you mention before, that you had found that a part of the character. And I thought – oh look! It’s there!
Peter: What happened with the scarves, I went to Catherine and I said, “It’s not in the books, but I think Carlisle wears scarves.” Because I see him as this proper gentleman it feels right for him to wear these scarves. It’s something that he probably wore in the 1600’s or 1700’s and now he continues to wear them. It’s a part of who he is. But I also felt like it had a duel meaning, because if he had gotten bitten in the neck area then maybe he has some kind of phobia about having his neck exposed or that he doesn’t like having his neck exposed much. So that’s the whole history of the scarves.
Laura: That’s great motivation.
Lori: And then scarves end up being this great fashion accessory right now.
Peter: I know! It’s so weird! Everyone’s wearing scarves now!
Lori: You started a trend!
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