In a recent
interview to THR, actress and producer Zoe Saldana gave some details about what
we can expect from the Rosemary’s Baby mini-series.
1. Paris plays a part. Filmed on location, the miniseries shifts the setting from New York to
Paris to create distance from Polanski's classic while also serving the
story. "It is the epicenter of sophistication and elegance, but also
of darkness, because of its aesthetics and history," she said.
(Saldana also noted that filming in Paris was inherently a much better
experience because more wine was involved.)
2. Fashion does not. Saldana noted that she never entertained the idea of shaving her head
not only because of her other projects and beauty campaigns, but also because
she didn't want to imitate Mia Farrow's hairdo,
which is now a major style moment. "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
followign her character's trajectory," she said of the "quick
conversation" with Holland about strategizing the haircut. Instead,
Saldana said she played to hercharacter's worries while
pregnant: "She's losing weight, she's very sick, she's losing hair,
let's cut it. Let me try to look beautiful for my husband."
3. Rosemary is more realistic. "Having a female director -- and a very opinionated New Yorker and
artist -- is that we were going to bring to life what we felt was a more
realistic woman, that is less subservient, kind, light-spirited, innocent, but
not a slave to a marriage or a man," Saldana noted of empowering her title
character. "She loves her husband and is very committed to her marriage,
but she will raise concerns ... I would need months of preparation to play a
subservient woman!"
4. Mia Farrow has been MIA. Saldana told reporters that she hasn't been in contact with the Rosemary
Woodhouse of Polanski's 1968 film -- not even on Twitter. "I know that she
is aware of it, and I just hope that she likes it when she sees it," she
said of Farrow.
5. Expect the blood and sex. Just because the miniseries is airing on NBC -- and on Mothers' Day --
doesn't mean the dark tale will be lighthearted. "That was a risk they
were already taking, so we knew they were going to give us a certain amount of
freedom," said Saldana of working with the network, who told the director
that they'll pull back in postproduction. "She was very surprised that
they only made her do minor changes, nothing severe. When I saw it, I was like,
'Are you kidding me? All this blood? All this sex? This is awesome.'"
6. Guy gets his spotlight. Rosemary's husband Guy Woodhouse (Patrick J. Adams) has more screen time in
the expanded retelling, as Holland made sure to focus on his distinct
relationship with the neighbors, the Castevets, that is detailed in the
1967 novel byIra Levin.
"There was a very interesting relationship between Roman Castevet and Guy
Woodhouse that Agnieszka was able to showcase more."
7. Adams' age was an attractive
factor. "I was very
adamant about us casting an actor that would be of my age to play my husband --
I did not want an actor that would be older than me," she said of playing
opposite Adams. "That is not a message I endorse, I don't like old men, I
wasn't gonna play Rosemary to do that, and I felt that is Rosemary was married
to a professor that was much, much older, it would probably give you the idea
that it wasn't his first marriage -- it was definitely her first -- and that it
would be easier to sell her out. As opposed to having them be 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."
8. Rosemary's race was never an issue. Saldana said that the retelling did not have an explicit intention to
lead with a woman of color, as the other actresses considered for the role were
Caucasian. "It felt right to me that we weren't making it an affirmative,
active decision," she said.
9. Playing pregnant entailed
research. While Saldana said
that her character's makeup helped her play an expectant mother, she also
listened to many mothers tell their stories of pregnancies. 'I became an active
blog reader of parenting websites! It was easy for me to sympathize with what I
had heard and the symptoms I had read," she said of her preparation. On
set, she found herself slowing down -- literally -- since Holland and others
had to keep reminding her that a pregnant woman wouldn't be running as fast as
she was in a scene.
10. The cat got friendly. Though the cat who appears in the series was cooperative and only
scratched the cast and crew by accident, Saldana laughed that
"she was in heat for like three months -- it was the horniest cat I had
ever met! She would make the weirdest sounds, you would think from a distance
that it was a woman or a child!"
11. She's ready for the backlash. "Of course you’re going to be a little afraid, but once you realize
that, overall, every time you remake something or redo something or retell
something, it’s never going to be accepted by everybody, you just remove that
pressure off the table," she said of receiving a negative response
for taking the classic to the silver screen. “If you don’t like the new, just
respect the fact that it was a bold decision, it took a great amount of wit and
'cajones,' and go back to your classic. It’s okay! You’re not being disloyal.
You’re just watching new things."
Adapted from Ira
Levin’s novel, Rosemary’s Baby stars Zoe Saldana as Rosemary Woodhouse, who
moves with her husband (Adams) into a Paris apartment that has a dark past.
After getting pregnant, she becomes suspicious that both her husband and their
neighbors have hidden motives about the future of the child.
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