Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum star as Kelly Jones and Cole Davis in Fly Me to the Moon. The film will have early sneak previews today and Saturday before hitting theaters everywhere on July 12.
FLY ME TO THE MOON is a sharp, stylish comedy-drama set against the high-stakes backdrop of NASA’s historic Apollo 11 moon landing. Brought in to fix NASA’s public image, sparks fly in all directions as marketing maven Kelly Jones (Johansson) wreaks havoc on launch director Cole Davis’s (Tatum) already difficult task. When the White House deems the mission too important to fail, Jones is directed to stage a fake moon landing as back-up and the countdown truly begins?
“I think I look for women that are a kind of sum of all their parts,” Johansson, who also produced the movie, explained while telling me what she looks for when taking on a new role. “I’m a sum of all the parts, all that’s gotten me here and I want to see that for better or worse or whatever reflected in the people that I see on screen. So, it’s not just like an idea of someone, but it’s a fully-rounded person, even if there’s things that they perceive or are perceived to be unlikable or whatever about their shortcomings, that stuff is important, you know?”
In regard to what Tatum enjoyed most about the project, he shared, “To really get to spar with her [Johansson], I was really looking forward to it. I mean, when I read the script, you know, when you read it, scripts that are big and sort of big in scope like this usually don’t have a lot of dialogue. There’s just lots of action and then, you put some plot in there, and then, you’re just getting from point A to point B. There was a lot of nuance and real sort of dueling and jousting between the two of us and I think that was the core of the movie for me. I mean, yes, this relationship is set in a giant moment and event in the world but that was what I was more interested in, and how we challenged each other and the friction and the complications of both of them kind of were the things that they both needed in their life to take it to the next place.”
I spoke with the actors about the importance of fully fleshed-out roles, why the dynamic between their characters is the core of the story, and a time in their careers when they took a rewarding leap.
Watch my interview below:
