Jennifer Connelly Talks Noah's Controversies

Refinery29

If you've been following entertainment news lately, you know that there's a huge movie coming out tomorrow. Darren Aronofsky's epic recreation of the story of Noah is finally hitting theaters â and, when we say epic, we really mean it. We're talking a life-size ark, sweeping shots of apocalyptic floods, and fight scenes that rival even the craziest parts of 300.   As to be expected, a movie of this magnitude â and subject matter â isn't without its controversies. Groups from the religious right have spoken out against the flick and the liberties that Aronofsky took with the story. In fact, Noah's trailers even feature a biblical disclaimer noting that artistic license has been taken. But, regardless of the contention, it's still a pretty awesome film, especially if you like heart-pounding action.   We sat down with Jennifer Connelly, who plays Noah's wife Naameh, about taking on such a legendary role. She spilled the beans about filming a movie of this proportion, and what it was like to confront the controversy head-on.

Transcript

00:04Noah is obviously the protagonist here but I really felt like your character was kind of the

00:09silent hero of everything. What did you think of her? I thought it was an interesting endeavor

00:16because if you read Genesis you don't really learn anything about Noah's wife and I think

00:21that Darren and Ari had written my character as a very devoted wife but more than anything

00:29a very committed mother very strong woman emotionally and also very capable physically I I thought it was

00:39a beautiful character they'd written. Did you have any kind of hesitations about taking on such a

00:45sensitive subject? I felt a lot of responsibility in playing my part for obvious reasons you know

00:52I wanted choices that we made to be substantiated by the Bible but I felt excited I thought it

00:59was I thought that the script was really it was you know it was bold and I knew that his

01:04vision for

01:05the film was quite bold and interesting and dynamic and at the same time you know having read the script

01:11the script I knew that it was faithful to the spirit of the story that's in the Bible so I

01:15was excited

01:16I thought it was a great idea. What did you feel like was the hardest scene to film like there's

01:20some really strenuous stuff going on in this movie with the rain and all the crazy sets like did you

01:27have anything that you're like wow this is? I kind of like doing that stuff. Did you? Yeah. We filmed

01:32in Iceland over the summer time we had yeah we had some crazy weather you know but wind and it

01:39was cold and it's okay it was you know dramatic and an amazing place to spend time and I don't

01:46know that I otherwise would have been able to you know would have ever spent a summer in Iceland. Yeah.

01:51And then there are scenes you know the movie's Noah so you sign up for getting wet

01:55you know when you do a movie called Noah. Yeah. What was your reaction when you first saw the ark

02:00in real life? The ark was spectacular. In the Bible they um the Bible specifies the dimensions of the ark

02:08and it was important to Darren to build our ark according to those specifications which meant that in Oyster Bay

02:16Long Island in this park there was this massive ark built that was extraordinary.

02:22and not only the scale of it but the details were really just so impressive and we had an interior

02:29ark set as well which was equally as magnificent.

Category

Transcript

Recommended