Jason Schwartzman in Marie Antoinette
Dunst, Schwartzman on Weight in Marie Antoinette
“Sofia had mentioned to me, ‘You know,
you should gain some weight,’” the actor recalled. “And
at first I asked her if there was any chance of doing it with prosthetics
or pillows or anything like that because they say it’s not healthy
to put on weight really quickly for work, but she said, ‘No, because
your face has to look a certain way.’ So she said that they’d
get me a doctor to supervise the weight gain because I was going to be gaining
45 pounds in like six weeks or something, but no one ever called me with
the doctor’s number.”
Flying solo, Schwartzman had to improvise. “I gained the weight basically
just eating everything I could, but I did it all organically because I feel
like we know enough about pesticides now and stuff like that, so I did it
all organically. I would do little tricks like put doughnuts next to my
bed and set my alarm for 3 in the morning and wake up and power them down
and wipe the jelly off my cheek and go back to bed. They say it’s
not good to eat in the middle of the night because your body’s resting
and not doing anything and you don’t burn any calories, and so I just
stopped all physical activity and I drank beer, organic beer, and just watched
DVDs and prepared.”
Kirsten Dunst, who plays Marie Antoinette, looks like her usual slender
self. Even eating on camera for the film must have done a little damage.
“I don’t really pay attention because I always pretty much stay
the same,” the genetically lucky actress said. “When we were
eating the delicious French pastries, I’d eat them. I wasn’t
paying attention to that because they were a little bit heavier. I tried
to make her food experience be not about eating anything in front of the
court when they were sitting there except for pastries. I just didn’t
want to put anything in my mouth that wasn’t a pastry or a raspberry
or something buttery and delicious. So I thought that was Marie Antoinette’s
relationship with food. Just the sweets.”
Once cameras rolled, that’s when poor Schwartzman
had to diet. “I feel like I was sent mixed messages because I gained
all the weight and then I got there and they said, ‘Great! You look
fantastic. Don’t gain another pound.’ And then they made all
these costumes and fit them to my body when I arrived, so I did have to
maintain that weight specifically. So I figured out the way to maintain
it was just to eat half of the bad stuff, half the amount of the bad stuff.
And one time they told me, ‘You put on 2 pounds, you have to lose
it,’ and I just thought, ‘Is this true? You can’t ask
a train to stop dead in its tracks!’ It was funny because on set I
eat so much, and then they would call lunch, and I just thought, ‘That’s
funny. It’s been lunch since 5:30 in the morning for me.’ And
so that was one time of the day that I didn’t eat was when everybody
else was having lunch and it was pretty gross. And you know most actors
chew and then they spit it out? I just ate all day long. It was really nice.”
Don’t worry, ladies. Schwartzman is already back to his normal, svelte
self. “I reversed the gaining process completely. I took out sugar,
and you just have to just eat the right amount of food. They did give me
a nutritionist when I came home who said, ‘If you must have dessert,
you can have five blueberries.’ It was just such a drag to hear, coming
from France when you’re eating like four doughnuts as a snack, so
yeah, I miss the doughnuts. I miss it all. That was just for an extreme
diet, but now I’m back.”
Marie Antoinette opens this Friday, October 20th.
For more interviews, posters, trailers, additional movie info and synopsis,
go to the Marie Antoinette
Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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