Alison Lohman and Maria Bello in Flicka
Interview: Maria Bello
“Well, I have to tell you, I used to have a horrible phobia of snakes,” Bello said. “My first memory is of a dream I had when I was a kid, a snake came out of the wall and started strangling me. I was like three years old and I had what they called lightmares for days where I thought there were snakes all over me. So I grew up completely terrified of them. I couldn’t even go to the zoo and see a snake without getting heart palpitations.”
Only in the mid-90s did Bello start to deal with her fear. “I was going to Africa about 10 years ago and this therapist said, ‘I know this great woman who deals with phobias, a therapist who deals with phobias.’ So I went to this woman and did snake therapy. I carried around a rubber snake with me, I went to the zoo on field trips. Every week I had to walk a little bit closer to a snake that was in a cage and they measured my heart rate and all of this stuff. So I think I’m fine. I go to Africa for six weeks, I don’t see one snake.”
It was only in the urban jungle that Bello got to test out her snake charming therapy. “The day I come home I’m at Union Square in New York City. I see this crowd of people gathered around a fence. There was a Burmese python, an albino Burmese python stuck in the fence. Someone was doing a show with it and it got its head stuck and it was bleeding. And in that moment I felt so much compassion for the snake, everything changed. I sort of just leaped over to the other side where I just wanted to help this little creature. Then after that, I’ve had no fear of snakes.”
The filmmakers knew nothing of this. She just suggested some new direction when cameras rolled. “When this was in the movie, it just said there was a snake in the garden and I see the snake. But I said, ‘How about I pick it up, how about I kiss it, how about I know it?’ So I was so excited to face those fears on screen.”
Flicka opens to theatres tomorrow, October
20th.
For the trailer, more interviews, poster and more movie info, go to the Flicka
Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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