Olivia Wilde
Interview: Olivia Wilde on Turistas
"All I know is that it was quite an audition process," Wilde said. "It’s not like they just offered it to us and said, ‘What do you think?’ We worked really hard to get these roles, and I’m glad that we did because the casting was such an important part of the way this movie panned out because the dynamic between the characters ended up being just perfect. We had a mix and match, where all different actors try out being the team, and they see who does it. Beau [Garrett] and Josh and I were together for the first time and the scene we did just clicked and they said that it was that moment where they knew right away who it was going to be."
The youngsters run afoul of poverty-stricken Brazilians who exact a sort of social revenge on the privileged tourists. The script grabbed Wilde right away. "The original script had this ‘warning to all visitors’ at the beginning that said there was a warning because of recent violence towards tourists because of kidnapping and suspicion of organ harvesting by Americans. Once I read that, I knew what kind of movie I was about to read, and I was already really hooked into it. I closed the script, and said, ‘I need to play her and I need to do it, and I’m going to work so hard to do it.’ And I was so thrilled and said ‘yes’ right away."
Beau Garrett, Olivia Wilde, Josh Duhamel and Melissa George in Turistas
On the run from the baddies, the surviving heroes try to escape in underwater caves. Even with stunt doubles, Wilde sprung into action herself. "It was all about pushing yourself farther than you ever imagined going. By the end, we all became pretty good free divers. We had amazing doubles who were teaching us everything we knew. Mine was Mehgan Heaney-Grier, who is the world champion free diver; she is a Sports Illustrated model. She has a show on Discovery. She’s an extraordinary woman, who can dive 185 feet in one breath. And rather than wanting to do all the stuff instead of me, she was encouraging. She said, ‘You should try it, you can do this, I’ve seen you swim, I think you can do this.’ And I would say, ‘There’s no way in hell. I am claustrophobic, and I’m afraid of drowning. And she’d say, ‘You can do it.’ And she’s the reason I did, and I’m really happy and grateful, even though we ran into some sticky situations."
There were safety crews standing by to bring Wilde air, but many calls were closer than she would have preferred. "It was interesting because they felt so far away, and the nature of the film is that, how are they supposed to tell when you’re actually panicking. The situation I ran into was I literally started to have a panic attack, flailing my arms, and they thought I was acting because that’s exactly what my character is supposed to be doing. You can see in the movie when I go for one air pocket, realize it’s not there, turn around… I can hardly watch at that point, it gives me shivers because that’s when I thought it was over. I didn’t think that the safety diver would be close enough, even though he actually was only 50 feet away and could swim really fast; he told me afterwards he had no idea. He said, ‘We were watching the monitor, and thought you were just doing a great job.’ Ugh, I don’t know; I’m just happy it happened at the end because it made for good movie watching."
Turistas opens to theatres on December 1st.
For the trailers, posters, more interviews, synopsis and more movie info, go to the Turistas Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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