Eva Mendes plays a sexy adulteress in The Women. She shows a lot of skin, with one scene set in a lingerie store dressing room, and another set in a bathtub.
Eva Mendes One of The Women
"I describe as barely there, considering one scene's in a bathtub," said Mendes. "Then one's in lingerie. In the bathtub I was totally naked, baby. I had those very sexy pasty things going on."
Though Crystal Allen (Mendes) is dating a married man, she is not just a slut. "[Writer/director] Diane [English] and I wanted to make sure she's not a tramp. She has a trampyness about her. I could have given it to you in a Brazilian thong. We didn't do that because it was too obvious to go that way. She's not a tramp. She's smarter and more calculated which makes her more dangerous. She knows Steven wouldn't go for something [slutty]. So we tried for that one scene, we tried to make it a little classy, like we didn't show her midriff."
The Women
The Women
The way Mendes explains it, Allen isn't even trying to "steal" the husband away from his wife. "We didn't want to vamp her out and make her this evil woman with an arched eyebrow. We wanted to realize that she was actually just very desperate. She's not a bad person. She's just desperate. Her time's running out. She wants a piece of the pie. She's not a husband stealer like I'm gonna get you. She's more like, 'Look Mary Haines, you've had your fun. You've had money all your life. You have your kid with this guy. You have your house. Let me have a piece of the pie. After a few years, you'll get him back. Let me get my piece of the pie.' Because the acting thing wasn't working out and it's more like we came at it that way and I had more fun playing her."
Crystal Allen was played by Joan Crawford in the 1939 original movie. That was no small bit of nerves for Mendes. "I'd seen it before because it's just a classic so I'd seen it before. Then I knew that people were going to kill me. I've gotten a lot of questions today like, how was it to fill Joan Crawford's shoes. I'm like, I didn't fill, I didn't even try to fill Joan Crawford's shoes. Don't put that in my head. It's nerve-wracking because she's Joan Crawford. My God! She killed it as Crystal Allen. It was one of those things where I didn't allow the original to intimidate because that was its own thing. We were doing our own thing. I just appreciated it."
The Women
The Women
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