By Fred Topel | Image property of Freestyle Releasing
It's "and Eliza Dushku" in Nobel Son, because while she's not a lead character, she is quite memorable. She plays City Hall, a coffee shop poet who has a torrid affair with the son of a Nobel prize winner, the night before he gets kidnapped. She pops up again later to complicate things with her drama.
Eliza Dushku Hangs With a Nobel Son
"Maybe somewhere deep down I'm troubled because it didn't feel like I was stretching that much," said Dushku. "I gave it all up to the direction from Randy [Miller] and Jody [Savin], and the character as she was written on the page and then just some of the work that we did."
Dushku went all out in her audition, so maybe the actual performance was a toned down version of the original City Hall. "When I read the script, I wanted this part so badly, and I auditioned my heart out for it. I brought props to the audition, I showed up and said I'd do anything you want me to in this room right now. My audition was like an hour long, and we did it one way, we did the scene then another, completely different way and just found all the weird nuances and variations in between and then they picked me. And I was psyched and we did it."
Nobel Son
Note to struggling actors: bring your own props. "In the movie we have those crazy masks, so I brought two masks, one was an African mask from Camaroon that my mother had given me and then one was this weird, tin, abstract one from Venice. And I had them in like a supermarket paper bag. And a couple other things: rope, a knife, all sorts of things. I was like, 'I'll do whatever you want me to do.'"
The love scene between Dushku and Brian Greenberg is hot. They've known each other since he was in college and she was hanging out with her older brother in the dorms. There was the usual Hollywood love scene awkwardness but Dushku still appreciated it.
"Bryan was in a sock, I was in pasties, and we were rolling around in fiberglass for six hours. Then there's the obvious that Bryan's hot, come on. It was fun. I mean, yeah, he's my homey who I've known since I was young but he's a hottie. It wasn't all that tough work."
Nobel Son
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