‘Ocean's 8’ women speak up

Los Angeles — It was like a convention of lovely, powerful women when we interviewed the wonderful cast of “Ocean’s 8,” the upcoming heist comedy film which is a spinoff of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trilogy.

The stars of the Gary Ross-helmed action film — Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson and Awkwafina — talked to us one beautiful warm day in New York.

Below are excerpts of our conversations with each one of them:

Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock || All photos courtesy of Janet Susan R. Nepales/HFPA

On her children:

I now have a complete commitment to my son and my daughter. I have a beautiful little girl for the last two years named Laila, and she is powerful. Yeah, life changed dramatically again two-and-a-half years ago, and the family is complete.  And yeah, everything I do is about my kids.

On whether her kids get along well:

Oh my God. As much as they want to kill each other, they fiercely love each other and they defend each other, even against me. But that’s what you want, you want them to be independent of you. They are going to be with each other for the rest of their lives, long after I am gone. So, there’s so much love between the two of them.  And yeah, I am lucky that I have turned over a lot of stones in my life, so I don’t need to turn over anymore. I just get to watch them grow up and try to be a good mom and work occasionally, only if it works for them. I am lucky I get to do that. There are a lot of moms that don’t and they don’t get to see their kids.

On what motherhood taught her about herself:

That I am incredibly impatient. I thought that I was very open and patient. No, I realized how impatient I was and how you get very good at saying no. You are always worried about their safety and worried about doing the right thing that you say no a lot that it just becomes a habit.

I say no now and they are like mom can I and I am like nope, nope. I have to stop myself and go yes, life is too short. I know they are good people. I know they are smart. I know they do the right things and they say please and thank you. They are kind, empathetic and are wise.

I am learning that I have to let go a little bit. I have to not be so about everything, because life is too short. It’s happening too fast and just being gone this week, I am on FaceTime with them and they already grew. It kills me and I can’t do that. So I need to let go a little bit and just live in the fun more than I do in being the mom.

On when she hit the jackpot professionally and personally:

It’s like I look at many jackpots. The first thing that got me noticed I would think was maybe “Speed.” Then my personal life was great then. Then I had another milestone with another movie “While You Were Sleeping” and I was having a lot of fun then too. I think my career milestones have been allowed to develop the same way that my personal life has been allowed to develop and mostly developed when there weren’t camera phones yet.

But you have to not think of something being a milestone and the end game. Every time I think I am done and this is the last time I am going to make a movie, I am going to shift gears, something always happens that is really special and takes me to a whole other direction that I didn’t see coming, because I like to plan. I like to plan my whole life and as you know, you make plans, God laughs. 

So everything in my life, all my milestones have come about without me planning them. They are the ones that are unexpected. So far, I am lucky. Life is sweet and everyone is healthy. It’s all I ask.

On her first personal jackpot:

That’s a really good question, what is my first personal jackpot? Just figuring out who I was and who I wasn’t. That has come really late in life. That has only come the last five years ago. To me, that feels good, because you just go oh, okay, you just realize that the baggage I was carrying wasn’t mine. The mountain I was climbing wasn’t mine. That comes with age too. You just let go. You don’t care anymore. That felt like a jackpot, because you were relieved.

Cate Blanchett

On moments when she felt she hit the jackpot:

I remember when I was cast years ago in a play right out of Drama School called “Oleanna” by David Mamet opposite Geoffrey Rush at the Sydney Theatre Company. I wept when I got the job. I thought it doesn’t get any better than this and it’s going to be all downhill from here. 

The landscape has changed enormously for women in the film industry. There has been a lot of trailblazing women ahead of me, over me who have paved the way for me and my career as an actress, that you can have a sense of longevity in your career.

Because when I first started out, people were saying make the most of it, because as an actress, you probably got almost five years. But I am trying to be an optimist and the positive thing about that is I have treated every job like it’s going to be my last. So I have tried to relish it, no matter what the size of the role.

Early on in my career, I took on roles that actresses turned down because they were girlfriend roles and tried to subvert that cliché and find something fresh from it. So I try to make an opportunity out of whatever.

With this film, that’s a jackpot right there. That doesn’t happen every day. It’s rare.  We made the film awhile back, and even in the last 18 months, two years, the landscape has changed enormously. It still felt like an anomaly. There are so many female-centric films being made, on development slates at the moment, that there is going to be an explosion.

We hit the jackpot with the film the other night. We had a fan screening and we popped in and it was a diverse mix in the audience. There were men and there were women and all ages, shapes, sizes and nationalities. This is not a niche film. It’s a great, funny, entertaining tent pole. It’s a heist movie, a caper movie, for men and for women. I feel like I have hit the jackpot.  I hope audiences feel the same way.

On her personal jackpot:

My husband.  And as a result, my family.

On having a girl after having three boys:

Once again, it gets back to the gender question. I wasn’t a girl who grew up thinking I would love to have kids. It wasn’t because I didn’t like children. But then I met my husband and we had a child. We talked about adopting after our first child and then we had another child and talked about adopting.  So it wasn’t about having a little girl. When you adopt, we felt like we had space in our lives. I am so proud of my three boys for the way they have welcomed her into their lives and she is so lucky to have them. They are very lucky to have her.  She is a blessing.  She is wise beyond her years. She is three.

On not taking a role because the pay was not equal:

That thing happened relatively recently. It happens all the time. Change is not going to happen overnight. I don’t think women have to be patient, but we certainly have to know that profound changes, and sometimes it happens in a sweep, but lasting change, these things have to be set in stone. So we just have to know that we are making progress. But it’s not going to happen tomorrow. It’s important that in any industry, where a woman is doing the same job as a man, that they get enumerated equally. It’s not about greed.

I have worked on films where I have been paid $10,000 and I have had to put that $10,000 right back into the film, because the film was about to fall over. I didn’t get into the industry to make money, but if my co-stars are doing the same work that I am, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t be paid the same.

Anne Hathaway

On memories of her first kiss and the most romantic places in New York:

My memories of my first kiss were that it was very, very sweet. It was a very sweet experience. I was 12.

I'm going to save the most romantic for myself but I'm going to say that New York is a really romantic place to be alone. I dreamed of living in the city when I was a little girl. I have that story where I lived just up the street from a train track and if you walked and at the bottom of a hill. If I walked to the top of the hill, I can see the city lights at night. I would do that. I would look at the city. I would say those are where all my dreams live.

So sometimes I have moments where I just walk around the city. I can't believe I'm here in the life that I get to have. I remember when I was doing a play at the Public Theatre, I remember walking to rehearsal the first day and like just checking in with my 16-year-old self and being like we're doing it.  We got here.  So that was a pretty romantic moment for me.

On a good Met Gala story:

Anna Wintour held my hair back. It was so nice. She had so much going on that night. I have too many stories about that.

One year, fashion designer Francisco Costa made me the most beautiful two-piece dress. As we were arriving at the red carpet, I sneezed and the zipper broke. It was just hanging off of me. I was awfully calm about the whole thing but I rolled down my car window and he rolled down his.

He was like are you ready and I was like well, so this sort of thing just happened. I scratched him and Francisco who has a beautiful tan went green. I've never actually seen a human being go green before.  Anyway, we pulled over, we found a seamstress. She sewed me into the dress and I wore it for three days. That's not true. I didn't wear it for three days.  It's a turn of phrase.

Sarah Paulson

On how it’s like making the female-driven movie:

Typically, you don't find yourself in a roomful of seven other women when you're on a set of a movie. I've been very lucky I've been working with Ryan Murphy where it's predominantly women over 40. So I've been very lucky in that regard but in the film space, I've never experienced this where most of the lead are women. You can often find yourself in a movie where there are 5 to 10 male protagonists to the one woman and so you often don't have a buddy on set that is a woman usually. So this was a really profoundly extraordinary thing because you had 7 women who were incredibly supportive of one another, who each wanted the other one to shine.

There was no competitive feeling going on. It's a true ensemble. It's absolutely led by Sandy Bullock but it really feels like you do need every single one of us in order to make the thing work.

Let me tell you who didn't come out of their trailer — but I don't have those stories which is probably a good thing.

Mindy Kaling

On bonding with the other women:

The good thing about the movie is that everyone is pretty extroverted and chatty. I didn’t necessarily think that someone like Cate, who comes off as someone that seems made of glass, can be naturally chatty.

She has a bawdy sense of humor, so it could be a little bit inefficient because we were just talking the whole time. In terms of going to trailers, Sarah Paulson and I became close over the course of the movie so we would hang a lot, and Annie as well. Rihanna is very shy for someone who we see in concert and in her new lingerie ad as no fear, and exposing herself and being such an extroverted performer. She’s very shy and thoughtful and that was surprising to me.

Awkwafina

On how she feels being in “Ocean’s 8” and “Crazy Rich Asians”"

I couldn’t believe it. I was floored. I heard about this project when it was just coming out. I thought it was such an unbelievable project to have all these women together in the room. Just to be included is something that I thought would never happen. So still to this day, I pinch myself sometimes.

On where she got her stage name:

Oh man. I regret that that’s my name because people will hear it and they’re, what is that? But I picked it in high school. It was a nickname and unfortunately, people actually call me that now.

It’s based upon an existing water brand but I made it awkward so it’s like awkward fina so it’s like a fine awkwardness.

On whether she can relate to “Crazy Rich Asians” and what she thinks are the difference between rich Asians in the U.S. and rich Asians in Asia

Ok well I’m not rich. It was very cool to play a rich person. But I think Americans don’t understand that in Asia, in Singapore and China and Korea and Japan, there is incredible wealth and they don’t understand that. They think it ends in Beverly Hills. It continues where we shot in Singapore. So I think that “Crazy Rich Asians” in the narrative you see an exploration of new money and old money.

My character is new money so she wears a ridiculous blonde wig and we’re feeding the kids chicken nuggets so it was portrayed but at the same time she has heart. And so she has grit and she’s able to relate to Rachel, who I actually relate to this Asian American coming into this new world. We all experienced that as a cast in Singapore.

On taking up journalism:

I would have loved to become a journalist. That was one of my favorite occupations ever. I don’t think I was that good at it, at the end of the day. So graduating college and coming to a city like New York, it’s a very hard industry to break into, let alone Hollywood. I didn’t think I could compete so I just got work at an air conditioning company.

On whether she has done stand-up comedy and how she got the part

I did not do stand-up ever. After “Neighbors 2”, my first movie, I was approached by Olivia Milch, who is a very talented director and writer, and she cast me in a movie called “Dude”. It was an indie movie and I play one out of four. It was one of my first real acting jobs. As they were writing the movie, director Gary Ross happened to see that movie before it came out and he Facetimed me and hired me from there. — LA, GMA News