All About Tanna: An Interview with Tanna Frederick, Part 3 of 3
“When talented people are interesting, it’s amazing. That’s like Tanna.” – Director Henry Jaglom, Hollywood Dreams
In her debut role as Margie Chezik, the effervescent Tanna Frederick manages to create a character who is equally zany and tragic. Margie isn’t just complicated, she’s a full-bodied enigma whose cunning is hardly limited to her interaction with the other characters. By the end of the film Hollywood Dreams, a film about a deceptive, ambitious, but ultimately troubled young actress, the audience knows that it has been taken in by Margie, too. And thanks to Frederick, we enjoy every second of it.
Part III (Read Part I and Part II)
FC: You’ve developed this relationship with Henry, now, but you are obviously trying to branch out into other acting work. And with Irene in Time, now you’re doing these different roles for a director you’re comfortable with. How does that set you up, or how do you expect it to set you up for the future?
TF: I think it will be really great when people do see Irene in Time because people will be able to see a different side of my acting. To be honest with you, I guess I haven’t really thought about people’s perceptions because I’m kind of oblivious to the fact that I swing so broadly from character to character. Only after the movie came out, and I went to film festivals and left screenings and people were actually freaked out by me as a person. I thought, “Wow, yeah, I guess I really do play a screwball in Hollywood Dreams.” [laughs] But graduating from the University of Iowa and having done the theater since I was nine and doing five shows a year and going from this character to that character, especially at a program like the University of Iowa where you are doing these extreme characters and these extreme scripts that are produced by new playwrights so people are all about risk taking, you just kind of take it for granted that people know that you have built a character, that there is a process. I haven’t been really worried about, “Are people going to see me in a certain way? Are people going to type cast me?” because I’m always different in every character. I think I’m boldly different. Not giving myself kudos or anything, but I am, well, Irene is very different from Margie. At first I thought people would be type casting me and giving me scripts that are crazy, neurotic, innocent girls, but actually people are offering me a wide array of different scripts right now. I’m surprised by the characters. I’m working on this Western surf film. I think that’s great. It’s very Kurosawa. That’s in development. It was offered to me by someone who saw Hollywood Dreams and thought I would be great as an action hero, as a silent, kung-fu fighting surfer…So I’m not being type cast, which is great.
FC: Is that what you wanted to do then, you wanted to go into film, even though you come from a theater background? Did you want to move into that?
TF: Yeah. I got a lot of flack in Iowa for coming straight out to Los Angeles. Everybody said, “You’re too big for film. You’re not going to make it. It’s not worth it. Why wouldn’t you go to Chicago or Minneapolis first? Or to New York?” A lot of people will tell you a lot of stuff. People were telling me my features were too big for film. They just didn’t understand why I was going straight to film. But I said, “That’s what I want to do. That’s my dream.” So I didn’t let anybody stop me from doing that. I figured, all these people who I saw fluttering out to Chicago and Minneapolis would eventually make their way out to Los Angeles. I’d say 95 percent of them have come here. It was after they went out and realized that a lot of productions are being cast with people from Hollywood who have credits. Now they’re coming out here and trying to build their resumes here. I’m glad that I was kind of naïvely stupid enough to come here and bypass that little time of dipping your toe in and just jumping in. I’ve always been more of a jumper than a wader in the water. Just get in there and do it.
FC: And in the process you’ve managed to connect with one of the last truly independent visionaries of film.
TF: Yeah
FC: If they’re intention was to go a more artistic route with it, and then you go to L.A. and get this work with an independent visionary. That was kind of a boon.
TF: I didn’t anticipate that. I was hoping to make fairly commercial films [laughs]. There were a lot of other people who had a much more extensive knowledge of independent filmmakers and independent films. I guess I’m more geared toward commercial tastes. Like Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory. Brilliant [laughs]. It was kind of ironic that I was surrounded in high school and college by people who were so into the independent world. Somehow I got hooked up with, as you said, one of the greatest independent filmmakers. That was a nice surprising, unexpected happening.
FC: You just can’t escape it.
TF: No, I just go with it [laughs].
Read All About Tanna, Part I & Part II
Hollywood Dreams is available on DVD May 6. Pre-order at Amazon.com.
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