This week's "New Face Friday" feature interview - a series spotlighting the castmates of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 - is of Judi Shekoni, who portrays Zafrina of Amazonian Coven!
Hosting this week's group interview is BreakingDawnMovie.org, and you can check out the full interview there, but below is the portion featuring my questions with Shekoni's answers.
Q: You were a fan before you came to work into this. Who were you most excited to work with?
A: I was really excited to work with the whole cast because I’ve seen the movies before. Also, I was really excited to work with Kristen [Stewart], Bella. Because when you read the books, they’re from Bella’s perspective. I almost felt like I let Bella drive myself and I kinda been on that whole journey. It was so nice to meet Kristen and do scenes with Bella. I felt like a had with the part of Zafrina that I also had a real close connection with the Bella character. I think Kristen herself is wonderful. She’s like a little doll. She seems extremely generous and very intelligent. I think the characters of Bella and Zafrina have a interesting relationship because she’s [Bella] Renesmee’s mother. When another woman comes in and has a relationship with your own daughter, it always creates something strange between the mother and the other woman. I felt like my character had a special relationship with Bella as well.
Q: You talked about preparing the emotional side of it and what you did to train. How did you prepare the animalistic motions that your character has as oppose to the other vampires?
A: I went to the London Zoo pretty early on and met up with Tracey [Heggins]. We came up with the idea of them [Senna and Zafrina] having these animalistic qualities. We actually went to the LA Zoo together before we started shooting. We looked through all the animals and decided which animal we can pick our movement from. We came up with the black jaguar, because there are a lot of them in Amazon and they have these beautiful bright eyes that very similar to vampire eyes. We’d go to the zoo, using video and watching the animals in real life and taking pictures, deciding which aspect. Basically, they have a lot of power and a lot of energy in their shoulders. They have this grace about them, and a stillness about them as well which is very vampiric. We tried to find elements to put that in. We actually did a couple of dance classes together, me and Tracey. So we could just be able to find a way to move at the same time, and have that same kind of rhythm about us. Actually, it’s quite funny on set, Stephenie Meyer came up to us at one point and said she noticed our vampires are really different from the other ones. She really noticed us and thought it was really pure. It was all a success for it to be noticed by Stephenie.
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