Interview mit Schauspielerin Hayden Panettiere

Von Denis Sasse @filmtogo

‘Save the Cheerleader, save the world’. Diesen Satz wird jeder Fan der Serie ‘Heroes’ bereits gehört haben. 2010 flimmerte die letzte Folge der Supermenschen-Chronik über die Fernsehbildschirme. Die Cheerleaderin Claire Bennett, die laut besagtem Spruch gerettet werden sollte, wurde von der 1989 geborenen Schauspielerin Hayden Panettiere dargestellt. Neben frühen Auftritten in Filmen wie ‚Message in a Bottle‘, Fernsehserien wie ‚Ally McBeal‘ oder Engagements als Synchronsprecherin in ‚Das große Krabbeln‘, erlangte Hayden Panettiere natürlich durch ihren Part in ‚Heroes‘ einen gewissen Bekanntheitsgrad.

Ab dem 5. Mai 2011 ist sie nun in dem vierten Teil der ‚Scream‘-Filmserie von Regisseur Wes Craven zu sehen. filmtogo hatte die Möglichkeit an einem Roundtable-Interview teilzunehmen, bei dem wir über ihre Figur in dem Film sprechen konnten, aber auch darüber, dass sie gerade einmal sieben Jahre alt war, als der erste ‚Scream‘ Film in den Kinos anlief. Untenstehend also jetzt nicht das komplette Interview des Roundtables, sondern die Fragen, die filmtogo der Schauspielerin stellen durfte.

filmtogo: How is it like to scream for ‚Scream‘? Did Wes came to you and said, that you have to do a special scream-training? Or did you get advice from the old cast members?

Hayden Panettiere: No! By being on ‘Heroes’ I had a lot of practice screaming. I did a lot of screaming on that show. When we went in for the audition they had us to do a few scenes from the old ‘Screams’ because they were very protective about the script. They didn’t want it to give it to anyone. I believe in one of those scenes there was a scream. I’m sure that was on purpose. I’m sure that was thought through.

filmtogo: You’re playing a girl named Kirby in ‘Scream 4’. She isn’t the typical horror movie blondie, isn’t she?

Hayden Panettiere: No she is not, that’s why she is so cool! I had such a good time playing her. She got this kind of tomboy attitude. She is dry and sarcastic. She is underneath this horror-movie buff, which is not what you expect from her. I loved feeling so different and I loved having short hair for it. Everything was a blast. It really felt for the first time in a long time that I was really playing a different character.

filmtogo: There is this one scene in the movie where you’re counting down all these horror-movie remakes. Are you glad to be a part of a sequel and not of another remake? What do you think about all the remakes coming out lately?

Hayden Panettiere: It’s got to be a very specific movie to be able to do a remake. I think sometimes it just has to be different. I love the way this movie is done. I love that it’s not just a sequel, it’s not a remake. It’s like a reboot. It’s playing and flirting around with a similar concept. But it’s doing that in a very modern day way. It’s not a completely different story and it’s got the original characters. The people really bond with those original characters. They are so familiar. You could try to replace them and make somebody represent these persons but I don’t know if that would work very well. So I’m very happy that it is a sequel or a reboot and not a remake.

filmtogo: The first ‘Scream’ came out 1996. You were seven years old back then. You were not even allowed to watch that movie. So when did you first encounter ‘Scream’?

Hayden Panettiere: I wish I remember this. I really don’t even remember. When I was younger I was never the kid who wanted to watch the movies I wasn’t allowed to watch. It just didn’t really register to me. I feel like my parents were a lot less strict about it because of what I did, because of the fact that I was involved in movies, because of the fact that they knew that I have a grasp for the fact that this wasn’t reality. I knew how these things were done and how this scripts work. And I had been on soap operas for years. There was a lot of really extreme content in it. I had leukemia, I was kidnapped, I was in car accidents and I had to shoot my mother’s boyfriend. I had a grasp pretty young on what was realistic and what was reality and what wasn’t. I obviously found my way to watching them. I’m sure it was probably in my early teens. And I probably found it on TV and saw it. I wish I could remember this specific moment. But I can’t.

filmtogo: Did you get any other offers to be a part of a horror movie before ‘Scream 4’?

Hayden Panettiere: Yes, definitely. I think because of being on ‘Heroes’, kind of in that Sci-Fi family, kind of in that scary movie family, I did get offers. And it was something I really wanted to do but I was really nervous about it because horror movies could really be one end of the spectrum or the other. They can be incredible or they can be really badly done. And then to come upon this and to have the original cast back and to have Wes Craven directing it, who is just the master of horror movies, and to be able to put your trust and faith in him, that he is going to lead you down the right road was definitely a relief. That made it a much easier process.

Das Interview führte Denis Sasse