Question: How has New Zealand suited you? What have you come to love about this part of the planet?
Lilly: (overlaps) I have found a creative home in New Zealand. Without wanting to in any way diss Hawaii, because I’ve been welcomed there with open arms and I found a loving home there, I feel that it’s creatively stifling. Here, I just blossom creatively. I feel like I’m doing my best creative work, both on set and off set.
I’ve been working on– Since I came here I’ve been so inspired, I’ve created my own children’s storybook series. And I had been wanting to do that since I was a kid. And I finally, here, got so inspired and found people who are so like-minded that I knew we could do it together. And I will actually be debuting that, the first of that series, the first book in that series, at Comic-Con this year.
Question: That’s with Johnny, isn’t it?
Lilly: With Johnny Fraser-Allen, who is amazing.
Question: What were you trying to communicate with that book?
Lilly: With the book?
I’ll recite the last stanza of the book so that you’ll understand what the book’s about. “And so the girl learned that night not to be too quick to judge. There’s a devil inside you might like to hide, but what if I gave it a nudge?” Because all of us have vices within us. And we might like to act like we’re really civil human beings and that we’re above everybody else and somehow better than the people who do bad things like steal and whatever else we want to judge, but none of us are above reproach.
And I guess it is sort of, “Ye who is without sin be the first to cast the stone.” It’s that kind of message of loving people and things and creatures and everything, not in spite of their vices, but because of their vices. All of us with our vices are loveable.
Question: How are you going to keep the creative mojo going once this stops and you’re presumably going to leave New Zealand? So what’s going to happen back on mainland?
Lilly: I’m going to fall to pieces. I actually am very curious to see how that goes, because you guys, I’m sure, have heard that Pete, Fran and Phil treat their cast like a family. They open their arms up and they open their world to you, and it’s like what’s ours is yours. And wow, I’m going to be like a float adrift at sea, after they release me again into the wild. Because here, they have this infrastructure they built up and they just open it to anybody who wants to be a part of it.
And it’s been an incredible gift and hopefully instead of it being a crutch, it’s actually just a launching pad, and it’s something I’ll be able to have learned from. And Fran Walsh has become, in my mind, a mentor. Somebody who has taken me by the hand and generously taught me and coached me, and I know that if I ever needed her I could pick up the phone and she would be there and she would be willing to take my hand again and help me through whatever I’m trying to do.
Question: This might be a little personal, but you’ve raised a child here as well while you’ve been shooting movies. Will that also be one of those changes when you get back to the United States?
Lilly: Well, my son, he’s spent fifty percent of his life living in New Zealand. And so he’s half-Kiwi. We keep saying he’s half-Kiwi. I think that it will always be a place we’ll come back to now. And there will always be good reasons to come back. I’m from Canada originally, and New Zealand to me is like if you took all of Canada and squished it and put it on two little islands. It’s really similar.
It helps satiate my homesickness, when I’m craving home. Even today I was saying, the set that we’re on, it’s got all these pine trees on it. They’re living pine trees, for crying out loud. What Peter Jackson pulls off is just ridiculous. And I know they’re living because I can smell them and it’s making me miss home.
Question: Of the physical skills that you’ve used in this film, what are you particularly good at? What did you find you had a knack for?
Lilly: What am I– Well, I think probably Elvish. I’ve been told that I’m particularly good at Elvish. It may have something to do with the fact that I can speak French and there’s some similar sounds that cross-pollinate in the two languages, and maybe just because my brain has been programmed to understand language because I learnt a second language at a young age. And I have to say, when I watched the trailer and I saw Tauriel do that limbo move under the swords, I went, “Oh, my God! Was that me?” And I double-checked it and it was me!
So now we’ve got three more of those in the movie because they went, “Oh, you’re good at that. You can do that.” So I don’t know, I would say Elvish probably. Yeah. And limbo. I’ll kill you all at a game of limbo.
Question: You could just find future roles that would combine those two things.
Lilly: (overlaps) Elvish and limbo. And I’m set.
Question: Thank you for filling our end of the day with the perfect ending.
Lilly: Well, You know, This is my last day on set.
Question: Yes, it is.
Question: (overlaps) Congratulations.
Question: (overlaps) Congratulations.
Lilly: (overlaps) I’m just reflecting and thinking about it. Yeah.
Question: Thank you very much.
Question: (overlaps) Thank you.
Question: (overlaps) Thank you so much.
Lilly: (overlaps) Thanks, guys.
Our One Last Party fundraiser passes $100,000 mark!
Our One Last Party fundraiser on Indiegogo has just hit the $100K mark and we’re pretty stoked!
If you’d like to join us as a Party of Special Magnificence in Hollywood in February — a toast to all SIX Middle-earth movies, then now is the time to throw in your support! Even if you can’t make it to Hollywood (or if you’ve already contributed), you can help out by retweeting or sharing our fundraiser across social media to get the word out.
