THR Looks Into the Mind of Stephenie Meyer

THR: Is the twist at the end of Breaking Dawn something you’re happy about?

SM: It’s something I came up with. Melissa and I together sat down and said, ‘OK, how do we do this book?’ There were some points like, it’s really long, are we going to do two books or are we going to do one? That was one that she ended up making the decision on. She laid it out and said, ‘There’s no way we’re fitting this in.’ Then it was like the end, because we knew that they were going to want some action in the end, so we came up with a way to do that that was organic to the book and I don’t have a problem with it. We felt like, ‘This totally makes sense, let’s go.’ I don’t think it actually jumps off the page that far. In a way, it’s sort of in the book, we just don’t get to see it because we only see Bella’s perspective. It’ll all make sense.

THR: Were you involved in the casting with Twilight as well?

SM: Not initially. Nick and Andrew consulted with me on everybody, so I had a say in it. It was really great. From the ground floor I was involved with all of those acting choices, which was amazing because I love casting. There’s nothing cooler than having an idea, then you see somebody read and they blow it away, and you’re like, ‘Oh! They’re gonna nail it.’ Casting is really exciting. With Twilight, I wasn’t involved at all with the casting in the original. They kept me in the loop, which was great. They’d be like, ‘Hey Kristen Stewart’s gonna do it’ and I was like, ‘Really? Awesome.' With the second one I got a little bit more involved, by the third one I was very involved, and then with the last one I was a producer. That was great because I got to see all of the auditions. It was hard because there were some really good auditions and there were some people I would love to work with, and you just were like, ‘Ah, there’s no place else for us to get this guy in’ and it just kills you to have to turn down people that are that good. We had such a wealth of choices on this last one because everybody wanted to do it. It was so cool. 

THR: Which casting most approximated your idea of the character?

SM: I have to say, physically, Ashley Greene. The headshot they sent and said, ‘This is gonna be Alice,’ it was kind of like ‘Wow’ because she’s stunningly gorgeous. Physically, she not as short as Alice, but facially very close. She’s probably the most like a vampire because they’re supposed to be inhumanly beautiful. There was an early casting choice for Emmett that was so far off the mark, so completely, physically wrong for the role, that that was actually the one where I stepped in like, ‘Please, I’m sure he’s a fantastic actor, but I just can’t see Emmett not being this big, burley tough guy.’ It’s kind of one of the defining characteristics and so that one didn’t happen, happily.

THR: Do you think that had Twilight not had the success it had, would The Host be as quick to have been picked up?

SM: Probably not. It is tricky. We did this as an independent movie. We did it outside the studio because studios couldn’t understand like, ‘How is this gonna work?’ It felt very simple to us and it works. I think that Hollywood kind of jumps on things that look like they’re gonna do well.

THR: At the same time, is there any added pressure to live up to that Twilight-level success with The Host?

SM: I'm sure there is. It’s not something that I have to feel pressure over. For me, they’re so different and I don’t expect anything to be like Twilight again. That was such a weird experience and to have everything be so crazy and bizarre, that’s just not normal. The fanaticism isn’t normal. So I would imagine it’ll be a much more normal experience, but I’m sure for investors and the like, they would really feel a lot of pressure to have it be just the same. I think this story is very different, I think people respond to it very differently. I don’t think it will be the same phenomenon at all.