Kirsten Dunst: Ready to Go Wild For “Bachelorette”
The actress was ready to reclaim her comedy cred after “Melancholia.”
Kirsten Dunst was desperately serious about getting silly again.
The 30-year-old actress got deep, dark and disturbed for her last film “Melancholia” – director Lars von Trier’s broody, sci-fi exploration of depression – and earned the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actress Award for her risky performance. But after waiting for the end of the world, Dunst was in major mood-lightening mode.
Thus she embraced the raunchy, raucous comedy “Bachelorette,” joining Isla Fisher and Lizzie Caplan in a wild-pre-wedding romp. The film’s already caught the wave of the current “ladies can be just as crass as the guys” zeitgeist, reaching the top VOD spot on iTunes before it’s even hit theaters. Dunst tells NBC exclusively about returning to her comedy roots, her first trip to a strip club and her thoughts after seeing the most recent Spider-Man film.
Were you looking for something fun to do, especially as a palette-cleanser after ‘Melancholia’?
After ‘Melancholia,’ I was like, ‘I want to be in a comedy! I want to have fun! I do not want to delve deep into my soul.’ So, I was looking for it, yeah, a comedy, and it’s hard sometimes because I did a lot of comedies when I was younger, but nobody saw me as that. They didn’t think of me as a comedy girl, so it wasn’t that easy to find, and then this came along and it was perfect. I met with Leslye [Headland, the writer-director] and hit it off with her, and even though this was her first movie, I just felt the energy that she would be a good director. She’s very strong and confident, and also very smart, so I wasn’t worried.
You do have a ton of comedies to your credit. How did you drift away from it?
It was more when I was younger. Maybe because as you get older, the roles – mostly in the bigger comedies – are smaller parts for women, because it’s usually a male comedy. So it’s usually playing, like, just the girlfriend, which isn’t fun.
Recent Projects
On Becoming a God
in Central Florida (2019)
Kirsten as Krystal Gill
About Krystal Gill, a minimum-wage-earning water park employee who will eventually scheme her way up the ranks of Founders American Merchandise: the cultish, flag waving, multi-billion dollar pyramid scheme that drove her family to ruin.in Central Florida (2019)
Kirsten as Krystal Gill