Patty Jenkins and Chris Pine are supposed to be exhausted. They’ve been promoting their new series, TNT’s I Am the Night (Pine stars and executive produces; Jenkins directs), nonstop and have just taken the red-eye to Los Angeles from New York. But when I sit down with them, they’re just as sharp as if it were their first interview about the show. In fact, when a publicist tries to wrap us up, Pine graciously asks for more time so he and Jenkins can finish answering my questions. Talk about dedication!
The two first met when Jenkins recruited Pine for Wonder Woman (he originally passed on the role before Jenkins was attached to the project), and it was pretty much obsession at first sight. Millions of dollars at the box office later, they’ve not only teamed up for Wonder Woman 2 but also I Am the Night, which takes on a new angle in the Black Dahlia case.
But no matter how much success Jenkins has achieved (just one example: Wonder Woman is the highest grossing live-action film directed by a woman), she admits that people still have trouble seeing her as a director. “Somehow the association of being a director and being a woman is something people have some weird thing about,” she says. In fact, Jenkins admits even her extended family gets tripped up by it.
So at a time when more women are starting to call the shots behind the camera—and certainly more attention is on Hollywood to do its part—what’s still so foreign about it? Here, Jenkins and Pine share their thoughts on that and more. Read on.
Glamour: Do you remember the first time you met? And what were your first impressions of each other?
Chris Pine: Oh yeah! Wonder Woman was [originally going to be] directed by someone else and I had this great meeting with this other person about it but [the character] really didn’t sound interesting to me and I had other stuff going on, so I kinda wasn’t into it. It came around again and Patty was involved, and I wanted to meet her, but I didn’t know if [the movie] sounded like my thing. But within five minutes of meeting Patty at this restaurant, I knew almost immediately that I’d be doing this film.
Wow. How so?
Chris: I think she spent, like, an hour acting out the entire film of Wonder Woman in this restaurant bar at like noon on a Tuesday. I was completely captivated and I just knew pretty much immediately even though there was only 20 pages of a script. I was just really into Patty and I thought that she understood the qualities that I could bring to it and that was it.
Patty, did you know this?
Patty Jenkins: He had told me that he [was on the fence at first] and then I was super psyched that changed because I was like, ‘This is fucking happening!’ I was like, ‘I’m not coming out of that meeting with a no. Chris has to do it. It has to be Chris.’ The funny thing was, as I signed on to it, the importance of who played that role was tremendous. We needed an incredibly powerful dynamic, funny, rich actor, and that person was Chris.
Patty Jenkins, Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), and Chris Pine
Getty ImagesEven though you wanted him to play the part, what was it like when you first met him?
Patty: It’s funny, because when it’s a famous actor you already know so much more about them. But he was chiller and even more fun to talk to [than I could have imagined]. We stayed for a long time at the restaurant just talking and laughing and having a great time. And then when we started working together, I remember thinking, “Wow, you are just so fucking incredibly skilled.”