Kidsday: 'Into the Woods' cast interviews, review

We were chosen to see a private screening of the new movie "Into the Woods" in Manhattan. This is a fantastic movie about many fairy tales that collide. A few of the popular fairy tales in this movie are Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel.

In the beginning of the movie, the characters are strangers, but by the end, they are one big family. This movie has a lot of exciting twists. We would give this movie 5 smiles because we loved the characters, the music and how the different fairy tales come together to create one story. We highly recommend going to see this movie. It's a thumbs-up for us!

After seeing the movie, we met a few members of the cast. We sat down with James Corden (Baker) and Emily Blunt (Baker's Wife), Tracey Ullman (Jack's mother) and Christine Baranski (Cinderella's stepmother) and with Anna Kendrick (Cinderella) and Chris Pine (Cinderella's Prince Charming).

First we met Anna and Chris. We asked Anna what she enjoyed most about playing Cinderella. She said, "A good part of being Cinderella was getting to wear the dress. . . . But I think my favorite part was getting to sing the songs because I think they were really beautiful."

We also wanted to know how she prepared for all the singing she had to do. Anna said, "I was really nervous because singing Stephen Sondheim is a big deal and I've never sung in a soprano range before. . . . We had really, really great people working with us on the music. They were very blunt with us, so I know that once they decided I was doing OK, they meant it."

We asked Chris how excited he was to work with so many great actors. He said, "In this one I got to work with Anna, a dream come true. Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman, who I love. These are all wonderful, dynamic and beautiful women, hyper-talented, super-talented. I was pretty lucky in this one."

Then we met with Tracey and Christine. We thought both of them were hysterically funny in the movie.

We asked Tracey if it was hard to make people laugh. She said, "I don't know if you thought it was funny, me smacking Daniel [Huttlestone, who plays Jack] around the head so many times in this film. He didn't think it was very funny by the time I hit him for the 100th time. I think this was not so much a comedy role. I think it was a lot of sadness and worry about my son, and making him sell his beloved cow felt very cruel. "

We asked Christine if it is more rewarding to play the part of a bad guy or a good guy. She said, "I like playing those characters. They're kind of juicy and fun. You get to do things that you would never ever think of behaving like that in real life, but when you're acting in a role of a villain, you can just let it rip. She's so mean and so selfish and so vain and it was just fun. Your job is to be mean to Cinderella."

Finally we met with Emily and James. We asked Emily what it was like when she had to work with Milky Way, the cow. She said, "Let me tell you about the cow. The cow's name is Tug in real life and Tug is a girl and Tug has a very dear friend called Diamond, who's another cow who was very difficult to work with. So we only ever worked with Tug. But Tug had to be able to see Diamond to do the scene. Otherwise she would just be like 'Moooo!' And just be crying throughout the dialogue. So Tug could be very difficult, and if she didn't have the right hay or the right attitude from the other actors, she would just strut off."

James added, "[Tug] was the biggest diva on the set."

Finally, we asked James how it felt to bring fairy tales to life in the movie. He said, "I think that's the best thing about the show, really. It's something so new, it's completely new and fresh and yet there's a familiarity in all of those stories -- Rapunzel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk -- and so for us as characters in the film to be the only sort of, I guess, normal everyday people in the film is a real thrill. It was great to combine all of those stories and see how they interwove somehow."