14 DAY TRIAL // Shailene Woodley, star of the “Divergent” franchise, is learning the hard way about the pitfalls of being the leading star in a big-budget, multi-picture Hollywood production, as her latest interview with People magazine can confirm.
After “Divergent,” the first installment in what is now known as “The Divergent Series,” Woodley starred in and earned solid reviews from the critics for “White Bird in a Blizzard,” “The Fault in Our Stars,” and before that, in “The Descendants.”
She is slowly coming into a reputation as a solid, versatile actress, so she must be feeling the itch to go and do more indies, which she obviously can’t do because she’s tied to “Divergent” for another 2 films, after “Insurgent.”
It was difficult to go back to Tris
Speaking in a press call for “Insurgent,” Woodley was typically candid about the difficult time she had going back to the character of Tris, because she never imagined she would outgrow the mindset needed to play her.
“Getting back into Tris was much more difficult than I anticipated because I didn’t take into account that I, myself, had grown for a year,” she says. “I figured getting back into [Tris] would be simple because I would just go back into that mindset, but my personal mindset had progressed a year in evolution.”
It’s not that she’s ungrateful, but she’s not sugarcoating it either: she outgrew Tris and she didn’t imagine this would happen, for the simple reason that the fact that she was signing on for a multi-picture franchise didn’t register with her after the first movie.
Woodley is proud of the character and the franchise, though, as she’s quick to add: there’s a reason the novels on which the franchise is based were such a hit with the public, and that’s because it presents a female role model who stands up for herself, who fights adversity and her own insecurities, and ultimately overcomes all.
Big budget franchises are draining
As it happens, Shailene isn’t the first star to complain, in more or less polite terms, of being tied to a huge film franchise. Chris Evans did it with “Captain America,” Jennifer Lawrence did it with “The Hunger Games,” Robert Pattinson did it with “The Twilight Saga,” and even Robert Downey Jr. did it with “Iron Man.”
Being part of a film franchise means that when you’re not shooting, you’re promoting the movie on all channels available, which actually leaves very little time to pursue other projects. Sure, the paychecks are impressive, but after a while, most actors start feeling as if maybe, just maybe, the compromise wasn’t worth it.
Shailene isn’t there yet, but by the things she says, she’s on the path to feeling that way. The worst part for her is that she has 2 more movies to make as Tris, “Allegiant Part 1” and “Allegiant Part 2,” which will be out in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Until then, this March, we’re getting “Insurgent.” It also stars Theo James, Ansel Elgort, Jai Courtney, Naomi Watts, Kate Winslet, Maggie Q, Zoe Kravitz and Octavia Spencer, and is directed by Robert Schwentke.