Analeigh Tipton

Analeigh Tipton, co-star of “Warm Bodies” sat down to chat about pointing a gun at John Malkovich and her role in the upcoming rom com zombie flick set to hit theaters February 1^st.

So, what attracted you to the project, the story or the character-

Analeigh: The cast attracted me to do it; to be able to work with everybody involved was/is quite an honor. I had seen ‘50/50;’ I love John Malkovich’s work and Nick Hoult has done some pretty solid, excellent things. That probably confirmed that this would go into a good direction. The marketing has been phenomenal and good for them; it’s kind of a hard one to try to figure out off the bat.

Pulling a gun on John Malkovich, that must’ve been a fun day-

Analeigh: (laughs) It was in rewrites and it made me so happy. I mean not to pull a gun on John Malkovich but to be able to say I did a scene where I had to hold a gun to John Malkovich. He was excellent in it because I was terrified, gun or words, there’s an intimidation factor. When we first did the scene, we finished and he looked at me and said ‘I need to feel the gun.’  So, every time then, I’d have to stick the gun into John Malkovich so that he’d feel it and then he would turn around and he would take my cheek and pat and go ‘thank you.’ Every take.

Were you familiar with the book before you started shooting?

Analeigh: No, I wasn’t familiar with it and I was actually super pumped to see that it made the New York Times bestseller list this week. No and I didn’t read it before filming, which I’m glad for because I think Nora, since she’s not one of the primary characters, I got to actually have some room with finding her on my own with the script and be more useful for what was needed in the film version of it.

When you read the script, were you able to visualize the post apocalyptic world?

Analeigh: It became so much more real than I could’ve imagined. When we went back to do re-shoots they had the fort that the humans lived at, with all the tents and things like that, it’s actually a shame that they didn’t get closer on some of the things that went on. They had a whole living system set up, they had really thought through what this town, what these people would need to survive, the bare minimum. The food line-up was incredible, they made it very unique to the situation…even our makeup, we wouldn’t have makeup, it would’ve been something previous to a girl… little things like that are gold. You don’t even see the technology, iPods are cracked or outdated. It was interesting to see what would’ve been precious and material things that we take for granted.

There’s a real self-awareness in the movie of what is funny and poking fun at itself and what should come across as humorous to the audience.

Analeigh: Jonathan did a really good job about that, the whole cast could trust him fully. It being a genre piece, you’re going to have trouble with how much can we really convince an audience? Let’s give the audience some modern day intelligence. We have a lot of extravagant science fiction things pushed on us all the time, nothing should shock us so much, not these generations and so it was nice to actually have this and making fun of this, slightly. But not making fun of it, doing it intelligently I think.

Do you have a favorite zombie movie?

Analeigh:’ Night of the Living Dead’