New Face Friday: Guri Weinberg talks 'Breaking Dawn - Part 2'

Twilightish hosted this week's "New Face Friday" interview, which introduces Guri Weinberg, who portrays Stefan of Romanian Coven!

Question: What did you think of your costume and your makeup the very first time you saw yourself fully decked out as your character?

Guri: Well I loved it. I mean it was a little freaky but I loved it. It was exactly what Michael, who is the head wardrobe guy wanted when we first met and we put on the wardrobe. The eyes were a little weird, cause I don’t wear contact lenses, so it took them half an hour to put them in and then it took me another good half an hour to see through them. So when I actually figured out what I looked like, I was pretty happy with it.

Question: You had never worn contacts before? That’s got to be a crazy situation.

Guri: Ya, it was awful. But because we had a whole department of people that handled the contacts and put them in our eyes. The first two weeks it would drive them crazy because it would take them a good half hour to put them in my eyes and they said you know we are never going to get through this and I said well you should try to be me.

Question: You had posted a lot on your blog about working on set with cast and your experiences from the set and since then. What kind of fan interaction have you had a result of that?

Guri: What kind of fan interaction did I what?

Question: I am just curious what kind of fan interaction you have had as a result. A lot of people don’t get into stories about the set. That’s kind of given us an inside look. So I was just curious if you had any fan reaction from that.

Guri: I always get, oh hey no disrespect but Go Fuck Yourself and it’s like how is that no disrespect?

Question: On your blog you made a mention that you got the twitter account and bought the blog and you started all the social media after you were cast. So do you think that Social Media has changed acting in a sense because of the way that you can interact with fans?

Guri: Well it hasn’t changed acting it’s more changed how actors interact with fans. It almost feels like a second job which I kinda don’t appreciate cause I don’t get paid for it. But it’s been really cool cause, joking aside, cause you get to know the fans, the fans get to know you. What I found most great about it is I got to know more about my character then I ever knew just reading the book, from the fans.

Question: What sort of things did you learn?

Guri: I’ve learned his past about losing his family, and this is where it wasn’t even in the book. Which is interesting because that’s part of one of the things that I came up with before I found out all of the rest of that information. As an actor you gotta take a character and sorta build their past, present, and how their past affected them in todays time. How they react to things. So it was very interesting to hear fans perspective, about my character and how they felt about it. And knowing about what we did in the movie makes me giggle cause a lot of it they got right and some that they didn’t.

Question: Did you do a lot of that character building before hand with Noel Fisher or did you build on your own and tell him “Hey this is what I came up with?”

Guri: I don’t want to speak for Noel, but I will speak for myself, I did it by myself at first. Noel and I met briefly in wardrobe fitting in LA, and then in October we had to go to Baton Rogue to camera, lighting tests, makeup tests, you know with Bill Condon, with everyone else. And so what happened was we had a meeting regarding our character. He wanted to hear what our ideas were and he wanted to let us know what his ideas were. And out of that meeting, really all three of us talked about what we wanted. We flushed it out and that’s how we came to be on the same page.

Question: We saw a still with you guys sitting around the campfire and it looks like they are looking at you and Noel as Vladimir, will we get to see some of that backstory looked upon? Like his war story that he’s talking about at the campfire?

Guri: I don’t know how much I am allowed to reveal, but Im just gonna put it more on the wide scope where we all talked about our experiences. You are not going to be able to pull it out of me.

Question: How much did you have to give Mackenzie in the swear jar. You are the one that kinda started it with her. How much did you have to give her?

Guri: Well I was lucky enough in the spirit that I didn’t have as much money as Rob and Kristen did, so she let me get away with it. But I was the one that told her to start a swear jar cause I felt that I was not a big help. She’s like a ninja, the way she comes up you don’t hear her. So at first you think it’s just us adults and then Mackenzie is there looking at you with that really disappointed look.

Question: How much did she charge?

Guri: I am not quite sure, because she never charged me. You are gonna have to ask her about that?

Question: We’ll have to save that for the next time we talk to her.

Guri: Exactly

Question: I know that you did a couple of conventions and then you ended up at Comic Con with all the rest of the new vampires. How was the experience been acting face to face with the fans? Have you found it overwhelming at all?

Guri: Ya it’s very overwhelming. Especially you think you aren't in the whole saga, no one knows who I am, they haven’t seen the whole movie yet, and it’s the opposite because they do feel that they know who you are because of the character that you are playing. They are so warm and open with you. It’s kind of overwhelming to step into that and, well you know I am just going to say love, cause it’s like “You haven’t seen the movie, give it a second, you might not like me so much.” It’s been great. I love it. I love the fans. I think Twilight fans are probably the most special fans that I have ever encountered.

Question: Ah, well thank you.

Guri: No, well thank you. I didn’t do anything, you guys did it.

Question: Do you think that you could spend thousands of years with Noel Fisher like Vladimir and

Stefan do together?

Guri: I don’t think I can spend thousands of years with myself, let alone someone else for thousands of

years. So no. The answer to that is no.

Question: How did you wrap your head around someone that lived for like 3000 years or something else like that? Not only that, everyone else is coming to defend the Cullens and Renesmee and you have someone who is just really bent on revenge more then anything else. How do you build that character that is so old and his this burning desire to have revenge?

Guri: For me it was actually a pretty interesting road to get there. When I got the part, well before I got the part I did some research about how did Romanians live 3000 years ago and then I found out that the Romans were in charge 3000 years ago and everyone hated the Romans because they were viscious. So my whole thing was, when he was a human, when he fought the romans, he lost his family to the Romans, he died, and became a vampire. That’s why the Romanians took over. For him it was a show of power against the Romans, but next thing you know the Volturi come again, and to him it’s like the Romans again. The Romans destroyed everything he had once again. For him it happened twice in a row. Anyone can understand when you have had everything that you love taken away from you, it’s just instinctual to have rage and want revenge. So it consumes you.

Question: Did you get a chance to talk to Stephanie Meyer about the history or the background of your character at all?

Guri: Stephenie and I never talked about that. Stephenie and I when we were hanging out and talking, we talked and joked about everything else. The cool thing about Stephenie is that she trusted the actors and Bill Condon to do our jobs. And our jobs as professionals is to come up with the characters, understand she wrote and bring it to life.

New Face Friday: Noel Fisher talks 'Breaking Dawn - Part 2'

Team-Twilight interviewed Noel Fisher this week, as part of "New Face Friday". Noel plays Vladimir of Romanian Coven, and in this interview, he talks about his experience on Breaking Dawn, Part 2, palling around with Stephenie Meyer, what he goes fanboy crazy for and more!

Check it out below:

It’s been a really good year for you professionally, with playing a great character on Shameless, and then the role of Cotton Top on Hatfields & McCoys. What made you pick a 3000 year old grumpy vampire? Why did you want that role?

I actually booked Twilight before Shameless or Hatfields & McCoys, but obviously the Twilight franchise is in a world of its own, a class of its own. It’s really really different from anything else I’ve ever done. And that’s something that I try and do with my parts, kind of pick parts that are really different from one another and I’m also just a huge geek at heart, too. I love vampire stuff, I love fantasy/sci-fi, and all that kind of stuff so it’s right up my alley. That was another lucky thing. I get to play like a 3000 year old bad-ass vampire. That’s awesome!

You filmed Hatfields & McCoys in Romania and you played a Romanian vampire inBreaking Dawn. Did you feel a special bond with the country when you were there filming?

I don’t know, I basically thought it was a really funny coincidence that I was going there just a few months after Twilight wrapped. I thought that was quite funny. We shot near Vlad the Impaler’s actual castle, which isn’t really a castle anymore. It’s basically a bunch of rubble now, but some of the drivers in Romania were telling us that just a few miles from where we were was a pile of rubble that was actually Vlad the Impaler’s old spot. So I thought that was kind of cool.

Can you tell us what it was like when you saw yourself fully decked out in your vampire gear with the red eyes for the first time?

In a word: Amazing. I thought that all the artistic stuff we did with this movie, in terms of wardrobe and makeup and hair and everything, really I thought it was very top notch. There’s something really special and transformative to put on all these really specific pieces of clothing and to have the eyes in, it really helped me with that very regal kind of attitude that the Romanians have from being that kind of royal group.

What was it like joining such an established franchise? Did you feel like the new kid on set?

I actually found it really welcoming. I think it was really wonderful because it was a really big group of newbies coming on. Basically, one of the really nice things about the set was that all the Cullens, and all the people that have been doing this for a long time, all they way up the ladder to Wyck, to everyone, everyone was very welcoming. It created a very warm kind of atmosphere on set, so that was kind of my experience, so I had a blast.

What was it like filming Breaking Dawn so close to home in Vancouver?

Actually, Twilight was the very first job that I’ve ever gone back to Vancouver to shoot since I moved to Los Angeles, which was really surprising. It was really cool. The hotel that we stayed at was literally three blocks away from my sister’s apartment. It was really wonderful to get to go home and see my sister, to see my family, to run around to all the little restaurants and cafes that I used to hang out at. It was really fun.

If you could create your own fan site, what would it be about? What are you really passionate about?

Oh, man, there’s a lot of stuff. I’m kind of all over the place with it. It depends on what I am currently obsessed with. Like right now I am really obsessed with a Showtime series called Homeland that I’m just totally falling for. Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead. Anything that’s fantasy is right up my alley. So anything involving that stuff would be pretty sweet. Breaking Bad is not exactly fantasy, but is another one that I’m pretty into.

Could you share some of your jokes, pranks or experiences with you and Guri [Weinberg] on the set?

The story that comes to mind a lot of the time for me, I was doing a scene where I had to — well, it’s not so much a prank because it wasn’t done on purpose, but I had a scene where I had to kind of squat down for a moment and it was right at the end of the day, and it was literally the last shot of the day and we were trying to wrap and everything. I remember they called, “Rolling!” and then, “Action!” and we started doing our stuff, and I do a squat and I just heard this big rip. I had basically ripped the back of my pants completely open, so everybody got a nice shot of my underwear. So I had to go over to the wardrobe lady and she literally sewed it back up while I was still wearing the pants in between takes. I had to run back out and get it one more time, and it ripped again. That was a good moment!

Did you and Guri try to work together to come up with the Romanian accent, or how did you guys work to make a cohesive Romanian coven?

We both sat down with Bill. That was something — I was just constantly impressed with Bill Condon because he sat down with all of the new covens and new vampires, including the Romanians, and he basically just sat us down and asked us what were we thinking? What were our thoughts on the characters? It was obviously something that we both wanted was to be able to do the accent and to do that in a way that was going to be really interesting and kind of unique. He was totally down for that and we got this dialect coach and came up with this — not a modern Romanian accent because they are so old, it had to be like an amalgamation of ancient Romanion and a lot of influence from the surrounding areas around Romania because they’d been around for so long and you add all of that into it. So we just created our own unique dialect. That was one of the really cool parts about doing the character, something that really helped me fall into the character, getting to put on that accent. I’m really glad that we got to do that.

When you learned that you were cast, who were you most excited to get to work with on this project?

Well, off the top, I’ve been a big fan of Bill Condon’s for a while. But the thing that’s really interesting about these movies is that you kind of know everyone. Like Peter Facinelli — his show on Showtime, Nurse Jackie, is great. There are so many aspects like Kristen’s been doing movies for obviously a very long time. And she’s been fantastic in everything she’s done, so like it’s really nice to get to work with people who are really experienced. It’s like a learning opportunity.

Marlane [Barnes, in a previous interview] told us that she was really impressed with your dancing skills in the flash mob that you guys did. Can you tell us a bit about your experience that day?

That was orchestrated by some of the new vampires and Toni Trucks rounded us up and brought us into a back room and, they had a little stereo and played this song and they walked us through the steps. We all just sort of fumbled around it until we sort of got it, and then tried to keep it hidden from the people we were going to serve.

We hear you’ve got the moves.

I’m glad somebody thinks so!

Did you have any conversations with Stephenie about your character?

Not a lot, actually. I had a few brief talks with her about the history and stuff, but it actually was brought up in the Illustrated Guide that she came out with a little while ago. But no for the most part, Stephenie and I talked a lot about — one of our favorite authors is Orson Scott Card and we had this big discussion. Actually, I think Summit is doing one of his books into a movie. It’s called Ender’s Game, one of my all time favorite books ever, and also one of Stephenie’s. We had a lot of conversations about book recommendations. In fact, she still owes me a book list of stuff that I’m supposed to read.

Are you trying out for a part in Ender’s Game?

No, I’m too old for anything in that, I think. But I’m super stoked about that. It’s going to be awesome. It’s such a good story, I can’t wait to see the movie.