X2 JUNKET: FAMKE JANSSEN (JEAN GREY) AND JAMES MARSDEN (CYCLOPS)

QUESTION: Was it like a class reunion getting back together again?

JANSSEN: It was.

MARSDEN: It was, definitely.

JANSSEN: We're like a family reunion, and a very dysfunctional family reunion.

MARSDEN: I was going to add that if she didn't. Yes. No, it was very nice. It was a lot less pressure this time around. It was good to see everybody. Actually the time between the first film and the second film was like a year and a half.

JANSSEN: Two, probably.

MARSDEN: Two years, I think. So it was nice. We kind of saw each other intermittently between, but it was good to have the whole...and it was nice to have the entire family back. There was no one missing, so it was cool.

QUESTION: Wouldn't you think it would be more pressure to do the sequel?

MARSDEN: No. I know what you're saying, because you have to top it or match it.

JANSSEN: But as actors, that pressure really doesn't apply to us as much as it does to the filmmakers.

MARSDEN: Right. Yeah. We're just kind of excited that the first one did as well as it did. So now we get to really make the movie we wanted to make on the first one.

QUESTION: Did that surprise you at all?

MARSDEN: The first film? Well we kind of had anticipated...

JANSSEN: We were surprised.

MARSDEN: We knew it had the potential to do well, but you never know, and I always set my expectations low so I don't set myself up for disappointment.

JANSSEN: Also, I think at the time, nobody had any idea. Bryan Singer had never done a movie of that stature. I think that comic-book movies had been quite the way with his approach. So I think it was a whole new thing and I don't think anyone really knew how it was gonna do. I think we were all really surprised. Happily surprised.

QUESTION: Does this mean you can't walk past a comic book store without getting frantic crowds chasing you?

JANSSEN: No. I'm fine.

MARSDEN: No. I think you'd be in trouble actually. I don't no if you're somebody who's walked past one, but you'd be in trouble if you walked past it.

QUESTION: Have you had any encounters with the X-Men community?

MARSDEN: I never leave the house.

JANSSEN: Me neither.

MARSDEN: Randomly, you come across people. It's trickier with me because nobody...I mean I'm just walking around without my glasses on. Nobody really notices until I put a pair of sunglasses on. Then they're like, "You look familiar." I'm actually incognito without the glasses.

But, yeah, occasionally people come up to me, but they're all very nice and very happy with the first film. They all think we're doing it the right way.

QUESTION: Are you excited about exploring your character, Jean Grey, becoming the Phoenix?

JANSSEN: In this movie? Yeah. I think it's great. I think it's great what Jean Grey is going through. She's going through a lot of changes and she's sort of exploring her powers and seeing how much she can control them or not. Yeah, I thought it was very exciting what's happening with her.

QUESTION: Is it challenging working with those glasses? You don't really get to express through your eyes. Are there any thoughts about giving your contacts?

MARSDEN: The thought did cross my mind. Unfortunately, the visor's such a cool visual thing. It's like the reason why it's on the poster. It's just a cool visual thing.

But yeah, it was definitely handicapping to do any sort of dramatic scenes or one on one dialog scenes when you couldn't make eye-contact with the other actor. Not only for us, but for the audience to see what's going on behind all of it.

In this film, it's so driven by...there's a lot more action and there's a lot more heightened emotion and things like that. So, I just was like, "You know what? If I believe in the dialogue I'm just going to do it like I didn't have these glasses on and cross my fingers and hope that it's conveyed."

I think it works but it's taken two films to really kind of master the technique.

QUESTION: How well do you think someone who hasn't seen the first movie can enjoy this one?

JANSSEN: Oh, I think it's completely irrelevant whether you've seen the first one or not. In the first one, I think we had a lot of introductions of the characters and what their powers were about and what the X-Men were about, but I think this movie just works as a movie. Whether you know about the X-Men, if you've seen the first movie or not, I really don't think it matters.

MARSDEN: I also think too, because it has an entirely new villain and it has a whole new conflict, that's why it kind of separates itself from the first film and you don't have to see that one.

I just think it's bigger and better on many levels.

JANSSEN: We were interviewed by a bunch of people yesterday that hadn't seen the first one, loved the second one so much that they went back and rented the first one.

QUESTION: How involved are you in voicing the video games?

JANSSEN: Not.

MARSDEN: Not involved at all. We've never been invited to.

JANSSEN: No! They don't care.

QUESTION: How about playing the games?

MARSDEN: I played one. What was the first one they came out with after the first film? It was like X-Men Evolution or something -- I don't know -- and I went to the Sony Playstation convention down at the -- the big gaming convention downtown.

QUESTION: E3.

MARSDEN: ...E3 convention, thank you, and I went and talked to the programmers of the new X-Men game. One of them was like, "Wow! Cool! Cyclops is here. Oh, by the way: Wolverine kicks your ass in the game." Thanks!

QUESTION: What about your choice to do another comic-book character. Is Preacher something that's going to happen?

MARSDEN: Yeah, that's something that I'd like to do. It's one of those Hollywood examples of something that has the potential to go, but it's one of those things where it's kind of in the mix of...it's trying to find all of its financing. But there's a director and there's a producing team and I told them that I'd love to.

They actually went to me and asked if I'd be interested in playing the role. I immediately picked up the comic and became a huge fan. It's much, much darker than X-Men and very intelligent.

So, it's one of those things that if it all gets its money together and gets on the right track, because it is a $25 million independent film, then I'd love to do it.

QUESTION: So you're not worried about being comic-book guy?

MARSDEN: No. I don't think so. There's plenty of contrast in the characters. That's actually a better reason for me to do it because it is the kind of antithesis of Cyclops.

QUESTION: Who's the director?

MARSDEN: Rachel Talalay is on board to direct it at this point.

QUESTION: Was it hard working in the weather conditions in Vancouver?

JANSSEN: No, it couldn't be more beautiful in Vancouver. We were there for the majority of the film, about five months. For the last ten days we went up to Calgary and it was cold, but nothing really that was unbearable.

MARSDEN: No. It was nice.

JANSSEN: Beautiful.

MARSDEN: The first one was Toronto during the winter.

JANSSEN: It was much more unbearable.

MARSDEN: It was cold.

JANSSEN: No, Vancouver was great.

MARSDEN: Vancouver was really easy to shoot.

QUESTION: Have you seen your action figures?

JANSSEN: We have them. I haven't seen them and I thought we were supposed to approve them. I haven't seen mine.

MARSDEN: I saw a couple of photos. There's one in the plastic prison with me in the cape.

There's a tiny fight scene, if you blink you might miss it, with me and the guards while she's healing, Kelly Hu's character is healing. The stunt coordinators worked out this fight where I kind of strip the guards of their plastic batons. So my action figure is there with a cape and these two plastic batons.

JANSSEN: Really?

MARSDEN: They look like dildos.

JANSSEN: This is going to be great.

MARSDEN: .You don't want two? But it was very funny.

QUESTION: Do they go through the cyber-scanning process with you?

JANSSEN: They do that thing where they circle around you and stuff? Yeah.

QUESTION: I know puts you in a position whee you don't have to do life-threatening stuff. But it also lets them affect your performance.

JANSSEN: I don't think they ever use it for stunts.

MARSDEN: I mean, they probably could..

JANSSEN: But they haven't.

MARSDEN: I don't think they would do that. Bryan's really…

JANSSEN: Everything is done with actors.

MARSDEN: I'll give him lots of credit on lots of things, but he really chooses to go to practical effects before he'll go to CGI. I do believe that he thinks he would rather try to do the practical effects and get that right before he tried to do anything CGI. But if ever felt like anybody was at risk or anything, he's a magical editor as well. He can kind of fix things with editing.

But the texture mapping stuff that they do is for costume fitting. Like they did my head to get the visor to fit perfectly and everything. And it's only so accurate. They still have go in with giant forceps measurements.

But I think when we fight and blow up…

JANSSEN: That was CG?

MARSDEN: Yeah, I think that was me, CGI, flying back. But it's good that you have to guess.

QUESTION: When you first got back together on the set, was that sort of like a family reunion?

JANSSEN: It was, yeah. They had a dinner for us, before we started shooting and everything. So, the first time was saw each other wasn't actually on set. They had a little dinner party to...

MARSDEN: ...to make sure everybody still liked everyone?

JANSSEN: Just to get reacquainted.

QUESTION: Do you get to keep anything? Do you keep the visor?

JANSSEN: We don't get to keep anything.

MARSDEN: Uh-oh...

JANSSEN: Oh...did you? Oh! You did!

MARSDEN: I kept nothing.

JANSSEN: Right. Right.

MARSDEN: No.

QUESTION: Was there an outline for this a while back? Do you know where these characters are going over the next couple of films?

JANSSEN: Oh, no, no, no. Nobody knows anything.

MARSDEN: X-Men 2, when we were shooting it, it was constantly reworked, dramatically at times.

JANSSEN: And before we started shooting it, I think there was so much talk about what the second movie was going to be about. And this storyline was going to be prominent and then you heard that some other storyline was going to be prominent. It changed all the time.

MARSDEN: I don't think anyone has any master plan. If they do, they're keeping it to themselves.

JANSSEN: I don't think they know.

MARSDEN: I don't think they know. It'd be cool to say, but I don't think.

QUESTION: That being said, are you committed to three or five or anything?

JANSSEN: No.

MARSDEN: No. No, we were all signed on, to my knowledge, for the first two.

JANSSEN: The first two. Yeah. That's it.

QUESTION: So you have them over a barrel now.

JANSSEN: Yeah! Absolutely!

MARSDEN: Yeah. Kind of. Right.

QUESTION: On Preacher, is it going to be hard to get the movie made with the controversial religious subject matter?

MARSDEN: I think that we could make it an R-rated film. The problem is, just like you said, the nature of the comic is so dark and violent and it questions organized religion and things that I think that the ratings board would just go, "Wahh!"

But I think that's why it's not at a studio. I think that's why it's gonna be an independent film and done correctly. To really please the fans on that you can't pull any punches. I think you really just gotta do what's on the page.

QUESTION: You said that this movie pushes PG-13 as far as it can go. Do you think movies affect the behavior of kids?

MARSDEN: I think a lot of things affect the behavior of kids. I wouldn't want to saddle the entertainment industry with being the reason why kids act the way they do or whatever. I was certainly affected by movies when I was a kid, but it never made me do anything. I think that if it's in a child's personality to do whatever they do, I think they're gonna do it anyway.

But it gets to the point of, where are you going to draw the line? I think it's a give-and-take thing. I think Hollywood can use more responsibility at times.

JANSSEN: Movies are very violent. Violence, people can get away with a PG-13 movie much more easily than nudity.

MARSDEN: Which is kind of weird.

JANSSEN: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

MARSDEN: ...and backwards, considering you can have eighteen people get shot in the head on Nash Bridges on television and you can't show naked breasts in a PG-13 movie.

Not that I care about that but I think that that's kind of our puritanical...backwards. It's kind of weird the way that's worked out, that violence is a lot more lenient.

QUESTION: How does music affect you?

JANSSEN: In terms of the wording and...?

QUESTION: What does music do for you and why?

JANSSEN: Well, music is very important to me. I love it. I think it's something that can change your mood. It can do a lot of things so I happen to listen to a lot of music. Are you asking me if certain lyrics are too ... ?

QUESTION: No, just in general how does it affect you?

JANSSEN: It affects me very differently depending on my mood, also depending the music and it's a very important thing to me.

MARSDEN: She loves her music though. She shows up on set with the iPod.

JANSSEN: iPod! I dig my iPod. I think it's the best thing in the whole world.

QUESTION: James, do you go by "Jimmy" now?

MARSDEN: It's just one of those things where, personally, I've always gone by Jimmy but professionally I did that thing many years ago, early on, it was like, "I'm going to be taken seriously. My name is James."

Always with billing and articles and stuff, I prefer to be called James but my mom calls me Jimmy.

QUESTION: To do a smaller-scale movie after doing a big studio movie, is it sort of a battery recharge for you?

MARSDEN: Yeah, because it taps into certain things that you didn't get...like X-Men fulfills a certain part of me creatively and then other types of films kind of fill other voids.

JANSSEN: For some reason, I only get different types of parts in the independents. I get kind of typecast in studio films, I would say, more, but in the independents I get to branch out into different things, so I welcome them. I love doing them.

QUESTION: It seems like often, blockbuster movies are just big, stupid films. People just do it for the money. X-Men has a terrific cast.

JANSSEN: Well, it was Bryan Singer, who was the director, who had been doing very serious, on a smaller scale, movies. I think that he attracted the cast. I think that we all probably signed on or were very excited to work with him.

MARSDEN: I also do believe that Bryan doesn't buy into the idea that a blockbuster has to be stupid. I think he believes that you can have both. I think that one of his favorite films, and one of my favorite films as well, is Jaws. It created the blockbuster. It's not about a shark, really. It's about these really wonderful characters trapped on this boat.

So I think Bryan believes that you can have both. You can make a solid film and lay on as many special effects as you want for people who just want to go and eat popcorn and go, "woo!' But Bryan believes that having all of that stuff that comes from a core that is based on character and relationship.

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