Hailee Steinfeld has several interesting encounters in developing a frienship with the titular Transformer in Bumblebee as her Charlie Watson character.
In encountering a Transformer, actors are often pushed to their imagination’s limits. Often times, actors find themselves looking at and talking to tennis balls or various other markers which are used to indicate where the editors will place computerized giants. In an interview with Fox TV’s Kevin McCarthy (seen in the video above), Steinfeld opened up about what it was like to shoot the sequence where she meets Bumblebee for the first time.
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“That particular one was actually, that took place on a couple different sets,” Steinfeld said. “One being our actual garage where there was nothing but a piece of type and that may be on the matte box or something. And then there was a version where the eyes are being lit up, as they are, were there and it was somebody, they basically had it so they could control when they came on and that was what I got for the initial reaction of them turning on. That was a very low to the ground rig that they would slide under.”
Seeing as Bumblebee is set in 1987, Charlie Watson’s room being filled with posters from the time period which make the older members of the audience feel nostalgic. Steinfeld, however, never went through such a time her life where posters crowded her room. If she had, her and Charlie Watson might have had a lot in common.
“I never really went through a poster phase but I imagine if I did there would be…it would probably be like old film references and music from the eighties is music to remember, for sure,” Steinfeld said. “I’m glad that’s part of my life. I guess The Smiths would be on there, Joan Jett, ‘Blondie.’”
An accomplished musician herself, the Transformer whose dialogue is often comprised of lines of dialogue from TV and movies or lyrics to songs, Steinfeld was asked to imagine which of her songs are most likely to be spoken by her big yellow friend.
“I guess it all depends on what he’s trying to say,” Steinfeld said. “That’s a great question. I feel like something in ‘Starving’ would be in there. How else is he going to express that he’s hungry?”
Bumblebee hits theaters on December 21, 2018.
