Video:Last House on the Left - Monica Potter Interview
with Rebecca MurrayMonica Potter plays the mom of a teenager who takes matters into her own hands when her beautiful daughter's attacked and left for dead in the 2009 remake of 'The Last House on the Hill.'See Transcript
Transcript:Last House on the Left - Monica Potter Interview
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the World Premiere of The Last House on the Left.
Monica Potter – 'Emma' in The Last House on the Left
I was watching the movie and I'm thinking you're not old enough to have a teenage daughter, are you?Monica Potter: "I love you. You know what? When I read the script I was like, because in Hollywood people go, 'Well, that's going to age you,' and this and that. I'm 37, which you know I am old enough to have. But I do have an 18 year old son, but thank you for saying that because I kind of felt like… I felt a little old when I was doing the film. And I like to have fun and now I'm just going to be a mom."
The next role has to be something totally different, not a mom type role, just so you don't get stuck in the mom roles, right?
Monica Potter: "Yeah. Well, I do a TV show right now too and it's fun because it's a different side of me which I get to play every week, so that's really great. The show's called Trust Me on TNT, a little plug for them, and it's a great character so I'm able to balance both and do both."
This is something really different because you don't usually do action, and this has you doing a lot of fighting and everything else in it. Why did you take that on?
Monica Potter: "I don't know. I didn't realize that I would be doing all of it. I worked with our stunt coordinator and I didn't realize that I was that strong. I was doing a lot of the stunts. And I didn't realize it at the time – when I read the script it came from more of like an emotional place so I didn't really think about what I had to do physically. Does that make sense?"
Because you are a mother you were able to connect with this protective mode that you had to go into. How hard was it to tap into that and then leave it behind at the end of the day?
Monica Potter: "That's a good question. You have good questions. It was easy to tap into because I'm so protective of my three kids. And I thought, 'If somebody were to do something even remotely close to this, all bets are off. You're done.' But what happened was when we were shooting, I left my three kids in the States because we shot this in South Africa. So every night, our days were turned around where at night here they were going to bed and I was just waking up. It was like, 'Are they okay?' I'm like that normally so it was tough to sort of let that go, and I still don't. I'm calling them going, 'Did you eat your chicken?'"
Even the 18 year old?
Monica Potter: "Even the 18. It's worse with him. He's going to college next year and I know for a fact that I'm going to be like stalking him in Colorado. Like, 'What's going on?'"
Well at least there's like email and technology now that lets you touch base all the time, right? That's easier to let him go away?
Monica Potter: "No, I'll be there. I will be there in his dorm. 'Are you doing your homework?'"
People love horror movies but what sets this apart from the typical horror film?
Monica Potter: "Good… This is set apart because it comes from an emotional standpoint, for me anyway, as a parent. There's an emotional core to this film that I don't really see in many horror movies. So I think that when people go to watch it – especially parents or mothers or whoever - they'll see that, hopefully, if we did our jobs right. But we felt it as we were shooting it so I think it will come across."