At Monday night’s premiere of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, we cornered Kristen Stewart and discovered something about her athletic skills (she literally outruns photographers), the athletic skills of her male counterparts in Twilight (their push-ups distract them from filming), and her working relationship with James Gandolfini on the set of Welcome to the Rileys (non-athletic, but challenging nonetheless). Like she says: “Whoa.â€
With all the frenzy about the Twilight movies, what’s your best story about running or hiding from the paparazzi?
Um, the best is when you can just pull up to places before them, and I know that I can run faster than them. And that’s satisfying every single time, and that happens quite a bit, so …
Really? That happens a lot?
Yeah. I mean, they just can’t catch me, which is awesome. As long as the parking situation is okay, that’s always satisfying.
You can even outrun them in those Louboutin heels?
Definitely not.
Peter Facinelli has joked about how the guys in this series have to work out obsessively to remain buff.
Yeah.
Which one of the guys is the most vain and body-obsessed?
[Laughs.] Oh my gosh, I don’t know. I mean, they’re all very devoted, but it’s funny when the wolf pack breaks out in little mini–push-ups and they start punching each other in the stomachs. And then suddenly we just have to do a scene, and it’s like, “You guys!†It sort of takes you out of it for a second, you know, in a funny way.
You did a movie with James Gandolfini, Welcome to the Rileys. Did you get to do scenes with him?
Yeah, most of my scenes are with him.
What was he like? Is he intimidating?
He was. I mean, at first I was definitely intimidated. He’s just very, um … he’s incredibly honest, which is something I really like. It’s just that at first it’s sort of like, whoa. Also, I think the script itself was sort of so ambitious, I think everyone, even Melissa Leo and James — who really have no reason to be nervous about stuff anymore — even they were … not nervous, but … They knew what they were getting themselves into, and that rubbed off on me, and I was, like, Whoa, I’m really a part of something that’s, like, not going to be so easy. I mean, those are all the best ways to feel before you do a movie, but we got along great. He’s awesome. We had, like, a Mowgli-Baloo dynamic.
So when the cameras were off, he sort of chatted and joked with you? He seems very quiet to the press when he’s promoting his own projects.
Yeah, he is definitely quiet, it’s not like he’s just that way for you guys — but he’s really funny, too, and we had a good time working on it.