Exciting news Reese fans! Reese graces the cover of the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, with a new photoshoot and interview inside! Reese looks gorgeous on the cover, and I can’t to see the photos inside! We’ll have scans for you asap, and if anyone would like to contribute scans then please get in touch 🙂
Below is the cover, report on the cover from the EW website, plus read on further down the post for the full interview.
This Week’s Cover: The return of Reese Witherspoon
Believe it or not, it’s been two full years since Reese Witherspoon has graced a movie screen, unless you count doing the voice of a nearly 50-foot-tall animated woman in Monsters vs. Aliens. In a candid interview, the actress — who stars opposite Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson in the upcoming romantic comedy How Do You Know — explains that her break from acting wasn’t anything she planned. “I just didn’t read anything I liked,” she says. “There are a lot of really, really, really big movies about robots and things — and there’s not a part for a 34-year-old woman in a robot movie.” In the meantime, Witherspoon has kept plenty busy raising her two kids, 11-year-old Ava and 7-year-old Deacon, and dating agent Jim Toth, to whom she’s rumored to be on the verge of getting engaged. “My mom always texts me, like, ‘Are you getting married?’ ” Witherspoon says, laughing. “I’m like, ‘Mom, come on! You would know if I was getting married.’ ” What Witherspoon clearly hasn’t been doing is dwelling on any of the personal turmoil in her past, including her divorce from actor Ryan Phillippe. “My favorite quote is from Martha Stewart: ‘I have a very short memory for painful things.’ And I do. I have one of those incredible memories where I just erase painful things….I truly believe you never lose in a relationship. You’ve always gained something.”
For more from Reese Witherspoon — including her thoughts on fame, her insecurities, and her “insane” visit to the White House with Paul Rudd — pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on stands Friday, December 10.
Reese Witherspoon plays against type
There’s a moment in her new romantic comedy, How Do You Know, when Reese Witherspoon makes an unusual request of Owen Wilson.
He’s her unreliable boyfriend Matty – a major-league pitcher who can’t resist the lure of other females. She plays Lisa, a young woman whose entire life has revolved around softball and who can’t cope emotionally when she’s dropped from her team.
So along comes this crucial moment when Lisa says to Matty: “If I wake up in the middle of the night and start crying, just ignore me, please.” Witherspoon cites this speech as an example of something she herself would never say in real life.
“I usually play really verbal characters, and this woman is sort of more interior,” Witherspoon points out.
That made Lisa a fascinating challenge, because Witherspoon couldn’t really draw on her own life experiences to portray her.
“I’ve done a lot of comedies where a woman talks about her romantic dynamics and is always kind of talking about men and what she should do. But this is a woman who has a hard time conveying her emotions and doesn’t even really want to talk about things -which is sort of an interesting female character.”
In the film, which opens Dec. 17, Lisa thinks her whole life is slipping away because, at 31, she’s been cut from her team. Because she’s uneasy talking about feelings, she feels emotionally isolated. Furthermore, her romantic life is in turmoil because of Matty’s irresponsibility and the unexpected intrusion into her world of another male. This is George (Paul Rudd), whose own life is falling apart because he’s the target of a federal investigation into high-stakes financial crimes.
Romantic comedies are nothing new for Reese Witherspoon, but her role in James L. Brooks’ new film, How Do You Know, presented some interesting challenges.
“This character is a woman who has a hard time conveying her emotions — and doesn’t even really want to talk about things,” Witherspoon says of professional softball player, Lisa.
“The biggest challenge for me was she’s not verbal, and I’m used to playing really talkative characters and women who speak about their relationships and talk about love and dynamics and boys with their girlfriends,” the actress explains.
“And she doesn’t really have that Greek chorus of women around her,” she adds. “So that was a new character for me, and really interesting. And I had to meet a lot of women like that.”
The film follows Lisa as her affections pinball between a commitment-phobic baseball player (Owen Wilson) and an honest-to-a-fault businessman (Paul Rudd).
“It’s a tough job, ladies, but someone’s got to do it,” she says of working with Wilson and Rudd. “How lucky am I to work with two of the most talented, funny, attractive, hysterical men?”
On set, Witherspoon found her own feelings mirroring that of her character, making it hard to choose between the two co-stars.
This week’s The Hollywood Reporter looks at the James L. Brooks dramedy featuring Reese Witherspoon ($15 million) and Jack Nicholson ($12 million).
Oscar-winning filmmaker James L. Brooks doesn’t work often, and he doesn’t work fast. And when he does work, he commands a budget as jaw-dropping as his history of brilliant work (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News). When many studios are shying away from star-driven adult dramedies, Sony lavished a budget on Brooks’ How Do You Know that even has talent reps with clients in the movie marveling.
THR has learned that the film, which centers on a love triangle, cost $120 million to make, though the studio drove that down to about $100 million thanks to tax rebates from Pennsylvania and D.C. One reason for the price tag is old-fashioned salaries for the pic’s talent: Reese Witherspoon ($15 million), Jack Nicholson ($12 million), Owen Wilson ($10 million) and Paul Rudd ($3 million) received their quotes, and Brooks will earn about $10 million plus backend for writing, producing and directing. That’s about $50 million for the major talent alone.
The cost also was high because of the time Brooks devoted to production and postproduction and his decision to reshoot the beginning and end of the movie. “He’s slow and meticulous,” a person familiar with the production says.
Another challenge: How Do You Know opens Dec. 17 against Tron: Legacy, Gulliver’s Travels and Yogi Bear. “That’s a big weekend,” sighs a talent rep with a star in the film, which could have the slow-but-steady adult space to itself. Brooks’ 1997 holiday release As Good as It Gets rode Oscar buzz to $314.2 million worldwide, but his most recent December effort, 2004’s Spanglish, fizzled. “They thought it would do a couple hundred million worldwide,” a source says. “It did $55 million all-in.”
But Sony hopes How Do You Know will perform like It’s Complicated, an $85 million-budgeted Universal pic from Nancy Meyers.That film pulled in nearly $220 million worldwide last winter.
It’s too bad Paul Rudd is married (for multiple reason) because if he had needed a best man in his wedding it sounds like President Barack Obama would be more than happy to step in!
While Paul was filming How Do You Know with Reese Witherspoon in Washington D.C., the co-stars were able to get a private tour of the White House.
As part of Entertainment Weekly’s cover story, Reese recalls what happened while they were on their tour.
“While we were getting a tour, we got a message from the Oval Office that Obama wanted to say hi to us,” she begins the story.
“We went to the Oval Office, and there was Hillary Clinton having a meeting with Joe Biden. It was insane,” she says. “Then Obama came out and he turned to Paul and said, ‘I loved you in I Love You, Man.’ ”
“I grabbed Paul and I was like, ‘Are you freaking out right now?’ ” she remembers. “He’s like, ‘I’m freaking out!’ We were so tongue-tied it was ridiculous.”
“Obama was like, ‘What are you guys doing in town?’ I started talking about the movie and I was like, ‘We’re doing a movie and… uh, I’m playing a character, who, uh…I’m working with Owen, uh…Owen…’ I could not remember Owen’s last name,” Reese explains.
“And Paul goes, ‘Wilson!’ Like it was a party game.”
Reese Witherspoon has revealed that she took a break from acting for close to two years because she was unsatisfied with her career path.
Speaking to EW, Witherspoon insisted that for a time she was disinterested in the projects that she was being offered.
“I just didn’t read anything I liked,” she said.
The BAFTA winner also explained that there are now fewer quality roles offered to women of her age.
She noted: “There are a lot of really, really, really big movies about robots and things – and there’s not a part for a 34-year-old woman in a robot movie.”
Witherspoon returns to the big screen with How Do You Know, which is released on December 17 in US cinemas and January 28 in the UK.
The Morning Show (2019)
