Anna Nicole Smith was a one of a kind personality, so anyone who played her in a biopic would require an enormous transformation, no pun intended. Agnes Bruckner wore a prosthetic, a fat suit at times, and changed her appearance in more subtle ways to play Smith in the Lifetime movie Anna Nicole, directed by Mary Harron. We got to speak with Bruckner about her portrayal of Smith by phone last week. Anna Nicole is now available on DVD.
CraveOnline: I was impressed that the film touches a little bit on Skyscraper. Would you have liked to show more of Anna Nicole Smith’s film career, whether it was To the Limit or Naked Gun 33 1/3?
Agnes Bruckner: Yeah, we actually at one point, Mary, Adam [Goldberg] and I, kind of got together and we wanted to do a little scene from Skyscraper, put together something from the movie. The schedule was so crazy that there was absolutely no time for anything else. It was an insane schedule to begin with so there was no way we could add anything on. It would’ve been really cool. If the film could have been three hours, I think we could have had so many cool moments of her life.
Which scene would you have chosen from Skyscraper?
Oh, man. [Thinks about it.] I don’t even know. There’s so many to choose from. Oh, man. I don’t know.
That was sort of her Die Hard.
Yeah.
Did you see her films as research for this, or had you seen them on your own in the past?
I hadn’t in the past so my mom kind of followed Anna’s career and I remember, I was really young so there was a lot of stuff that I wasn’t really able to watch. I always remembered her image growing up because she was just so larger than life. She was such a character. There’s definitely things that I’ve seen of hers and pictures and interviews and things like that but not until this movie did I really just go online and I got a huge binder sent to me from Lifetime with every single interview, pictures and everything of hers. I did as much research as I could on Anna Nicole.
What was most helpful in the binder?
The interviews and the behind the scenes footage of her was I think the most helpful to me. Just really trying to understand somebody and see where they’re coming from through an interview is pretty difficult but there was so much footage on her that I watched everything, and even the paparazzi footage of her leaving restaurants and walking around was really helpful to see her personality and how much she loves the camera and working with the camera and the attention she got from it and how much she loved it.
If this had been an HBO movie or theatrical, would you have done nudity wearing the prosthetics, because you would have still been essentially covered?
I think so. Nudity is such a tricky thing, especially when it comes to acting, but playing Anna, she was so comfortable with it. She was so comfortable showing her body and being sexy and getting the attention and loving it. It was a big part of her life so I definitely think it would have been a bigger part of the film if we had gone that route, but I think we really pulled off an amazing version of it that didn’t show nudity. We really also wanted to focus on the story and her life as opposed to all about the image of who she was because everybody already knew that.
Certainly she might be best known for the reality show at this point.
Yes, which was so hard to watch for me because in becoming Anna, I kind of fell in love with her as a person. Watching the reality show was really kind of hurtful to me. I took it kind of personally at times because I was like, “Oh, man, I wish I had known her in some way and could’ve taken her away from this horrible, embarrassing moment.” It was really difficult to watch reality show stuff.
Did you recreate some of the scenes from the show from actual footage of “The Anna Nicole Show?”
We tried to. I think Adam Goldberg brought up, because the only real footage I think of Howard K. Stern, the most footage of him was the reality show. So Adam did a lot of research on it and he really enjoyed a food eating contest or something that Howard and Anna did. Adam brought it up to us so we tried to recreate that moment in the film where they’re eating pizza and it’s like a competition. It was really fun actually. It was a really fun scene to shoot, just because everything with Adam was hysterical and he’s such an amazing actor so it was really fun to bounce off of him and do things. A lot of that was actually improv’ed and we just kind of threw things out there. Mary was really, really cool with it too. It was a fun scene.
How long did it take you to perfect Anna’s delivery of, “TrimSpa, baby?”
Like I said, there was really no time to even rehearse or anything. We shot that so fast, the TrimSpa stuff. It was actually on the day I think we were doing a lot of the Playboy cover photo shooting stuff. It was awesome. It was really scary but it was awesome to be that sexual and just not care about it. It was really hard but watching the TrimSpa videos, she owned it. She rocked it so it was really fun. It was really nerve wracking for me as Agnes personally, stepping into those shoes and going for it. It was really fun.
I thought you nailed it, because that is her most memorable line.
Thank you so much.
So I assumed you did lots of practice in front of the mirror.
[Laughs] No, not at all. I got to set and I was wearing that really bright white dress and had just changed my hair to make it straight, because I think in a lot of her TrimSpa days she had really long, straight, bleached hair. It was just kind of let’s go, very fast.
Is Anna Nicole Smith’s story in any way for you a cautionary tale as an actress working in Hollywood?
I think the biggest difference Anna and I had when it came to that was I have such a strong family and friends and group of people around me, and I have since I was little. I was 11 years old when I got my first job which was a soap opera. I just always had incredible people around me to support me and guide me through this thing called life. I don’t think Anna had that.
I think she was so vulnerable and so pulled in every different direction, but she had a lot of bad people around her. She didn’t really have that guidance and I think the only person that was in her life that was genuine and genuinely loved her was her son. It was just really sad to see that. Like I said, watching the reality show I kind of just wanted to grab her and shake her and be like, “What are you doing?” So I think that’s the biggest difference between her and I when it came to that. I have a really strong group of people around me.
Was the “I am noticed” scene, the tantrum, a big day, a difficult scene to do?
Yeah, it was really difficult. There was prosthetics involved. We did a lot of face and neck prosthetics. There was a crazy fat suit that kept warping as the day went on, because it was actually made from cotton shoved into some kind of body suit that the wardrobe team created, which was really amazing. It was one of the most emotional scenes in the film with her mom, and of course Virginia Madsen who’s a rock star. It was really amazing. It was definitely difficult but it was fun. It was one of the sad, downer scenes and it was fun.
Earlier in your career, you did Blood and Chocolate just before all the Twilight, romantic monster/werewolf stuff came out. Do you feel you were ahead of the curve on that?
Yeah, you know I ran into Katja [von Garnier], the director of Blood and Chocolate a few years ago, right around I think when the first Twilight came out. We kind of giggled, because we ran into each other at a grocery store, at how funny it is that we did this movie, kind of in the same genre and then Twilight blew up. It was fun. I just remember reading the script and really enjoying it. Who wouldn’t want to play a werewolf? It was just so cool. It was a cool idea, a cool story. Yeah, it was a great time.
I spoke to Christopher Landon recently and he told me how the script changed a lot. Did you read his original script?
I don’t remember. I don’t remember what version I had gotten when I first read it, so I actually don’t know.
Even earlier, you did Murder By Numbers with some intense scenes with Ryan Gosling. Did you know back then what he was capable of?
Yeah, God, that experience was also amazing. I’ve had such an amazing career and life, I’m just so grateful. Yeah, he was definitely talented. He’s always been talented. He’s a true actor. He’s just so into it and he was really, really nice. I just remember he was super nice and we remained friends, here and there. He’s a great actor and a really cool person.
What can we look forward to coming up next?
I just finished doing a film called There is a New World Somewhere. It was my first producing film. I executive produced it. It’s just really exciting. It’s a beautiful love story and life story. We shot it in Louisiana and we’re in the editing process right now so I’m just really excited because I think it’s going to be a really, really cool film.
Between Anna Nicole and There is a New World Somewhere, are you in a pretty special phase of your career with some projects really close to you?
I am. I really feel that I have grown so much as a person and I’ve become a lot more picky with my roles. I’m fortunate enough to be picky and to do things that I really love. It’s really exciting. This year is going to be really amazing.
Was there a really competitive audition for Anna Nicole? Were there a lot of other contemporaries of yours up for it?
I actually don’t know. I came into the process later on because I didn’t think that I wanted to do the film. The producer actually, Judith Verno, who I worked with on The Craigslist Killer which is another Lifetime film, she called me personally and was just really adamant and just really felt that I could really rock this role. I was just so terrified. I was like, “What are you talking about?” She really saw something in me that she thought I could do this role and jump into Anna Nicole’s shoes.
I remember going into Susan [Edelman], the casting director’s office, and I actually was Skyping with Mary Harron and Judith. They were already on location, scouting. So I came into the process really later on but I do think they saw a lot of girls for the role. I can only imagine, it’s insane.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
