CraveOnline: Since you had Star Trek Into Darkness last year, are you signed on for more Star Treks?
Alice Eve: I really look forward to getting together again if we manage to, and I hope it will be soon. I loved that experience.
After Carol Marcus has lost her father, how do you expect her to cope?
Well, I mean, if things are right and healthy, that’s the natural order of things. Children lose their parents. Better than the other way around.
But the circumstances where she finds out he was a real bad guy.
Yeah, that’s intense, isn’t it? I suspect there’ll be a sense of relief as well as her grief in that recovery, so I think she’ll cope just fine. She’s a tough cookie, Carol Marcus.
J.J. Abrams apologized for the shot of you in your underwear and admitted he edited the scene wrong. Do you think that was warranted?
J.J. is a gentleman through and through and was responding to what needed to be responded to, but that was a decision that I made with J.J. It certainly wasn’t made for me.
Do you think you’ll be in the Entourage movie?
I don’t think I am. I’m not sure if Vince could be Vince if he was married.
But he was so in love.
Well, there’s such a thing as limerence, Fred. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it.
I haven’t. I will have to look that up.
It’s a good concept.
I’m sure when I find out what that means, it will blow my mind.
[Laughs]
Are you doing another Neil LaBute movie also?
We did it. We did it in New Mexico with Matthew Broderick just this past fall. He’s editing right now but when he’s got it, it’ll come out.
What do you get to play?
I play an English graduate called Nat, Cambridge graduate, who works in an office with Matthew Broderick and they end up getting waylaid on a journey and having to stop in Albuquerque. It sort of plays out over the next, again, he works in real time. So it plays out over the next 24 hours.
Do you get different pleasures from each different mode of storytelling, the big budget Star Treks, the violent twisty thrillers like Cold Comes the Night and the dramas where two people talk about their relationships?
Yeah, there’s a great sense of satisfaction from getting through a day of Neil’s dialogue and knowing that that’s an achievement. There’s a lot of cadence and a lot to say. There’s a real pleasure from just two people communicating I think, but also to look back on what is such a gargantuan effort that’s Star Trek, to know you were part of it, a cog in that huge wheel is incredibly rewarding in a different way.
Is there something about Neil’s dialogue that just flows?
For me, it comes off my tongue easy. I’m not sure it’s the same for everybody. I don’t know if it’s because he writes with my intonations in mind when he writes for me, but I just feel it’s very nice to say his words. It’s satisfying. It’s like hitting a bullseye in a game of darts.
I first saw you in She’s Out of My League. Is there another comedy coming up for you?
You know, I just did a movie with Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, which I would say is a romance. It’s probably not a romantic comedy but it’s definitely a romance and that’s the closest I’ve come to She’s Out of My League in a while. I do love that genre and I’m looking for another film to fill it and I think I have one. I do love it and I miss playing that. I love it passionately actually. It’s just a great time, and those are the movies I like to watch, romantic comedies. They give me great pleasure.
What is that movie called?
1:30 Train.
What is the premise?
A woman is stranded in New York City after missing the last train home and having her purse stolen. Chris Evans’ character comes to the rescue but there’s something that she’s withholding from him the whole time.
We’ve talked about so many different genres in this interview, has it ever been a fight for you to be seen in different roles?
I think that there have definitely been points when I’ve had to fight to move my career in a different direction. I think 2012 I did a few movies that touched on a darker side and those are movies I’d been wanting to make and stories I’d been wanting to tell for a while. So I think it definitely takes work to move genres.
What were the pivotal roles in 2012?
Well, to do Star Trek. We made that in 2012 so that was pretty important for me to be working with such a mastermind as J.J. Then both Cold Comes the Night and Some Velvet Morning were made in that year so for me that was a very intense, emotional year.
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.
