Actress Liv Tyler is having a busy summer with not one, but two movies from Universal being released in the next couple of weeks. When ComingSoon.net/Supehero Hype! talked to the starlet for Bryan Bertino’s horror thriller The Strangers, we were just as curious to find out more about her portrayal of Betty Ross in Marvel Studios’ relaunch of The Incredible Hulk.
Tyler didn’t have a lot to reveal about what to expect from the relationship between her Betty and Ed Norton’s Bruce Banner, but she told us that she did go back and watch Ang Lee’s The Hulk to check out how Jennifer Connelly played the character, though that’s not to say that the new movie will be very much like its predecessor. “There’s nothing similar about the story or even really the characters in a lot of ways,” Tyler explained. “I mostly went back and watched the television show, which was one of my favorite things my mom and I used to watch all the time. I would say that the essence of that image of the lone figure of [David] Bruce Banner walking down the street alone with his little backpack hitchhiking, the misunderstood hero having to move onto another town was more of the overall feeling for the film but the story is completely different.” (Oddly, Betty Ross wasn’t in the original television show at all.)
She couldn’t really elaborate on what she hoped to bring to the role either. “I didn’t write the screenplay, Edward Norton did, and I was really very happy, because I was actually offered the part and had to decide if I was going to be in the movie before I ever read the script, but it was really well-written and he wrote a really great part for me. I’m a scientist—which I know is unbelievable—and I had a lot of good things to do that I was excited about.”
There’s been a lot of gossip and rumors about the acrimony between Norton and the film’s producers especially when it came to the final edit but Tyler didn’t really see any of that while filming the movie. “No, this was a real collaboration for everyone and Edward wrote the screenplay and they agreed to his story, and he was really involved—as were we all—It was a real collaboration the entire time. I think where real misunderstandings happen, if at all, was just in the editing. Edward released a statement talking about it. I can’t speak for them, but I think that basically at a certain point, Marvel just decided to put together or edit a movie that they wanted to, and I think possibly Edward disagreed with some of those things. It’s really not a big deal. It’s the same movie. There’s nothing crazily different about it. I’m not really sure why all that happened, to be honest.”
Having been a fan of the original show, Tyler was disappointed that she missed the visit to the set from the original Hulk Lou Ferrigno. “He came to set one day and I believe it was an amazingly, one of the only days in the three or four months where I had half a day somehow, because I was working constantly, and I didn’t get to stay to meet him and I really wanted to.”
You can read more with Tyler, talking about her new horror movie The Strangers (opening on Friday, May 30) over on Superhero Hype!’s brother site ShockTillYouDrop.com. The Incredible Hulk opens on June 13.
Source: Edward Douglas
