Carla Gugino: I’m really a sucker for love stories

BEVERLY HILLS, California — As a mission engineer in Space Between Us, which is about the interplanetary romance between earthbound girl Tulsa (played by Britt Robertson) and Martian Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield), Carla Gugino described the movie as having all the elements of a feel-good one.

“That’s what I love about it,” Gugino told the international media during the round-table interview at the Four Seasons. “I’m really a sucker for love stories. It’s the kind of movie that gives you a light feeling after watching it, just like All That Jazz which happens to be one of my favorite movies. It’s different from my previous movies.”

Gugino is an accomplished screen and stage actress who has starred opposite Dwayne Johnson in the hit (over $400 gross worldwide) disaster drama San Andreas, the Spy Kids trilogy, HBO’s Entourage, Sucker Punch, Night at the Museum and Sin City. Among her Broadway roles were as Maggie in Arthur Miller’s After The Fall (for which she received a Theater World Award and an  Outer Critics Circle nomination for Outstanding Actress in a play), Catherine in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer and as Abbie Putnam in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under The Elms (for which she also earned an Outer Critics Circle nomination).    

In Space Between Us, shortly after arriving to help colonize Mars, an astronaut dies while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet, never revealing who the father is.

Aside from meeting his online friend Tulsa, Gardner travels to Planet Earth to look for his father. Kendra Wyndham, Gugino’s character, becomes the de-facto mother figure to Gardner.

According to director Peter Chelsom (Serendipity, Shall We Dance, etc.), Gugino’s role called for a versatile actress “who could convey intelligence, strength, athleticism and vulnerability.”

Said Gugino, “I was absolutely riveted from the start, soon after I read the script. It’s epic in scope and I strongly connected with the notion of people looking for their place in the world. The relationship between Kendra and Gardner is so unique. She’s not his mother and yet she really cares for him. They have almost this sibling-like relationship yet there’s a mother-son dynamic.”

As the mission engineer, Kendra is athletic and tough but has a soft spot for Gardner, allowing him against the rules to have an interstellar pen pal (Tulsa, the girl from Colorado).

During a media event.

“I love playing Kendra, a very accomplished and incredibly bright astronaut but whose husband left her because she couldn’t have children,” continued Gugino. “So she’s happy to say goodbye to Earth. I find it fascinating to think of a person saying that she wants to leave this planet and is never coming back because that wouldn’t be my choice.

“I’m interested in characters that are coming from a different perspective. Kendra is going up to Mars for a very personal reason and she’s not happy about it, only to end up caring for this young man. She thought she wasn’t going to be a mother and yet, ultimately, she’s doing a most motherly job.”

Space Between Us was inspired by other feel-good movies like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Being There, August Rush, Wings of Desire, The Fault in Our Stars and Romeo and Juliet.

“Gardner has to travel a long distance to learn what it means to be human,” one of the movie’s co-writers was quoted as saying, “and I think in a nutshell that is the core of Gardner’s journey and the major theme of the movie. I also think there’s a central love story that young people can really connect to but that will appeal to everybody.”

Richard Lewis (also at the junket), the other writer, recalled that when the producers began casting the film, they already had one person in mind for the Gardner role, and he’s none other than Asa Butterfield who towers at 6’1”.

“I had seen Hugo, the movie directed by Martin Scorsese and I found Asa very spectacular in it,” confirmed Lewis. “He had a sense of wonder and otherworldliness; he felt timeless. There’s also an old soul about him.”

Chelsom agreed. “Asa has the exact combination of intelligence, purity and innocence. His simple gaze is disarming in itself. He’s like a lie detector.”   

With co-stars (from left) Gary Oldman, Britt Robertson (as the earthbound girl) and Butterfield

Asked about his directorial style, Chelsom was quoted in the production notes: “It’s never about bringing it to the boil; it has to be its best at the moment the camera rolls. But there is so much great layering that comes out of rehearsal. The cast here (in Space Between Us) totally embraced it. In Asa’s case, I put him through the experience of feeling uncomfortably heavy by strapping some serious weights to his body, having him walk, run, struggle, etc.

“By the time those scenes came up for the shoot, there was some kind of ‘muscle memory’ that just kicked in and looked very convincing. Of course, we had to chart a gradual ‘acclimatizing’ of Gardner, so that he slowly adapted and looked to be walking and running like any other human.”

Incidentally, also in the cast is Gary Oldman as Nathaniel Shepherd, the revolutionary founder of Genesis Space Technologies, the private aerospace company that is seeking to establish human life on Mars. When you watch Space Between Us (released nationwide today by Pioneer Films), you will be thrilled by the revelation at the end of the film.  

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