Reese Witherspoon Says She Wanted to Be ‘Raw’ in “Wild”
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ABC/Image Group LA(NEW YORK) — Reese Witherspoon is ready to walk on the wild side. And since she figured no studio would want to cast her as a woman dealing with drug addiction and reckless behavior, she decided to produce her new film, Wild, herself. The actress’ own production company adapted Cheryl Strayed’s novel, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, for the big screen.
“I just didn’t want to hear, ‘Oh, we don’t want to see Reese have sex….Oh, can we not have any profanity?” Witherspoon told Vogue of why she produced the film. “I wanted it to be truthful, I wanted it to be raw, I wanted it to be real.”
After being portrayed largely as the girl next door, Witherspoon wants to challenge herself to be even more real, even if no one believes she can do it.
“When people underestimate me, it’s actually a comfortable place for me,” she explained. “‘Oh, that’s what you think I am; well, no, I’m not.’ I’m a complex human being. I have many different shades.”
So how did Witherspoon portray a character who looks like she does heroin and has a string of one-night stands? The actress said she did draw some inspiration from her own life.
“Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors, but I think there’s a general sense now that I’ve lived a pretty textured life. So many of the things that Cheryl goes through in the book I’ve been through, you know? I’ve been married, I’ve been divorced,” she explained in the magazine. “I haven’t lost my mother, but my mother’s mother died in a very similar way, of an aneurysm very suddenly.”
“Cheryl has this idea that the things that have happened to you are part of you. There’s something really beautiful about that idea,” Witherspoon continued. “I’m not sure I agree with her about everything. Someone might say, ‘I was raped. Is that a part of me? Am I supposed to accept that?’ That’s her perspective.”
Wild will hit theaters on Dec. 5.
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