Perhaps you’ve enjoyed watching Jada Pinkett Smith cram glittered handfuls of scenery into her mouth as Fish Mooney on Gotham (or hated every moment of it, depending on your tolerance for camp). But did you know the audition which landed her the job was even more over-the-top crazypants?
Vulture reported from the Gotham panel at PaleyFest this weekend:
Jada Pinkett Smith, who plays the devilish Fish Mooney, served up the juiciest detail of the night. The first time she met [Danny] Cannon for an audition, Pinkett Smith said she showed up dressed in a long, flowing gown, with her short, black Mooney wig and a young man on a leash in tow. He was shirtless and had “LIAR” scrawled across his forehead in lipstick. “I said, ‘Forget it, instead of talking about who Fish Mooney is, let me just show you,'” said Pinkett Smith. “I went method.”
As Vince quoted from Shop 101 when Shia LaBeouf cut up his own face and pulled out a tooth to method act in Fury, “Theater majors gonna theater.”
Meanwhile at the same panel, the awesome Robin Lord Taylor (who plays The Penguin) talked about a more practical form of method acting. After being mortified that he had forgotten to limp during a scene, a wardrobe assistant suggested one weird trick: putting a bottlecap inside his shoe along the sole, near the heel, as a simple and practical reminder to limp, and it also causes no permanent scarring. See now, if he were really committed like Shia LaBeouf or Jada Pinkett Smith, he would have just slammed his leg in a crab trap. ALL THE EMMYS.
