INTERVIEW WITH THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF GIRLS ON THE BUS
"We like to believe that as women we can achieve everything at the same time, we can perform equally well in all areas, but unfortunately life doesn't work that way"
Four journalists. Four actresses. More specifically, four actresses playing journalists. Melissa Benoist, aka Supergirl, Carla Gugino, The Tempting Devil of The Fall of the House of Usher, and Christine Elmore and Natasha Behnam, starring in Girls on the Bus, represent four perspectives and four generations. I talked to the cast members of the girl series of the year on Zoom.
One of the most important aspects of the series is how the characters try to find the right work-life balance while constantly on the road as a political journalist. As actors, you travel a lot, shoot a lot away from your home. Is it possible to find balance this way?
Carla Gugino: Impossible. Believe me, I have been in this for a long time, and sometimes there are moments when I feel that I have managed to fix one part of my life, and then I see that I have managed to achieve this at the expense of the other part. Maybe over time you will find a better balance, things will improve, but there is no ideal state, or at least I don't think it can be achieved. We like to think, and the media also echoes the image, that as women we can achieve everything at once and perform equally well in all areas, but unfortunately life does not work that way. Rather, life is a constant balancing act. We try to figure out how to do it right, and that process continues until the day we die. This may sound negative, but it is actually what makes our lives enjoyable. The good thing about the series is that it can show us this.
SHARING
NLC.HU LEISURE INTERVIEW WITH THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF GIRLS ON THE BUS
"We like to believe that as women we can achieve everything at the same time, we can perform equally well in all areas, but unfortunately life doesn't work that way"
Four journalists. Four actresses. More specifically, four actresses playing journalists. Melissa Benoist, aka Supergirl, Carla Gugino, The Tempting Devil of The Fall of the House of Usher, and Christine Elmore and Natasha Behnam, starring in Girls on the Bus, represent four perspectives and four generations. I talked to the cast members of the girl series of the year on Zoom.
One of the most important aspects of the series is how the characters try to find the right work-life balance while constantly on the road as a political journalist. As actors, you travel a lot, shoot a lot away from your home. Is it possible to find balance this way?
Carla Gugino: Impossible. Believe me, I have been in this for a long time, and sometimes there are moments when I feel that I have managed to fix one part of my life, and then I see that I have managed to achieve this at the expense of the other part. Maybe over time you will find a better balance, things will improve, but there is no ideal state, or at least I don't think it can be achieved. We like to think, and the media also echoes the image, that as women we can achieve everything at once and perform equally well in all areas, but unfortunately life does not work that way. Rather, life is a constant balancing act. We try to figure out how to do it right, and that process continues until the day we die. This may sound negative, but it is actually what makes our lives enjoyable. The good thing about the series is that it can show us this.
Melissa Benoist: You just go forward, you make mistakes, but you try to do your best. I think that's all we can do.Melissa, you are not only the actress of the series, but also the producer. Could you tell us what concept you worked on as a producer?
Melissa Benoist: Girls on the Bus is the result of a very long development process, and I didn't join it at the very beginning. Most of the themes that I thought were important to develop were already there in the script. For example, female journalists are often accused of sleeping with their sources for information. We show how baseless this accusation is, since the moment the journalist becomes zero in the eyes of the profession, as soon as this is proven. As a producer, I had more influence on casting.
Christine Elmore: I love that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. There is no such thing as if I do it this way, then you do it that way and it will be good for you too. We have to find the right path ourselves. The characters in the series all get different answers to the same question. At the current stage of my life, I am raising two small children, which obviously changes this balance a lot. It will probably be quite different when the kids are older, and it was different when I started my career and didn't have kids yet.
In different life stages, different things are really important to you, so the balance is also different. There was a time when my whole life was about work, and now, next to the children, my unread e-mails accumulate like the children's laundry.
Such is life. (laughs) No one can excel in every aspect of life, and Girls on the Bus shows just that.
Natasha Behnam: Hey, I didn't know that!
Melissa Benoist: I did watch your casting video. (laughs) I saw that your recordings with Christina are fantastic. But my opinion was not only important at the level of the main characters, but I was involved in the selection of all the characters. It feels good to be more responsible for a series and not only have a say in the development of my own character.
In the series, Sadie asks the subject during one of her interviews what he thinks are five things the reader should know about him. Now I'm asking you the same thing.
Christine Elmore: Are you sure you need five? Is less not enough? (name)
Melissa Benoist: I'm not interesting enough to know five things about me. (laughs) Should I start listing things that I can't eat dairy products now? Should be good! When we first meet, I will immediately ask you when your birthday is.
Natasha Behnam: I can attest to that. He asked me too. Rather, mention what an amazing leader you are. As a producer, you not only looked after the series, but also over us, and you always made sure that we had a good time. And at the same time, you should also know that she is a really crazy girl who is always in a bit of trouble. The world may not know this, but the moment has come for them to finally find out.
Melissa Benoist: (laughing hard) Thank you so much for sharing.
Natasha Behnam: Sorry to snap.
Carla Gugino: There is no good answer to this question. (laughs) What do you think I can do by just watching the movies and series I've been in and hope you enjoy them? (laughs) Ideally, I learn something new about myself with each role. From Grace on the Girls on the Bus, I learned persistence, authenticity, and the need to look at topics from the right distance in order to have a better perspective. And I also learned from Grace how much our personality is influenced by where we come from, but at the same time we have the ability to change. Grace is already in the second half of her life, and we tend to believe that people don't change after a certain age, but her case also shows that there are people who change only later.
SHARING
NLC.HU LEISURE INTERVIEW WITH THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF GIRLS ON THE BUS
"We like to believe that as women we can achieve everything at the same time, we can perform equally well in all areas, but unfortunately life doesn't work that way"
Four journalists. Four actresses. More specifically, four actresses playing journalists. Melissa Benoist, aka Supergirl, Carla Gugino, The Tempting Devil of The Fall of the House of Usher, and Christine Elmore and Natasha Behnam, starring in Girls on the Bus, represent four perspectives and four generations. I talked to the cast members of the girl series of the year on Zoom.
One of the most important aspects of the series is how the characters try to find the right work-life balance while constantly on the road as a political journalist. As actors, you travel a lot, shoot a lot away from your home. Is it possible to find balance this way?
Carla Gugino: Impossible. Believe me, I have been in this for a long time, and sometimes there are moments when I feel that I have managed to fix one part of my life, and then I see that I have managed to achieve this at the expense of the other part. Maybe over time you will find a better balance, things will improve, but there is no ideal state, or at least I don't think it can be achieved. We like to think, and the media also echoes the image, that as women we can achieve everything at once and perform equally well in all areas, but unfortunately life does not work that way. Rather, life is a constant balancing act. We try to figure out how to do it right, and that process continues until the day we die. This may sound negative, but it is actually what makes our lives enjoyable. The good thing about the series is that it can show us this.
Christine Elmore: I love that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. There is no such thing as if I do it this way, then you do it that way and it will be good for you too. We have to find the right path ourselves. The characters in the series all get different answers to the same question. At the current stage of my life, I am raising two small children, which obviously changes this balance a lot. It will probably be quite different when the kids are older, and it was different when I started my career and didn't have kids yet.
In different life stages, different things are really important to you, so the balance is also different. There was a time when my whole life was about work, and now, next to the children, my unread e-mails accumulate like the children's laundry.
Such is life. (laughs) No one can excel in every aspect of life, and Girls on the Bus shows just that.
Melissa Benoist: There is no perfect balance, or if there is, I haven't found it yet. Life keeps throwing obstacles in front of you, and you try to somehow jump over them.
Natasha Behnam: I don't know if you remember, Melissa, but the filming turned my life so upside down that I came up to you on one of the first days of filming and asked how you do it, how everything works so well in your life, and with such a career , you also have a family, you are a mother. You looked at me and said you had no idea because you weren't doing well either. (laughs) If Melissa doesn't even know, how would I know? (name)
Melissa Benoist: You just go forward, you make mistakes, but you try to do your best. I think that's all we can do.
Melissa, you are not only the actress of the series, but also the producer. Could you tell us what concept you worked on as a producer?
Melissa Benoist: Girls on the Bus is the result of a very long development process, and I didn't join it at the very beginning. Most of the themes that I thought were important to develop were already there in the script. For example, female journalists are often accused of sleeping with their sources for information. We show how baseless this accusation is, since the moment the journalist becomes zero in the eyes of the profession, as soon as this is proven. As a producer, I had more influence on casting.
Natasha Behnam: Hey, I didn't know that!
Melissa Benoist: I did watch your casting video. (laughs) I saw that your recordings with Christina are fantastic. But my opinion was not only important at the level of the main characters, but I was involved in the selection of all the characters. It feels good to be more responsible for a series and not only have a say in the development of my own character.
In the series, Sadie asks the subject during one of her interviews what he thinks are five things the reader should know about him. Now I'm asking you the same thing.
Christine Elmore: Are you sure you need five? Is less not enough? (name)
Melissa Benoist: I'm not interesting enough to know five things about me. (laughs) Should I start listing things that I can't eat dairy products now? Should be good! When we first meet, I will immediately ask you when your birthday is.
Natasha Behnam: I can attest to that. He asked me too. Rather, mention what an amazing leader you are. As a producer, you not only looked after the series, but also over us, and you always made sure that we had a good time. And at the same time, you should also know that she is a really crazy girl who is always in a bit of trouble. The world may not know this, but the moment has come for them to finally find out.
Melissa Benoist: (laughing hard) Thank you so much for sharing.
Natasha Behnam: Sorry to snap
Carla Gugino: There is no good answer to this question. (laughs) What do you think I can do by just watching the movies and series I've been in and hope you enjoy them? (laughs) Ideally, I learn something new about myself with each role. From Grace on the Girls on the Bus, I learned persistence, authenticity, and the need to look at topics from the right distance in order to have a better perspective. And I also learned from Grace how much our personality is influenced by where we come from, but at the same time we have the ability to change. Grace is already in the second half of her life, and we tend to believe that people don't change after a certain age, but her case also shows that there are people who change only later.
Christine Elmore: When someone asks me to tell you five things about myself, I can't even think of my own name. (laughs) I'd rather tell you five things that I liked about the series. I got to work with the most wonderful and normal colleagues. Believe me, it seems almost impossible, but I have not met a single asshole in any of the departments, which is a very special thing in this profession. I got a wonderful character in Kimberlyn, and even though we are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, I could understand her and her choices. From Kimberlyn, I learned the importance of self-confidence and standing up for myself. It was wonderful that while the background is the world of politics and media, Girls on the Bus is actually about friendship and family.
Your characters in the series constantly want to prove themselves and others. As an actor, was it easy for you to relate to that?
Natasha Behnam: It's not easy being an actor. You have to constantly prove that you are the best for a given role. And not only at castings, but even after you've already played the part. People of color and members of the queer and trans community especially do not have it easy.
Melissa Benoist: Journalists working on campaigns and actors definitely have one thing in common, that we spend a lot of time away from home because of our work. You make serious sacrifices to be able to work, and that can only be done by someone who is driven by true passion in their work. Sometimes you feel that it is not worth it, but from time to time your work gives you such a sense of success that you think it was worth the many sacrifices.
How did you prepare for the role? What or who was your inspiration for your designs?
Christine Elmore: AMYCHOZICK 's book was definitely the biggest help. Fortunately, it was very well scripted, and the pilot episode already did a lot for me to understand Kimberlyn's character. I liked that our characters were not clear copies of real people. Amy met a lot of different journalists during the political campaigns, and our characters were made up of a lot of different people. I didn't feel like I needed to know someone to base my character on.
SHARING
NLC.HU LEISURE INTERVIEW WITH THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF GIRLS ON THE BUS
"We like to believe that as women we can achieve everything at the same time, we can perform equally well in all areas, but unfortunately life doesn't work that way"
Four journalists. Four actresses. More specifically, four actresses playing journalists. Melissa Benoist, aka Supergirl, Carla Gugino, The Tempting Devil of The Fall of the House of Usher, and Christine Elmore and Natasha Behnam, starring in Girls on the Bus, represent four perspectives and four generations. I talked to the cast members of the girl series of the year on Zoom.
TóCsa
April 13, 2024
One of the most important aspects of the series is how the characters try to find the right work-life balance while constantly on the road as a political journalist. As actors, you travel a lot, shoot a lot away from your home. Is it possible to find balance this way?
Carla Gugino: Impossible. Believe me, I have been in this for a long time, and sometimes there are moments when I feel that I have managed to fix one part of my life, and then I see that I have managed to achieve this at the expense of the other part. Maybe over time you will find a better balance, things will improve, but there is no ideal state, or at least I don't think it can be achieved. We like to think, and the media also echoes the image, that as women we can achieve everything at once and perform equally well in all areas, but unfortunately life does not work that way. Rather, life is a constant balancing act. We try to figure out how to do it right, and that process continues until the day we die. This may sound negative, but it is actually what makes our lives enjoyable. The good thing about the series is that it can show us this.
Christine Elmore: I love that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. There is no such thing as if I do it this way, then you do it that way and it will be good for you too. We have to find the right path ourselves. The characters in the series all get different answers to the same question. At the current stage of my life, I am raising two small children, which obviously changes this balance a lot. It will probably be quite different when the kids are older, and it was different when I started my career and didn't have kids yet.
In different life stages, different things are really important to you, so the balance is also different. There was a time when my whole life was about work, and now, next to the children, my unread e-mails accumulate like the children's laundry.
Such is life. (laughs) No one can excel in every aspect of life, and Girls on the Bus shows just that.
Melissa Benoist: There is no perfect balance, or if there is, I haven't found it yet. Life keeps throwing obstacles in front of you, and you try to somehow jump over them.
Natasha Behnam: I don't know if you remember, Melissa, but the filming turned my life so upside down that I came up to you on one of the first days of filming and asked how you do it, how everything works so well in your life, and with such a career , you also have a family, you are a mother. You looked at me and said you had no idea because you weren't doing well either. (laughs) If Melissa doesn't even know, how would I know? (name)
Melissa Benoist: You just go forward, you make mistakes, but you try to do your best. I think that's all we can do.
Melissa, you are not only the actress of the series, but also the producer. Could you tell us what concept you worked on as a producer?
Melissa Benoist: Girls on the Bus is the result of a very long development process, and I didn't join it at the very beginning. Most of the themes that I thought were important to develop were already there in the script. For example, female journalists are often accused of sleeping with their sources for information. We show how baseless this accusation is, since the moment the journalist becomes zero in the eyes of the profession, as soon as this is proven. As a producer, I had more influence on casting.
Natasha Behnam: Hey, I didn't know that!
Melissa Benoist: I did watch your casting video. (laughs) I saw that your recordings with Christina are fantastic. But my opinion was not only important at the level of the main characters, but I was involved in the selection of all the characters. It feels good to be more responsible for a series and not only have a say in the development of my own character.
In the series, Sadie asks the subject during one of her interviews what he thinks are five things the reader should know about him. Now I'm asking you the same thing.
Christine Elmore: Are you sure you need five? Is less not enough? (name)
Melissa Benoist: I'm not interesting enough to know five things about me. (laughs) Should I start listing things that I can't eat dairy products now? Should be good! When we first meet, I will immediately ask you when your birthday is.
Natasha Behnam: I can attest to that. He asked me too. Rather, mention what an amazing leader you are. As a producer, you not only looked after the series, but also over us, and you always made sure that we had a good time. And at the same time, you should also know that she is a really crazy girl who is always in a bit of trouble. The world may not know this, but the moment has come for them to finally find out.
Melissa Benoist: (laughing hard) Thank you so much for sharing.
Natasha Behnam: Sorry to snap.
Carla Gugino: There is no good answer to this question. (laughs) What do you think I can do by just watching the movies and series I've been in and hope you enjoy them? (laughs) Ideally, I learn something new about myself with each role. From Grace on the Girls on the Bus, I learned persistence, authenticity, and the need to look at topics from the right distance in order to have a better perspective. And I also learned from Grace how much our personality is influenced by where we come from, but at the same time we have the ability to change. Grace is already in the second half of her life, and we tend to believe that people don't change after a certain age, but her case also shows that there are people who change only later.
Christine Elmore: When someone asks me to tell you five things about myself, I can't even think of my own name. (laughs) I'd rather tell you five things that I liked about the series. I got to work with the most wonderful and normal colleagues. Believe me, it seems almost impossible, but I have not met a single asshole in any of the departments, which is a very special thing in this profession. I got a wonderful character in Kimberlyn, and even though we are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, I could understand her and her choices. From Kimberlyn, I learned the importance of self-confidence and standing up for myself. It was wonderful that while the background is the world of politics and media, Girls on the Bus is actually about friendship and family.
Your characters in the series constantly want to prove themselves and others. As an actor, was it easy for you to relate to that?
Natasha Behnam: It's not easy being an actor. You have to constantly prove that you are the best for a given role. And not only at castings, but even after you've already played the part. People of color and members of the queer and trans community especially do not have it easy.
Melissa Benoist: Journalists working on campaigns and actors definitely have one thing in common, that we spend a lot of time away from home because of our work. You make serious sacrifices to be able to work, and that can only be done by someone who is driven by true passion in their work. Sometimes you feel that it is not worth it, but from time to time your work gives you such a sense of success that you think it was worth the many sacrifices.
How did you prepare for the role? What or who was your inspiration for your designs?
Christine Elmore: Amy Chozick 's book was definitely the biggest help. Fortunately, it was very well scripted, and the pilot episode already did a lot for me to understand Kimberlyn's character. I liked that our characters were not clear copies of real people. Amy met a lot of different journalists during the political campaigns, and our characters were made up of a lot of different people. I didn't feel like I needed to know someone to base my character on.
However, because of this, I still had to prepare for the role, for example, I had to find my own TV announcer voice and speaking style, and I also worked a lot to get to know the work of TV people and journalists a little more closely and to understand the way they talk to each other. The Internet helped me a lot in this, but the journalist Abby Phillip , who had a career in the media that my character aspires to, also worked as a consultant for the production, so I was able to learn a lot from her.
Carla Gugino: Amy was there for us the whole time, we could count on her for any questions. He is very good at conveying his personal experiences in such a way that they give us universal lessons. One of the best things about acting is that you can immerse yourself in completely foreign worlds and learn something new all the time, and that's exactly what happened in Girls on the Bus . They wrote really good characters for us, it was a real luxury that we only had enough to do with them to bring to life everything that was written on paper.
What I found very exciting about Grace was that she came from a family of journalists and was doing exactly what her father had achieved great success with at the time. For this reason, he views the profession somewhat romantically, but at the same time he had to rebel against the side represented by his father in order to find his own identity in it. Of the four girls, Grace is considered the veteran, who knows the profession inside and out, and because of this, looks at this world a little more realistically, her naivety has already disappeared. He knows the negative side of things and is no longer surprised when he encounters them. I find it enviable that he remained curious and interested even after spending so many years in the profession. He is always open to young people and likes to help their work.
Melissa Benoist: Amy Chozick not only helped us with her book, but also gave us a reading list of books from which we can learn a lot about the world of political journalism. I read everything from What It Takes: The Way to the White House to Boys on the Bus . I was completely engrossed in this world, I really devoured the pages. It even occurred to me how funny it would be to change the career of a campaign reporter. (laughs) I watched documentaries, consulted a lot with Ashley Parker , who works at MSNBC and the Washington Post , so the information came from all directions.
Natasha Behnam: I also went through the reading tour and there were very interesting books, but at the same time my character, Lola, does not come from the traditional journalism side, she represents a new generation in the series. In order to learn about it, it was more helpful to study the people I follow on TikTok and Instagram a little more consciously. I've compiled a list of influencers who are also political activists. I looked at how they broadcast the news and how they can bring their personalities into the commentary on public affairs and politics. Since I was already in this world, it was not difficult for me, but I could still learn new things.
We live in an extremely polarized world. Although the four protagonists of Girls on the Bus are very different in their ideologies, they still become friends and learn to cooperate. Would that really be possible?
Christine Elmore: If you look a little closer into the world of politicians, you will regularly see politicians from two opposite ends of the pole in Washington, who seem to disagree with each other, regularly have dinner together and have good conversations for years, or they go to the same poker club and spend every weekend together they smoke cigars.
Although today we tend to think that this is not possible, I think you can be someone's friend while disagreeing on many things and still be able to work together. I believe the same can be true for journalists. I love how these four women never let their ideological differences get in the way of their friendship. I think that disagreeing on certain things only deepens their friendship because they need to have deeper conversations about these topics.
Even when the four of them are fighting, they still look out for each other and care about each other. I loved shooting these because I think this is exactly what a true friendship should look like. And of course it also helped that the four of us really became friends on set and got along really well. Thanks to this, we often experienced work as relaxation.
Carla Gugino: We are actors, our job is to make the audience believe in the friendship between us, but our job is much easier if it is already given and there is a real relationship between us. Just like our characters, we also differ from each other in many ways, our backgrounds are completely different, we belong to a different generation, we often see politics differently, but we were still able to find a common voice.
In a world that forces you to constantly choose sides, this series finally shows that despite our differences, we are all human.
It's something that will always connect us, and we can build on it, we just have to communicate with each other. If we talk, we will see that there are other points of view besides our own.
Natasha Behnam: My favorite scenes were the four of us together. In the last two episodes, we had a lot of scenes together, and it was fantastic that the four of us were locked in the same space for an extended period of time.
Melissa Benoist: When we shot the scene of the exploding campaign bus, we were out in the middle of nowhere, and we had plenty of time to talk between takes. The four of us and Carla's dog, Melvil, who hung out with us all day, had fun on the top of the bus all day.
Episodes of Girls on the Bus can be seen on HBO Max.
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