Finding out what it is like through the looking glass chatting with "Alice Kingsleigh", the amazingly talented actress Mia Wasikowska. #‎ThroughTheLookingGlassEvent

**Disney provided an all-expense paid trip for me to cover this event, all opinions are 100% my own **

What was it like to play the iconic character "Alice Kingsleigh"? Recently myself and 24 awesome bloggers got to sit down and have a chat with the star of Alice Through the Looking Glass, the amazingly talented actress Mia Wasikowska. Mia Wasikowska is known for her roles in Crimson Peak and popular period pieces such as Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary among others. Her breakthrough role was in Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" and returning in the sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass. 

We tackled the tough questions like how it is being a role model for young girls and was it like working with Johnny Depp? (Okay that one was not that tough), but it was a fun interview with a down to earth actress who was just as beautiful in person as she is on the big screen.  Mia was soft-spoken and very sweet, we were excited to ask this star of the movie a bunch of questions and she was eager to answer all of our great questions, here are a few of my favorite from the interview.

 Photo Credit: Jana Seitzer / MerlotMommy.com

Question:  Alice, has gotten more independent...  How did it feel stepping back into the role with those changes, with the years that have gone by? 

Mia Wasikowska:  It was great,  I really love Alice and I like seeing her journey.  In the first film, she was a little uncomfortable and trying to bridge that gap between, knowing who she is on the inside and being able to be that on the outside. I think that was her journey in the first film. She's just spend years as the captain of her own ship, and she has a really strong sense of who she is.  Despite the fact that, expectations of her are really low in in her society she manages to hold on to that sense of being worth more than what people want of her. Which I think is really great and important for young girls and boys everywhere. 

Question:  What was Alice like for you growing up as an original story and then how do you feel about making the film? 

Mia Wasikowska:   I think like the great thing about the books is that you can read them at any stage in your life and they mean a completely different thing.  I think kids see stuff in it that adults don't and vice versa.  I like that it lends itself to like many different interpretations.  I hope if anything all these interpretations kind of bring people back to the original source material.

Question: You have a lot of relationships with the other characters in the movie.  Is there one that was your favorite?

Mia Wasikowska:   I like the relationship with Alice and Time.  Sasha plays a confident idiot very well.  He's this old powerful loser in a way and Alice is the only one that isn't scared enough to  pull him out on how he just doesn't make any sense at all.  I like that she sort of has no fear in approaching anyone.

Question:  What are some of the challenges that you faced, because there is so much CGI in green screen in this film?  Where there any particular challenges that you faced to stay in the role?

Mia Wasikowska:   I do a lot of running and then that translates to five months of running every day and jumping it feels quite physical.  That’s probably just like sustaining that level of energy and when you have quite little coming back at you in terms of the set.  It's just a big green blob of, light and there's not much.. We had a few more sets on this film, which was really great but otherwise it's quite like an abstract experience. I had a two week period before we started filming, with the stunt coordinators. 

They were really brilliant group of people.  There's no illusions to the fact that I did the like quite a lot of the physical stuff, but I had a wonderful stunt double, who did like a lot of that really difficult, painful stuff.  I would come in and do the fun, whimsy bits, and then she'd be like thrown across the room.  A film like this is great, and really fun, but it is definitely like a lot of hard work and, and a lot of very long days.

Question:  Your costumes were incredible.  Were you allowed to help with the creation of them? 

Mia Wasikowska:   A little bit. Colleen (Atwood), with the design, is really brilliant and she did the first one.   I knew her and so we were able to have a good dialogue about it, I had active kind of clothing. I had so many trousers, even when they kind of like look like skirts, they've got  a leg bit, which was really good and even having her captain suit at the beginning and the end, just a sense that she's like more active and less kind of restrained in her like gaudy dresses was quite nice.

Question:  Alice was such a great role model, especially for young girls or young women watching it.  Is there a particular message that you'd like for girls to take away from this movie?

                                    Photo Credit: Jana Seitzer / MerlotMommy.com

Mia Wasikowska:   She (Alice), seems to have this innate sense of who she is and, even though she's got all these challenges and people always questioning her, she manages to hold on to that really strong sense of herself even when she goes to the ball with the oriental costume and, she just doesn’t even seem to notice the judgment coming off of everybody else. That seems to roll off her back.  I guess just that sense of not caring so much about what other people think, I think, is really important. 

Question:   How does it feel to be a role model for young girls and young boys everywhere?  In your role, as Alice you are this independent woman who isn't worried about what other people think.

Mia Wasikowska:   It’s really great.  It's not something like I ever considered until you're doing a film and then you see it has a, an impact on people.  It's not something that I really ever thought about until like after the fact, I mean, I'm excited for this film for all sorts of reasons. We've come a long way and especially in this film where making, we kind of satirizing the idea of female hysteria, which only a hundred years ago was taken very seriously. It's a big step to be able to be like, this is so obviously ridiculous.  Not so long ago, it was so serious.  That’s a big step, and there's obviously a long way to go before, things are entirely equal. Slowly it's more normal that there's a lead character in a big, summer movie that's a female, and such a feisty one.  

Question: The movie has so many different themes to it, with family and friends and obviously not hating or despising Time.  What is the thing that resonated the most for you?

Mia Wasikowska:   I did really like that it, looks at the relationships between all the characters a lot, like Alice and her mother, and the Hatter and his father, it looks at sort of like the root of the rivalry between the sisters. Your own relationship with your mom changes again and again as you like grow older and you go through different stages in your life, and that kind of like reestablishing that relationship and how that happens constantly.  And that Alice and her mom like kind of learn from each other and are able to like really appreciate each other again.  It's really sweet in this.  I really liked that.

                                    Photo Credit: Jana Seitzer / MerlotMommy.com

Question:  What was it like working with Johnny Depp this time around, and how was it different from the first time?

Mia Wasikowska:  It was great.  The main difference was just that I knew him before and with all the cast I had like that level of familiarity with them and, um, that was really nice.  We all sort of knew each other and that always helps stepping into a project like this, which is quite abstract.  He’s such a wonderful person, such a lovely, sensitive like person. I love that he's so kind of creative.  All his characters are very, very different, but they're also distinctly his own characters. You always sort of know a Johnny Depp character, he's great.

Question:    What's up next for you? 

Mia Wasikowska:   I did a film which will be out sometime next year, otherwise I am just having some time off, which is really nice.  I filmed sort of quite a lot back to back for the last three years, and now I've just, had a really nice couple of months off until I sort of find the right project. I would love to do maybe like some comedy or something. I think it's really hard to find a good comedy.  There’s a million great dramas every year, but comedies maybe are like a tiny bit harder to find one that feels really great and funny.  I would like to explore that.

There are so many great quotes in this movie, and when asked for her favorite Mia replied “You can't change the past but you can learn from it”.  It’s the best way to kind of live your life and be in the moment, to accept what's happened in the past and move on into the future.” For me this is so true, you have to enjoy the time you have, you can you can’t change the past but you can do your best to learn from it, this is the biggest takeaway for me for this film and my favorite quote as well.  

Alice Through the Looking Glass is in theaters tomorrow, this is a film the whole family will love! Are you planning on taking the family? My family is excited to see it! Be sure to stay tuned for my film review and an interview with the film’s director James Bobin, I have a lot more great Alice Through the Looking Glass tidbits to share with you all.

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Alice Through the Looking Glass opens in theaters everywhere on May 27th!

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