Though the summer flick
Grind has come and gone,
SG had the chance to speak to female lead Jennifer Morrison about her part in the movie, her experience skating, and working with pros like our Oct./Nov. 2003 cover girl, Lauren Perkins, on set. Check out her interview below. And if you missed the film in theaters, keep an eye out for the video and DVD release.
--Robyn Lass
ROBYN: How's it going?
JENNIFER: Everything's going great!
We know of your acting history on "Dawson's Creek." [Jen laughs nervously.] Are there any other credits to your name or any other films that we might have seen you in?
Yeah, I was in Urban Legends II: The Final Cut. I played a character in that, and then I was also in Stir of Echoes, and I also did guest-star things on "Touched by an Angel" and "Any Day Now." I did a bunch of television shows right around the time I was doing "Dawson's Creek."
Can you describe your character in the movie a little bit? What kind of girl she is, and what the character is all about.
I play a pro skateboarder and my name is Jamie, and basically she skates with the guys and she's really at the top of her game. She has to sort of deal with some of the backlash that comes with being a girl skater amongst a bunch of guys. And having to prove herself over and over again and some of the repercussions that come with that.
How much actual skating does your character do?
[Laughing.] My character does a fair amount.
OK.
Which is what you see Lauren [Perkins] doing and she was...she's so awesome! She's so good. We were just saying, "You're 14, what are you doing?!" It was amazing...totally blew my mind to watch this girl. So she skated all that stuff for me, but there's a few kinda major scenes where you see her skate the street course for me.
Did you know Lauren at all before?
Had I skated before?
No, did you know Lauren Perkins at all?
Oh, no, I hadn't met her before. I met her on set.
You were obviously pretty impressed with her ability.
Yeah! [Laughing.] She made me look very good in the movie! She made me look very skilled. [Laughs more.]
And you skate as well?
Yeah, I actually learned on set. I had never skated before. So it was totally a crash course, no pun intended, but basically I found out that they wanted me for the job and things started moving very quickly. It was basically like, "Well, here's a skateboard!" [Laughs.]
So I kinda jumped on it. I had snowboarded before, so I had that behind me, and I have always been an athlete, so it helped. Morgan Stone was one of the producers who had grown up skating, and he helped out a lot. A lot of the pros on set and Lauren, everybody helped me just figure out how to get comfortable and move on the board and get to the point where I at least could just skate around comfortably and drop into a few of the smaller street ramps.
Wow, that's pretty good.
Yeah, they were able to cut it together really well because they had real footage of me dropping in on some of these ramps and then they could cut to Lauren jumping up and grinding a rail or whatever she does. You know?
What attracted you to this movie and to this character?
What attracted me to both Grind and Jamie was that first of all it's just really fun and funny--it's such an amazing, fun cast that the experience on set was, you know, you just can't compare to it. So just looking at it as an experience in general, I was looking forward to it. But also looking at it in terms of acting, Jamie's really a character who sticks up for herself and believes in what she's doing. She's a girl who is in a sport that is fairly new for a girl to really be excelling [in], in skateboarding and a lot of the extreme sports. And it's cool to be a part of exploring that world and representing it to other people so that all the girls out there can be like, "Yeah, I can do this too," you know? They don't feel hindered at all by thinking that "Oh, skateboarding's a boy's sport," or something like that; it's sort of bringing out there that it's open to all of us, being a strong, assertive young woman and sticking to what she wants and getting the guy she wants. It's fun!
Where there any cool behind-the-scenes stuff that you learned? Were there any major crashes for you or any instances that maybe come to mind?
Yeah, luckily I avoided major crashes, but behind the scenes was really pretty amazing. It was the most fun I've ever had on a set. Between takes, between setups, between anything, we never, never left the set--we were always hanging around because all of the guys were skating and these f--kin' guys are pulling tricks nobody has ever pulled before on our set, right there. And it was like you didn't ever want to miss a second of these guys skating--it was so insane and they were excited because they have all of these ramps and courses accessible to them all day that they can just mess around on. We just had a ball watching them. So it was kinda like a big party, you know, even though we had to take it seriously and make sure our lines were memorized, making sure everything was taken care of. We just hung out all day and we all got along so well. Skaters are so cool in the sense that they are really encouraging to each other. It's a sport that is constantly changing and growing, so once one guy nails one huge trick they find another variation to nail, and then another variation and another variation. It's a constant evolution of craziness, you know?
Sure.
