With the way they interact with each other, you’d think these native Californians had been friends all their lives. And in fact, they do have many mutual friends — for example, Stewart’s boyfriend, actor Michael Angarano, co-starred with Reed in Lords of Dogtown. But if you’ve read Stephenie Meyer’s original Twilight book, you know their characters aren’t the best of buddies. In the movie directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), Bella (Stewart) falls quickly in love with the handsome vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson), but another vampire close to Edward, Rosalie (Reed), is against the twosome hooking up — for reasons that aren’t readily apparent until later in the book series.

A lot of Rosalie’s coldness toward Bella in the book is non-verbal, with glares and icy stares and such. Do you explore that more verbally in the film?
Nikki: No. Kristen feels that presence with me anyway. She’s naturally just very scared of me. [laughs] The only problem with that for me is when you read 700 pages of a book, a character won’t come off as one-dimensional but when you turn that into a screenplay where obviously it revolves around Bella and Edward, there isn’t enough time. There were a few scenes that I can think of where I actually said to the producers, “It would be really great if we could not shoot this only because it turns into a cliché unintentionally" — scenes where she would walk by and I would just stare at her. It’s like, OK, we’ve seen that in every other high school movie so let’s not do that. For people who are not Twilighters, it’ll just make all the other characters beside Kristen and Rob, the ones you can’t explore in great depth, look very cliché.
Kristen: It’s arbitrary anger.
Nikki: Yeah, its not necessary so I’d rather have less of me and a few scenes that describe my character further as opposed to just floating around.
Kristen: Rosalie’s story will come out later. In the first one, you don’t really know why but there’s a very good reason why she’s feeling the way she is.

That said, was there anything thrown into the script from later books to flesh out that relationship?
Nikki: I read all the books before we started shooting. I read the script and it was great, but there was nothing for me to really do. We shot a kitchen scene once where I just distinctly remember Catherine coming up to me and going, “So we have one problem: Everything we’ve done is not usable because your eyes are watering and vampires don’t cry.” I was really feeling like that element of hurt and pain, which is where Rosalie is coming from, is not like meaningless anger or bitchiness. But it seems like with my career, no matter what I do, people like to go, “Oh, she’s just playing that character!”

Did you all use outside sources to inform yourself on how to play a vampire, or a girl in love with a vamp?
Kristen: For me, it was just living with the book. There was nothing outside of the book because vampires don’t exist. Our vampires are very distinctly different from the classic vampire. They’re people — at least the “goodies” are, fighting their inner vampire. They’re really, really trying desperately to push it down. It’s like they’ve got the plague or something and they can’t be around people and they’re very self-loathing. That’s why Rob was sort of perfect for the part because everyone else came in thinking of them as outsiders — like in the book, the way the humans think of them: “I just have to be good looking and confident and walk a certain way.” But they’re not like that so Rob came in with the right mind-set, like what would it be like to live 108 years alone and hating yourself. So he was perfect for that part. [laughs]
Nikki: Some of the other kids in the movie will say, “I studied Lost Boys,” and Peter Facinelli said he studied Underworld. [laughs] I didn’t only because I feel like this is one of those things that you can approach from any angle, and like she said, we didn’t have the fangs and we don’t sleep in coffins. Those are all classic vampire qualities and we didn’t have any of that. When we first got to Portland for filming, Catherine put me and every other vampire in cat class [to learn how to move like a vampire], and it wasn’t very useful. The entire shooting process felt more like an independent film than you can imagine. It was very chaotic and a lot going on in multiple units, trying to pick up pieces. I don’t think anyone going into this — from the actors all the way up to the studio — really knew what they were getting into. When the day came, it wasn’t about our cat classes or our lions-eating-bear video or baseball practice.
Kristen: Those sort of filled our days, and we felt like we had to cram in all of our actual rehearsal — not even rehearsal, but just sessions together to think about it — at night.

It’s interesting that you bring up an indie sensibility, because reading the book, it’s at its core an intimate character study.
Nikki: Reading the books, I sort of envisioned something more fantasy-like. They brought Catherine Hardwicke on for a reason: She has a very specific style, and that is her specialty, stories about youth and love. Her style is pretty consistent. The end result of the film is great, but it does have a different look than what I envisioned while reading.
Kristen: It was nice that we weren’t doing this big effects-driven, green-screen movie. It looks like it could be in the trailer; they’re trying to hype up and amplify the action-y sequences.
Nikki: It’s this big glossy thing, but it’s not that. It’s very character-driven and very intimate.
Kristen: And it’s slow. It’s a slow steady progression of a relationship and it’s quaint. It’s not what you’d expect. It’s also a very detailed, personal account of the story, and it’s like second-to-second thoughts. You’re reading about this girl’s fixations like they’re your own, so they happen slowly. It’s not like you get smacked in the face with big plot points in every chapter. You have to slowly figure out what’s going on.

(Photos by Deana Newcomb)