I don’t know if it was the writing in this Variety interview or if Kirsten Dunst comes across like a sulky teenager sometimes, but this Variety cover story is definitely a weird read. Dunst covers Variety to promote Civil War, the Alex Garland film where she plays a war photographer covering… a modern American civil war, with a Trump-like figure refusing to leave the White House and all hell breaking loose. The fictional Trump-like president is played by Nick Offerman, which sounds like a joke but apparently all of this is being played as straight drama, including the part where Garland filmed in Atlanta and borrowed Tyler Perry’s White House set, the one Perry used for a Madea film. Seriously, are we sure this isn’t a comedy?? Anyway, back to Kirsten. The vibe is definitely weird, but I kind of wonder if she just wasn’t feeling this particular interviewer. Some highlights:

‘Civil War’ is fiction: “The whole movie is open to interpretation. For me, there were things I just accepted that were unexplained. It allows the audience to fill in their own feelings about what they’re watching. It feels fictitious to me,” she says of any connection between Nick Offerman’s character and Donald Trump. “I don’t want to compare because that’s the antithesis of the film. It’s just a fascist president. But I didn’t think about Nick’s character being any certain political figure. I just thought this is this president, in this world, who will not abide by the Constitution and democracy.”

How she’s voting in this year’s election: “I’m gonna vote for Biden. That’s my only option. Right?” (Though she laments that Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke, a home-state politician for her Dallas-born husband, didn’t go the distance in the 2020 presidential primary.)

She’s a practicing Christian: “I did have both my children baptized because I love the tradition. I believe in God.”

The American divide: “Media really stokes it big time. The media is forcing us to choose a side. Everything’s a lot more complicated than that.” Dunst, a onetime Bernie Sanders supporter, may be voting for the Democrat in the upcoming presidential race, but she’s not thrilled with her choices. “It’s just shocking that we’re in this position again,” she says of the rematch between Trump and Joe Biden. “It’s just money, money, money, money, money.” Then, Dunst’s voice cracks with emotion: “Everything is broken. Everything needs to be fixed.”

Working with Woody Allen in “New York Stories” when she was a little kid: “I remember they wanted to send a car down to New Jersey to pick me up to play with Dylan [Farrow]. My mom was like, ‘I’m not sending my daughter in a town car to go on some play date without me.’”

She never thought she was a famous actress as she was growing up: “I was walking to like the convenience store and talking to some kids, and they’re like, ‘Well, my agent says I’m the next Kirsten Dunst.’ I just thought, ‘Y’all crazy. I have a Jersey mother. Very East Coast.’ I never thought, ‘I’m famous.’ Like, I went to normal schools.”

But her costars always gave her special gifts: “There’d be a gorgeous Christmas tree fully decorated in my dressing room from Tom. He treated me like a princess,” she says of Cruise. As a wrap gift for “Jumanji,” Robin Williams bought a 13-year-old Dunst her first computer. “It was an Apple, the ones that came in all those different colors. He was like the most generous, kind, funny person.” While shooting “Little Women” in the dead of summer, Dunst and Sarandon’s daughter, Eva Amurri, ran a lemonade stand that attracted co-stars Winona Ryder and Christian Bale as customers.

On the ‘Bring It On’ franchise, of which she only starred in the first one: “I didn’t even think about it then, but these days, I would have been a producer on ‘Bring It On.’ But I wasn’t.” She has no desire to revisit the franchise. “People keep saying we should do another ‘Bring It On.’ I’m like, ‘No. What would we do?’”

Tobey Maguire pulled down a reported $17 million to reprise his role in ‘Spider-man’: “It might have been more, actually,” Dunst speculates. As for her salary, “It was different. A lot different. And I was in ‘Bring It On’ and had a track record.”

She’s only done a couple of movies for the money: “When I was younger, in my 20s, I didn’t have the best guidance, I would say, and I did a couple of duds for money reasons, but nothing that I would have actually done otherwise. I get offered the most money on things I don’t want to do. As soon as I took the reins and started to develop my tastes and who I wanted to work with, everything shifted.”

[From Variety]

In some ways, it’s sort of refreshing to hear Dunst talk about some of these subjects in such a matter-of-fact way – I didn’t know she baptized her children, I didn’t know she had ruefully (?) decided to vote for Biden, and I didn’t know that she turned down well-paying gigs just because they didn’t align with her artistic sensibilities. On the other hand, I rolled my eyes at the “everything is broken” stuff. Is a lot of sh-t broken? Yes. Is the whole Trump era and MAGA cult a really dark period of American history? Yes. Is the answer to fangirl over Beto and Bernie? Probably not.

This week’s Variety cover story:

Kirsten Dunst Confronts ‘Civil War’ Hysteria, Hollywood Pay Gaps and the Media Dividing America: ‘Everything Is Broken’
https://t.co/jO9jh6v20f pic.twitter.com/rYWVxGw8ua

— Variety (@Variety) April 3, 2024

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.