Pulling a film together isn’t easy, but it’s even more impressive when your first official producing credit is Kick-Ass 2 – certainly a not to shabby effort. Producer and Sydney native Leonie Mansfield chatted to TOM Magazine about breathing new life into the superhero sequel and being a costume-film convert.
TOM: IMDB tells me Kick-Ass 2 is your first producing role?
Leonie: Yes. It’s the first time I’ve been credited in the producing team which is brilliant, very happy about that.
TOM: It’s a pretty good project to have your first producing credit on!
Leonie: Yeah I didn’t mind, wasn’t complaining!
TOM: Was it daunting at all?
Leonie: Not so much because I’ve been working at Marv Films which is Matthew Vaughns production company for a number of years before so I was his assistant on the first Kick-Ass, I felt like I really knew the project inside out and it was actually probably the best way to get into the producing side because I’d had such a solid foundation of working on the first one and knowing the team at Marv Films so well. It was exciting.
TOM: Was it largely the same team that worked on the first Kick-Ass?
Leonie: We did actually have a lot of the same crew which was really great. That really helped because Jeff [Waidlow] our director was the new boy, and I think it made him feel very supported by the crew who’d all been through the first film and helped him come up with all his amazing new ideas. We had that nice loyalty.
TOM: Writer/Director Jeff Waidlow seems to be a relative newbie to feature films – what sensibilities did he bring to the project?
Leonie: He’s an excellent writer, he had some great ideas whilst he was writing and ideas that Mark Miller [creator of the comic books] and Matthew all loved. The main thing is he’s American, I’m Australian but everyone else is essentially English so the first one we were all making an American film set in Britain and for the second one we had an American guy brought into Britain to make the American film. I guess that was the biggest difference – he had the sensibilities of how the language works, slang which really helped give it an authenticity and he brought different tastes to the fight scenes and choreography. Justice Forever are essentially normal people turned vigilante so I guess he had a bit more of a martial arts slant on the fight scenes and those nuances that gave it his style.
TOM: The graphic novel of which Kick-Ass 2 is based off is quite explicit – how do you know where to set your boundaries with the film?
Leonie: Yeah, it’s a hard thing, especially when you have this 11-year-old cussing killer and a lot of people were like ‘that is not cool. You have to water that down.’ And that is one of the biggest challenges, to remain loyal because that’s what makes it so original. Because Hit Girl’s a bit older in this one in that sense we didn’t have so much of a shocking reveal but there’s still a high level of violence, it’s graphic, and it’s that fine line of we want to remain loyal to the source material – Mark Millars stuff is very graphic – but then also the film’s premise is that this is real life. In a way you don’t want to water it down because it’s a dangerous thing these characters are doing. Walking down the street in a green wetsuit is risky business. Everyone was sort of aware of that line and I think you sort of dance over it.
TOM: I suppose it’s one of those things where audiences take it or leave it.
Leonie: Exactly.
TOM: What made you passionate about bringing Kick-Ass 2 to the screen?
Leonie: I think we all loved the first project – the way we made that film was very exciting and we hoped the risk would pay off and it did. The second one, the challenge was how do we make a sequel that doesn’t just re-hash the first one and the thing that drew me to it was the three characters Hit Girl, Kick-Ass and The Motherfucker, they all have very interesting character arcs – they all have a journey to go on. I think it was important to all of us that the characters did evolve in some way that wasn’t just another fight film. Particularly with me I loved all the stuff with Mindy McCready trying to fit in in high school and all of that. It really showed her in a new light, that she was grappling with things everyone else grapples with.
TOM: Justice Forever is an eclectic bunch – how was the casting process for those characters as they are so unique?
Leonie: I think Jeff particularly had so much fun casting those roles. The team we ended up with are brilliant, I think everyone’s just so fun – as an actor I imagine it would be so fun to play, to get into your roles and your funny costumes.
TOM: Who’s your favourite member?
Leonie: Ooh, that’s really hard. I really love Tommy’s Mum and Dad, my heart warms so much to them.
TOM: Previous to Kick-Ass 2 you’ve worked as assistant to Matthew Vaughn on a number of films including X-Men: First Class and the original Kick-Ass – do you share a similar taste in films?
Leonie: Well I started out as the office assistant at Marv Films and I’ve slowly worked my way up so I’ve got to know the team very well. I will be honest and I’ve always said I would never have ordinary gone to see a movie like Kick-Ass at the cinema, it was so not the kind of film I would see. Having been at Marv Films for 5 ½ years I adore superhero films now. I think they’re so fun, their fabulous adventures, they’re a brilliant genre so I’ve certainly come around and I love all the films I’ve been involved with. Every now and then I would have loved to have read a comedy or a drama, don’t get me wrong, but action and thrillers and superhero films I’m a huge fan of and very fortunate to be involved in that slate of work.
TOM: Kick-Ass 2 has upped the ante with the number and intensity of their action sequences – how was the training process for the actors?
Leonie: Aaron and Chloe were used to it from the first film, even though there’d been four years between them they were still used to that sort of training. The biggest challenge was our Mother Russia role because she was an unknown. She had a bodybuilding background was in very rigorous training right through production and Olga did a brilliant job, she was fabulous. She did a lot with the stunt team – she knew what she was doing, she had that background but it was just learning the choreography through those sequences so it could be shot the way Jeff wanted to shoot it.
TOM: The final showdown between Mother Russia and Hit Girl is quite brutal – did you approach that with any trepidation because she’s really getting beaten up by this huge woman!
Leonie: I suppose we were so used to it having worked on the first that that’s the genre and we don’t pretend to be anything but. We’re a comic book film, that was in the script so that’s what was going to be done. I think the whole way through we really wanted that tension, that suspense of Hit-Girl vs. Mother Russia – we were really excited that Hit Girl has finally met her match in the fighting sense so that fight was really crucial. Obviously Hit Girl had to survive it but it’s all part of the storyline for Hit Girl.
TOM: Just to finish off, what’s next on the plate for you?
Leonie: I’m back in Sydney which is my hometown – I’ve come back to have a baby actually, I had my baby in March so now I’m working out what to do next. My plan is to produce independently here in Sydney as hard as that is from all reports but I’m in the middle of optioning a book which is a comedy/drama, a very different turn, and it focusses on motherhood so that’s the material I’m connecting with at the moment. Hopefully I’ll get that off the ground in the next couple of months.