Cruella Star Mark Strong Shares Crucial Insight Into Disney’s 101 Dalmatians Reboot
Courtesy of movieweb.com:
As far as unforgivable villains go, it is hard to beat Cruella de Vil. The evil nature of the character is spelled out right there in the name itself. Yet, humanizing such a dastardly character is exactly what the upcoming Disney movie Cruella intends to do, with Emma Stone playing the lead character of the villain from the 101 Dalmatians series. In an interview with Collider, Mark Strong, who is a part of the project, explained how the upcoming film will take viewers inside the mind of Cruella.
“What the film does, which is brilliant, is try to throw a light on where the Cruella that we think we know has come from. It’s a development story, as you see Cruella grow into the Cruella de Vil that we know and love to hate.”
The character of Cruella was invented by English author Dodie Smith as the main villain of her 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Cruella went on to become one of the most iconic Disney villains with the release of the animated 101 Dalmatians in 1961. Since then, the character has appeared in various forms in cartoons and live-animation, where her distinctive look and love for killing and skinning puppies to make coats out of their hides have made her a standout among Disney villains.
The upcoming origin movie starring Stone is set in London in the 1970s, where we will see Cruella in the early days of her career as a young fashion designer who becomes obsessed with dogs’ skins, especially dalmatians. Her obsession leads Cruella down increasingly darker paths until she eventually becomes the villain of legend that the audiences saw in 101 Dalmatians. According to Mark Strong, Cruella will be a massive and fantastical story set in the world of high fashion.
“I had a great time. Craig Gillespie, who directed it, I was a big fan of. I loved I, Tonya and I loved Lars and the Real Girl, the films that he made before I got to know him. Just liking the stuff he’d made meant that we wanted to work together, and he asked me to play this part in Cruella. It was fantastic being on set. It’s such a massive production. There are huge fashion and ballroom sequences in it, which are just so impressive. I got to be on set during those days and spend most of my time with the two Emmas – Emma Stone and Emma Thompson. It was just great being able to shoot the breeze with those guys during the downtime, and then play with them, telling this fantastical story that I think people are thoroughly going to enjoy, when the cameras were rolling.”
Cruella is directed by Craig Gillespie and features Emma Stone as Cruella de Vil, Emma Thompson as the Baroness, Paul Walter Hauser as Horace, Joel Fry as Jasper, Mark Strong as Boris, Emily Beecham as Anita, Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Tabitha, and Jamie Demetriou as Gerald. It is scheduled for release on May 28, 2021. This news arrives from Collider.