Trolling through some transcribed interview tidbits, I came across this bit recently from the press day maybe two months back for Henry Poole Is Here, in which Radha Mitchell talks about her work in Jonathan Mostow’s forthcoming The Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, Rosamund Pike and Ving Rhames. Better late than never, as they say:

“It’s set like tomorrow, only 10 or 20 years in the future, but there’s this conceit that people don’t live in the world, they just sit at home in these simulated chairs and experience everything through technology,” says Mitchell. “And a robot does everything for them. So the whole concept of identity is very interesting, because you play different genders and different ages, and who you are is kind of abstract. So I play two people surrogates, and then I play my operator. It’s funny — I get taken over by men, and then I’m a woman [too].”

The scale and logistics are a lot different from her work on director Mark Pellington‘s film, which was shot over a cramped 30 days in La Mirada last August, but Mitchell doesn’t mind. The Surrogates is “based on a graphic novel, and it’s a big action movie. It’s extravagant, like a big event,” she says. “I just finished two days ago, so my head’s in a new gear. It’s exciting and fun to be able to do a movie like Henry Poole Is Here and then a movie like that, and then this Australian movie in India I’m getting ready to do, The Waiting City, which is a tiny, beautiful character piece. But I do like the theatrics of the big films.”

And as for Bruce? Mitchell pauses, laughs a bit, then offers: “He’s interesting… he’s dynamic, and very much the tough guy. He’s very macho.”