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Maia Mitchell & Susie Porter on The Artful Dodger Season 2 and That Bellybutton Scene · Kyle Meredith With...

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• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also recently talked with Thomas Brody Sankster and David Duelis, they are starring in the Artful Dodger, also playing the original Hulu series, you can find on Hulu and Disney Plus.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, it makes a lot of sense that now we're going to talk with Maya Mitchell and Susie Porter about this second season.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, Maya plays Lady Bell, Susie plays Lady Jane, and they
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, Maya will tell us about Belle's six months off-screen transformation, including surviving surgery, fighting to save Jack from the news, and losing some of her innocence along the way.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: While Suzy will share what it's like stepping back into Lady James privileged, but evolving perspective, especially as the show tackles poverty and sexism and class in 1850s, Australia.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: They're also going to get into the ultra-realistic medical scenes,
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  [SPEAKER_02]: complete with prosthetic torsos and live artery blood pumps, including what I think is the now infamous bellybutton moment that Mitchell calls the worst thing the show has ever made her do.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: All of that and more as we get into season two of the artful dodger, the Hulu original series out now in Hulu and Disney Plus.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle Amirath with Maya Mitchell and Susie Porter.
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  [SPEAKER_03]: Hello Kyle.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Pleasure to meet you both, and to be one of the many people I'm sure I'm sure congratulating you on just an outstanding second season of the Artful Dodger.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Susie, I'll I'll I'll start with you.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: You get two years away from a character like this, which seems like such a specific style of character.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is it hard to find your way back in like like what do you how do you find your way back to the voice of of Lady Jane?
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Look, sometimes I watch little clips from season one, just to remind myself exactly where I was.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: And also just having a dialect coach to bring you back to that.
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  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's always nerve-wracking the first day to be honest, like the first day after a period of time, you think, oh, God, I hope I can,
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  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, manage this.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then once that first day is over, that once the costume and you've read the script, you know where the character's heading.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: you kind of feel more settled, but it is that momentary thing of, oh, who am I again?
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It might be the same for you sort of too, because we see Belle gets her first real big defeat in this season.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: What was different in playing her this time around?
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because it seemed like, I don't know if she wasn't like sadder all the time, but it seemed like there was kind of a, you know, a bit heavier mood that sits with her this time.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, she's a different Belle.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: We,
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  [SPEAKER_04]: pick up season two six months where we left off six months after where we left off.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: So she's been through a life or death surgery.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's had to recover from that surgery.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's been so ill. She's got this kind of new grasp of life where she used to be played with anxiety about, you know, having this terminal thing.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: So she's really energized, but also has spent six months
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  [SPEAKER_04]: Fiting for Jack's life, advocating for him, trying to save him from the news, knowing that he's in jail and not being able to see him.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, not sleeping, not eating.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: So she is, she's a different Belle.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: She's not as plucky.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: She's not as naive.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: She's lost some innocence.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: But she's kind of stronger than ever.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: And way more dropped in and just a little more adult, honestly, she's had a bit of a coming advantage that we've not seen, but you're seeing it, you know.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: as we pick up and she's literally running for his life.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's a little heavier in tone for me this season, season two.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: And as you said, we see Bell having a real kind of humbling devastating moment in terms of her kind of blind ambition and her, dare I say like recklessness sometimes in terms of her ball win a China store style.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: which I think is good and you also see her looking quite critically at her relationships and her future and her romantic prospects.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not the kind of fairy tale romance that I think is tempting for a show like this.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: It really drops into some nuance and we get the introduction of a potential suitah
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, on another show, maybe might be an antagonist, but we love him because he's.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Dad and lovely and kind and clever and a door's bell for the reasons that we all do.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so it's an interesting, it's an interesting dynamic, but it was really fun to play.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think taking those two years was probably a good thing because Bell is in a different place.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I wasn't trying to match where we'd left off.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: I sort of was working with the dialect
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  [SPEAKER_04]: vocal drop down in levels and playing with that in different physicalities.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: So the break may be helped a little.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we'll be right back right out of this.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle Meredith with Maya Mitchell and Susie Porter.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's it, and to kind of piggyback there is because it's interesting the way you will play with the characters, you know, what's a villain, what's not to the villain, the relationship between both of your characters, and the way you tackle bigger topics, I mean, the line I keep going back to punishing the poor because they're poor, you know, it's like I start you.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: because this show is so many different things, you know, whether it's historical drama, a little comedy and all of this stuff.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Susan, maybe you can speak to this because you do have this character.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's not a villain.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: She's in charge of a lot of things.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: I think she's trying to make the right decisions, but at the same time, like you do get to speak to these bigger topics, right?
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and also I think that character's never feel
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, don't see themselves as villains.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I completely believe that Jane obviously is doing doing the right things and it's through the story through.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jane of talking about the different thing that women, you know, that what women can't do, as well, also like it devil's elbow, like so shocked at seeing how others live, like when you're in your own bubble of privilege to then not to actually be shocked at some of the poverty that she had never seen.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think is a really, really big thing to go, wow.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this exists,
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  [SPEAKER_03]: this exists rather than keep one social standing and spinning all the plates.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I think that was a sort of thing and just the role of female, sort of what they got to do back then was really not a great deal and you have to hide what you're doing because it wouldn't have been allowed.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: the medical part of this, and maybe on the, you know, the silly or trivial side, I'll ask this, Maya.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: But do any of the surgeries ever feel too real?
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I know we do a lot of moving magic there.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, they are so realistic.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the most tactile experience because they, I mean, our prosthetics, you know, makeup department is unbelievably talented, like they build
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: These full prosthetic torsos that you can cut open, they've got the organs in there, the organs are in the right spot.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have so many rehearsals like it.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Whenever we're not on set where doing rehearsals for the surgeries coming up in the next block and where we have a doctor who's on Zoom with us or in the room with us talking us through how to do these surgeries because we're doing them practically like in a wide shot.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so, and they've got, you know, these blood kind of tubes that, if we, you know, on camera, oh, the arteries burst, someone's pumping blood so that you, there's blood spurting everywhere, like it's so realistic.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think the pressure of being on camera as well and like only having one shot to do,
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: the cutting not that it's the same as life or death but sometimes in our industry it feels like life or death if you're not going to if you're going to mess it up like they've only got that one tool so so yes it is it helps with the tension and there's some really amazing procedures this season and some really cool prosthetics are
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I would say I thought seeing a person you're in need out of their belly button would be enough, but seeing what you do with your finger in that scene even tops that.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: So awful.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: That was the worst thing that our show run has ever done to me.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: I told him that.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: And I made him come to set and put his finger in that belly button before I did it.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's a true fact.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: That was my last scene of the whole season.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: They put that last.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: That was my like, that's a wrap on Maya was me.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Billy Button think, yeah, horrible, awful, gross, disgusting.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: Lasting memories.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thank you, James.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we'll be right back, right out of this.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back, it's Kyle, Meredith with Maya Mitchell and Susie Porter.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: You brought a box of the character in Susie, I just think, because you just worked with Luke Wrights.
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I did just work with Luke.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: We played brother and sister actually on Bruce Barris, for his latest film called The Travelers.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I had actually worked with Luke before and another film quite a few years ago.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, this was now the third time, but it was just so great because I had finished the travelers and then like a few months later, I find out that Luke's
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Playing boxes so I was really excited to see him because we, yeah, get on really, really well, and obviously have like a real brother's sister relationship is the truth in the way we joke and so yeah, it was just gorgeous to see him in a completely different character.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: See, I know the whole thing about sometimes accidentally calling the actor by the real name, but it seems to me after you worked like that, like the possibility of just like many names running through your head.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we had lots of laughs and lots of, you know, inappropriate.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: jokes probably when we were filming yeah yeah that's true he's a real character he plays he stops you know and and gets a paper and fills out the crossword yeah he loves the cryptic crossword he's like old school you know he gets the pan and he's got the he's just old school stops at the news agents you know on the way to work and I love that kind of like he's an old soul
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but he's also like such a man, Lee Boy, like he walks around barefoot and, yeah, you think he's a gorgeous fellow.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's great.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I love what you all do, seriously.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Congratulations on this season.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been so great watching you and I cannot wait to see where the story goes to.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you all so much for taking the time today.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks a lot.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
• 13:30
  [UNKNOWN]: Bye.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: My thanks to Maya and Susie, the season 2 of the Artful Dutcher, playing now on Hulu and Disney.
• 13:37
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• 13:44
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• 13:59
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• 14:03
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