The road to “I do” for Milla Jovovich and her husband/frequent director, Paul W.S. Anderson, wasn’t without potholes.
“There was one point during the first Resident Evil where both myself and the director of photography had black eyes because Milla had punched us!” recalls Anderson, 59. He and his actress wife, 49, are cozily reminiscing for Us Weekly’s latest “In Conversation” entry — and to be clear, that jab wasn’t what you think. “Paul said, ‘Just punch straight, as if I’m the camera,’” Jovovich tells Us. “But he didn’t have a camera, so I punched him straight in the eye.”
Wed 15 years, the couple have thrived on creative (and unconventional) collabs, launching the iconic Resident Evil franchise in 2002 before falling in love, saying “I do” and welcoming three daughters: Ever, 17, Dashiel, 9, and Osian, 5. Their latest project, In the Lost Lands, hits theaters on Friday, March 7, and serves as the film adaptation for George R.R. Martin’s short story of the same name. Jovovich stars as the powerful sorceress Gray Alys opposite Dave Bautista’s Boyce, a quiet, cowboy-like hunter guiding her through a post-apocalyptic realm in hopes of locating a power shapeshifter. Anderson, meanwhile, serves as the film’s director.
Watch Anderson and Jovovich’s conversation in the video above or keep scrolling to read the banter-filled interview in full:
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Milla Jovovich: I’ll start.
Paul W.S. Anderson: Ladies first.
MJ: What is your favorite part of getting to direct me?
PA: Wow. This is for a family audience? [laughs]
MA: Like, direct me on set!
PA: I get it now. I think my favorite part of the day is the first half an hour when it’s just you and me on set with a couple of cups of coffee before the crew turn up where we get to talk about the day, and it’s pure creativity without 150 people there, asking questions. That’s terrific freedom, and it’s a wonderful time to create, connect with our surroundings, connect with the set. Really understand.
MJ: Yeah.
PA: Oh, this is a good one. If you were really a witch — because you’re not — and not just playing one, what would you want your powers to include?
MJ: I would like to be able to modify reality. And I would also love to have the power to be the best warrior and use any weapon to the best of the best abilities of the best warriors who ever lived.
PA: And Airbend probably, right? Because you love air bending.
MJ: Airbending is one of my secret passions, actually. I do it all the time in private. [laughs]. How did working with me change once we had kids together?
PA: Wow. Did it change? I don’t know if it did. We just ended up dragging the kids along with us onto the film sets and kept on working. And then our eldest daughter [Ever] fell in love with acting, so now she’s an actress.
MJ: It got harder, though. The more kids we had.
PA: It was easier with one because we could just drag her along with us. With three, you have to think more seriously about taking everyone outta school, going to different cities, different countries. So logistically it got a little harder, but —
MJ: Yeah. And night shoots. We do a lot of night shoots, and it’s hard to come back at, you know, 7 a.m. from a night shoot and everyone’s like, “Mama, Bubba, let’s play!”
PA: Let’s sleep [laughs]. Is it my turn? What was your first impression of me when we first worked together? Apart from the fact you punched me in the eye and gave me a black eye.
MJ: My first impression when we worked together was that you were super hot.
PA: Nice. I like that answer.
MJ: And you looked like Roger Waters’ cute younger brother. I was a big fan of Pink Floyd, and I knew afterwards that you also were a big fan [and had] good taste in music.
Us Weekly: Sorry to interrupt, but can we hear the black eye story?
PA: Black eye, you say!
MJ: What? Black eye story? I don’t know what you’re talking about.
PA: There was one point during the first Resident Evil where both myself and the director of photography had black eyes because Milla had punched us. Not in anger!
MJ: They asked for it. They put me in an impossible situation. Paul said, “Just punch straight at the camera as if I’m the camera.” But he didn’t have a camera, so I just punched him straight in the eye.
PA: Well, I imagined that she would imagine there was a camera in front of me. It takes her about “this much” space, but she just imagined the back of my head was the lens. [laughs] And just wham. So I saw how powerful her punches could be in real life.
MJ: Is it my turn?
PA: I think it is.
MJ: What made you want to direct the film adaptation of this George R. R. Martin short story?
PA: My wife said “You should direct this. This is amazing.”
MJ: It’s true.
PA: She brought me to it and introduced me to Constantin Werner who wrote the screenplay for us. And for me, the movie was a wonderful combination of two things I love. It was an adult fairytale where [the theme is] ‘Be careful what you wish for because bad things are gonna happen.’ [And] because this is a George R.R. Martin story, and also it was a western. I felt like George had written this story about two characters that don’t necessarily trust one another who have to go off on a mission together and learn to respect one another and care for one another. And that really reminded me of movies I’d loved as a kid. Like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Two Mules for Sister Sara — these iconic, strong 1960s, 1970s movies.
MJ: Yeah. And it was fun to watch you work and all the different iterations that the script went through. It was like, like, “Paul, too much action. Paul, not enough action. Paul, where’s the story? George’s story has to remain in there somewhere. It can’t all be just me killing people!” It was a lot of that, many years of that, actually.
PA: Yes, it was.
MJ: You know, it took us seven years to bring this to fruition. It was a real passion project.
PA: But thankfully when I screened it for George, the very end of it [was] probably the most stressful time of my life in a movie theater, because I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico and screened it for him and his wife and all of the people who worked with him. And he turned to me at the end. Everyone was really silent. So I was super stressed. And he said he loved it. He loved it, and he thought it was a great adaptation. And that was a wonderful, wonderful moment. Made all of those years of work worth it.
MJ: Mmm-hmm.
PA: Is it me next? How do you prepare for getting into the mindset of Gray Alys?
MJ: You know, I feel like I was sort of born to play Gray Alys because I was always someone that believed in magic. And I was always a big fan of Carlos Castaneda books and I read Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology, Norse mythology. Mythology was a huge part of my childhood. And then, going on to fantasy literature and series. So to be able to finally play a real deity, this really organic, magical creature that has been alive for God knows how many millennia and how scary that can be, and what does she remember — she probably forgot more than we could ever remember in our lifetime already — and how isolating that would be. Then that kind of made me go, “Wow, that’s so human because, like, we’re all feeling so isolated and so out of touch even though we have everything and all the resources to be in touch all the time, but we’ve never been lonelier.” And so this all-powerful being that can grant you any wish that you want —
PA: But can’t make [herself] happy.
MJ: But can never be happy. That was an incredible character to try and visualize and embody. What was your first impression of me when we first worked together?
PA: Wow. That was it.
MJ: I was really hot when we first worked together [on Resident Evil]. And I knew it. He got me at my goddess-core moment.
PA: The first time Mila and I met, she came in for a meeting to read for the part, which she was really annoyed about.
MJ: I’m The Fifth Element! Like, you want me to read for you? Jesus.
PA: Anyway, she did do it. She read with a very good friend of mine, Jason Isaacs. And he was in town and he’s like, “I want to come in and help, anything I can do.” So he read with Milla and then Milla left, and Jason turned to me and he said, “Well, that’s it then.” And I said, “So you think she’s great for the movie?” And he said, “Oh, forget about the movie. You and her.” So he felt there was some electricity in the room, and he was not wrong.
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Us: That was the first time you met?
MJ: Yep.
PA: Yeah. [laughs] Is it my turn? What is your favorite part of being directed by me?
MJ: You know what you want and I respect and love when directors know what they want. Actually, one of the first bits of direction [you] gave me on the first Resident Evil was, “Don’t ever do that again.” [laughs]
PA: And you didn’t.
MJ: And I didn’t! And it wasn’t the punching thing, either.
In the Lost Lands is in theaters now.
