David Fincher is notorious for making his actors film scenes over and over again – and it was no different with his new film.
Amanda Seyfried has revealed the extent of Fincher’s attempt to achieve perfection with Mank, a biopic about Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman).
Seyfried co-stars in the Netflix film as Hollywood star Marion Davies, and recently told Collider it was “the hardest [she’s] ever worked”.
While Fincher’s reputation as a meticulous perfectionist is known within the industry, Seyfried experienced this first hand – and claims that he made her shoot one scene approximately 200 times ”for an entire week”.
She also says she was part of a scene that Fincher shot for five days.
“I was part of scenes with tons of people in it and we would do it for an entire week,” she said. ”I can’t tell you how many takes we did, but I would guess 200, maybe. I could be wrong and could be way off.”
She added: “Um, I could be underestimating by five days of one scene when I didn’t have one line… ‘You think I can just relax?’ No, because there are probably about nine or 10 different camera angles that had been on me at one point.”
Most recently, Fincher made the cast of Netflix drama Mindhunter shoot one nine-minute take a total of 75 times.
Mank, which has been shot in black-and-white, is expected ot arrive on Netflix later this year.
Seyfried’s new film You Should Have Left will be released in the US on 18 June.
