Yahoo News Joey King Talks AI: ‘Damn Shame’ If I Don’t Have to Shave My Head Anymore
Joey King is no stranger to a shaved head. The actress has (so far) done away with her hair three different times for roles (in “The Act,” “Wish I Was Here,” and at just 11 years old for “The Dark Knight Rises”) — and assumes she’ll probably do so again at some point.
With current discussion in Hollywood about artificial intelligence kicking way up, including what it can and can’t do, and the ways it may change how actors work, IndieWire asked King how shaving her head helped her performances. Specifically, if potentially not having to do so in the future, thanks to technological advances, appealed to her or would it change something about how the actress preps.
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“So I’ve done it three times, and I have to say, I think it was really important each time,” King told IndieWire. “Every woman has struggled over the years to define what beauty means to me. I do think [shaving my head] was so helpful in terms of not being attached to this one thing that I feel like a lot of people try to tell you to associate with beauty. I really loved the experience of that. I also really loved the way it put me in a mindset to play these characters that I was playing. So I think it’s a damn shame that AI would take that away, because I feel like it was very immersive and very helpful.”
As part of a larger discussion about her role in Hulu’s Holocaust miniseries “We Were the Lucky Ones,” King noted she’s not a Method actor — something that certainly helped her out when dealing with the heavy true story at the center of her latest role, which finds King portraying the real-life Halina Kurc, a Jewish woman in Poland who must escape the Nazis — and help her siblings, scattered all over, do so as well.
“I’m not a Method actor,” she said. “I think to be a Method actor it takes such a specific kind of skill set. And I admire people who can do it, but I personally am very much able to go home at the end of the day. And shed the day. Some days are harder than others and some days are you get caught up in the emotion and it’s a little bit, you need to talk through it with someone on FaceTime or your friends or something.”
She added, “But, [co-star] Logan [Lerman] was just saying, ‘Oh, yeah, you love to go back to the apartment and watch “Love is Blind.” I’m like, ‘Yeah, I did. That’s what I love.’ I love trashy reality TV, and I am not ashamed.”
“We Were the Lucky Ones” is now streaming on Hulu.
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