Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek

Host: Thank you so much for the film. You know, it's a, it's a serious film about a very serious subject, but what I really appreciated was how it gives the time to deal with the long-term impact of war.

And I wanted to ask you first, Angelina, about, adapting the book, with the novelist and what choices you were making about where you wanted to keep the focus as you turned it into a film. Angelina Jolie: He said to me, when I first, met with Barikko, he said, "They're going to force you to change the end. They're gonna force you to pick a country.

They're gonna force you to decide what year it is. Try to hold." And because it's intended, this is what it's intended to be, you know? But sometimes these things don't.

We don't get to leave them because there's a, there's a, you know, there's an impulse or a feeling that you have to finish something or explain something. So now I think back, I feel like he was almost challenging me instead of warning me. So I think it was that, it was the commitment to the, it's, that it's universal.

I think the book is so strong, but really it rested so much on what could be alive at that table. I shots, we shot so much 'cause I didn't know how much, until they gave their extraordinary performances, I didn't know how much I was gonna be able to stay and how much I was gonna have to reenact.

And because they were so strong, I was able to stay and be pulled into, so really we were, I was in some way prepared for, to adapt in different ways. But then, but then it was them. Host: Yes. And at what point did you choose your cast for the film?

At what point did you decide that, Salma and Demián were the ones that needed to be in these two roles? Angelina Jolie: I mean, I thought of Salma early, and I called her, and she said no. Host: What? Salma. Angelina Jolie: You didn't know I was gonna say that, did you?

I was gonna admit it. Salma Hayek: I know that you're saying it. I first I didn't know she was gonna direct it.

Microphone. I got confused in Oh, see this, ah. She The beginning, she sent me the script. I was looking for material, and I always get confused.

She sent the script, and I said something. I said that, "It's super interesting, but it's completely director dependent, so I don't know." Host: And she is the director.

Salma Hayek: I didn't know, yeah. And then she comes back to me, and she we're talking, and it comes out that it's her directing. And she said, "Well, if you really don't wanna do it," which I don't understand why.

"Who should I cast?" And I go, "But what do you mean? You're directing it. I thought you were just producing it."