Monday, May 4, 2009

More Magic From Anyone But Me's Rachael Hip-Flores

In Part 2 of our spotlight on Anyone But Me's Rachael Hip-Flores (Vivian), Rachael answers more fan questions, sharing her obsessions with Batman, the The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and actor Bill Pullman.

What's the one thing that is always guaranteed to bring a smile to your face?

RACHAEL HIP-FLORES (RHF): Lord of the Rings. Seriously. Movie references, in general. Magic, always. The idea of infinite worlds and infinite possibilities. People who sort of stumble or trip and then furtively look around to see if anyone saw. I totally did, dude!And I’m laughing in my head because it’s so not as big a deal as you think it is! Everyone trips – we should bond over it, not shun it! That was more than one… Why put a limit on joy?


So Batman's your favorite superhero, but since he doesn't technically have any super powers, if you had the power to bestow them, which power would you give him? Why?

RHF: Awesome question! I'm tempted to say flight, because it’s really handy for escaping, but I don’t think Batman would want an escape power. So, I’m gonna have to go with invisibility, since most of his fight tactics are based on stealth. Betcha it’d save him a ton of cash in Bat-gadgetry, too. Not that Bruce Wayne seems to have a whole lot of money trouble, but still, times are tough everywhere these days, so we really shouldn’t assume…


What’s with the Bill Pullman thing?

RHF: Oh man, I wish I knew. I just have a thing for sweet, good-guy
types, and so I’ve had this life-long (since I was 6 and saw Spaceballs for the first time) crush on Bill Pullman. I have this magazine advertise-
ment for an HBO movie he did in, like, 1996, called
Mistrial, and it’s been on my bedroom wall at home for, seriously, 13 years. So, wait, listen to this: I met him once, in 2002, when he did The Goat: or Who is Sylvia on Broadway. And, like a dutiful borderline stalker, I saw the show (amazing) and waited outside the stage door for this man whose picture I’d had up in my sixth-grade locker. He comes out of the theater, and he’s so tall, and this is what comes tumbling out of my mouth:

I brought your Mistrial thing for you to sign but I left it in my brother’s apartment.

…It took me years to figure out that outside the context of my own head this made absolutely NO SENSE WHATSOEVER! I have a picture with him from that day, and you can see I have this HUGE, ELATED grin on my face, and he looks like he’s trying to hide how positively alarmed he is. So fast-forward six years or so, and I’m an actress now. The first major film project I was cast in (which, alas, fell through the cracks before it got made) was slated to star Bill himself. Would have made a great story, if it had made any sense to begin with.

Postscript: I have a wonderful boyfriend now. Yes, there is a resemblance.


I saw on Twitter that you wanted Lord of the Ring movie trivia [questions], so... What words does Merry use to describe Hobbits to Treebeard in Two Towers?

RHF:
Merry: But we’re not orcs! We’re Hobbits! Halflings! Shirefolk!
Treebeard: Maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t. The White Wizard will know.
Pippin: White Wizard?
Merry: Saruman…

…Seriously, I’ll pretty much do the whole trilogy for a sandwich…


Where do you see yourself in five years?

RHF: I don’t believe in five-year plans; I think they’re Communist. …Hmm… In five years I see myself…well… y’know, the world is so full of creative possibilities, and it only keeps expanding. Five years ago, the idea that a Web series could be a legitimate enterprise never crossed my mind. Five years before that, if you’d said I was going to be a professional actress, I would have chuckled and gone back to poring over my books. Given my track record, it’s entirely possible that five years from now I will somehow end up in space. I hope to be working with people as smart and talented and dedicated as the company in which I find myself now. That’s the best I can give you, right now. (And, yes. That was the extra long way of saying, I have no idea, I’m generally terrified, and please God, don’t let my dad read this ‘cause he’ll have a coronary.)


Do fans ever do any weird things to you? If so, what?

RHF: Well, there was this one girl who was like, I brought your Mistrial thing for you to sign… That was pretty much the weirdest thing ever…


--Edited by Leslie Jaye Goff
Producer

Editor's Note: Episode 7 of Anyone But Me premieres on May 11! In the meantime, check out Rachael and the rest of the cast in Episodes 1-6 at our Web site.