Chloë Grace Moretz isn’t just fighting for her right to party, she’s fighting for all of our rights to party in the new comedy Neighbors 2. The 19-year-old thespian joined the comedy sequel to try her hand at comedy, yes, but also to espouse a sort of “Tao of Adequate,” to promote the film’s theme that women are allowed to make mistakes and be silly too.
I sat down with Chloë Grace Moretz for what feels like the umpteenth time to talk about Neighbors 2, but also to catch up and find out how she is adjusting to adult life now that she’s bought her own house, venturing out into new career paths (like the starring role in the live-action The Little Mermaid remake), and her new pastime of collecting 35mm films for her personal screening room.
Neighbors 2 is now in theaters.
Universal Pictures
Crave: How are you doing today?
Chloë Grace Moretz: I’m good, I’m good. You know, busy. Promoting the movie. It’s been a long year of promotion for me. [Laughs.] Yeah, I haven’t been on set since September of last year.
Dear god!
I know. I wrapped Neighbors and I went right into The Fifth Wave press in December, and as of now I’m still doing Neighbors press and then I’m on to [The Little] Mermaid.
So you’re prepping for Mermaid?
Yup, yup. We’ve been prepping for the last like four or five months.
Is that a lot of swimming, or…?
Yeah, yeah. Mainly we’re just doing script work right now, and casting and stuff like that, and figuring out all the concepts and making them very linear. Because you know, there’s so many ways you can go.
Is this going to be one of the dark remakes? Like, we never KNEW the story of The Little Mermaid…?
I think this one we’re going to keep it pretty big. I think we still want to keep it pretty large-scale, but it’s not going to be revisionist. It’s going to be more relevant, socially, for women.
Walt Disney
I like that approach but sometimes it feels like the solution for how we make this whole story more relevant for women today is [just], “Now she’s a warrior.”
It’s true. It does happen that way. I think a lot of what I’m trying to do is make it more of a story about a young girl who pretty much is growing up in Ohio, and she wants to move to New York, and land is the idea of the big city, and it’s an opportunity, and it’s life! You know, it’s a world beyond what she knows, and that’s kind of my concept of where I want to go with it, you know what I mean? It feels real. It feels relevant.
Are you going to have to sing for that?
I don’t know. We’re still doing all of these things right now, so it’s all figured out, but I don’t think so.
You don’t think so?
I can’t say anything really, but I don’t think so.
I wish you luck regardless, however it happens. Do you feel good about your singing voice or would you need a lot of auto-tuning?
No, I’m pretty confident in my singing voice. I’m pretty hoarse from press over the last three weeks. I am so raspy already that when I talk too much I just lose it completely.
You’ve got a good Kathleen Turner thing going on.
Yeah! You know? It’s happening! It’s definitely becoming a thing. I just need to really start wearing the right outfits. Yeah, no, I’m confident in my singing voice. [Laughs.]
Universal Pictures
So I guess the whole Neighbors 2 thing that we’re allegedly here to talk about, it’s an odd film because in some respects they’re asking you to come in and be Zac Efron this time. Is that how it was? Or did they tell you about your character and your journey?
Yes, literally it was like we had been hearing for a few months that they were wanting to a young female comedy, and particularly with me, and they wanted to write it around me and do something very cool like that. Because they liked where I kind of stood as an actor, and how I kind of touched on comedy in 30 Rock and, you know, Kick-Ass had elements of comedy and satire.
So I went in for a meeting with Seth [Rogen] and the boys, Evan [Goldberg) and Nick Stoller, and we all sat down and they were like, “Hey, we kind of have this idea where we want to do Neighbors 2, and we want to make it about sororities, but we don’t want to do it like the boys did it. We actually want to give them a reason, and we found out that sororities aren’t allowed to party, which feels really crazy! Do you find that interesting, as a young woman? Would you want to see us worry about that? Because we’re a bunch of older men. Is that cool for you?”
And I was like, I thought it was a very interesting idea, and I thought that… you know, I’m very proactive, socially and politically with young women and women’s rights and everything like that. So I felt like we don’t use enough levity to speak on big social issues. And I think that if we used levity more, [rather] than doing all these educational dramas about it, we can honestly hit way harder into the youth of America.
Is “the right to party” a major social issue or do you think it’s more of a general…?
I think it’s more of a general idea of the rights issue in general, and the fact that femininity right now is becoming very convoluted. So I think it was obviously a lot of oppression, and then it was expression. So it went from oppression to expression, where we were all coming free and doing what we needed to do, and now it’s reached this weird point where it’s kind of been put on this level where we have a really high pedestal to live up to.
So we can women that we want to be, we can be CEOs and we can do that, but we have to be highly educated, we have to be very well-spoken, we have to be well-dressed, we have to really prepare ourselves and counteract the fact that we are women in general, which is a very strange concept. And what I like about this movie, which I want to show, is that it’s okay for girls to be dumb too, in the sense that we make mistakes. We can be silly. We can be idiotic. We can also be passionate. And we’ve seen boys do that for years but we’ve never really seen women go there.
I like the way you’re putting that, about the progression. […] Because there is that thing where you have to…
You have to find the middle ground.
You have to find the middle ground. You have to work within certain social restrictions without actually sacrificing anything.
Exactly. It’s like, not all of us can be the pinnacle housewife. Not all of us can be the pinnacle CEO. It’s okay to just be adequate! Do you know what I mean? It’s okay to not know what the hell you’re doing!
“The Tao of Adequate.” I would follow that.
It’s fine! It’s really fine! [Laughs.]
Universal Pictures
Tell me about… You’re a Hollywood person.
I’ve been around it.
You’ve probably been to a few parties.
Yeah.
Are the parties that you throw in this movie, did they run those by you? Like, “Chloë, is this cool…?”
I was always psyched, because the thing is, I was like, “Look guys, I didn’t go to college! I didn’t go to high school. But I’ve been to, like, L.A. parties?” [Laughs.] Which I think is, on the scheme of all of this [Neighbors 2], very realistic in the trash meter. So yeah, if you want to get a raunchy, nasty party that I don’t like to go to either way, that would be the frat party.
What is the ideal Chloë Grace Moretz party?
Good food. Lots of really good food and a solid theme.
What’s a good theme?
Even if it’s just like “wear whatever you want but dress to the nines.” So if you’re going to show up in a costume, DO IT. Do the makeup, do the hair. Kill it. Or whatever you’re going to do, just really kill it. Even if it’s Fourth of July. Make sure there’s like a Fourth of July… like a flag everywhere. You know what I mean?
Did you ever read Scott Pilgrim?
Yeah! [Laughs.]
There was one theme party they had where everyone’s secretly Batman.
Yeah! Exactly! See, like that’s such a stupid theme but it’s amazing. It’s a theme!
It’s a spectacular theme.
I’m going to do it too.
Universal Pictures
What’s it like being on a Seth Rogen movie? Because there’s the implication from the outside that they must have the BEST weed.
[Laughs.] I’m sure they do! I don’t really smoke weed, to be honest. But they do love weed and they seem to really handle it well. It doesn’t really seem to handle their work ethic at all. They are the hardest workers I’ve possibly ever worked with. Like, we were working 16 hour days ever day and we’d be doing so many lines of improv and on our cues, and when he [Seth Rogen] is not acting he’s helping Nick direct and produce and doing it all. It’s such a collaborative effort. The weed is there but it’s not like a real, you know, kind of issue.
I like “the weed is there.” It makes it sound like there’s a craft service table.
Yeah, yeah.
Really?!
Yeah, kinda. Yeah, like “go ahead.”
You have a cool job.
[Laughs.] It’s a very strange job.
I’ll bet. What’s that like? You mentioned you hadn’t gone to high school. Are you planning to go to college?
Right now the real issue that I have with college, and I love education, I do my own education, but I have made all my own money from the time I was a kid and I cannot justify our educational system right now, and the fact that to go to college, to get a higher education, I would be spending all my own money, and then end up – honestly – resenting the entire experience because I’d be paying it back for the next ten years. Which is just kind of a very strange way that I have never liked to view education. Maybe it’s because I was homeschooled. I had a privatized way of learning, and it was more special for me, you know?
Screen Gems
What’s it like having to play characters who are in school? Because it’s such an all-encompassing experience.
It’s weird.
Do you do research? Do you run into your neighbors and ask, “What did you do today?”
I played Carrie, [which] was the most high school of high school-type movies. That was one of the first times I’d ever been inside of a high school classroom was for that movie. It’s a very strange experience, and all of my school experiences have been through movies.
That’s weird.
Which is very weird.
That’s very, very, very weird.
So weird.
And then you have adult experiences. Because you’re like, adulting now.
Yes, I know.
Yeah…
I know.
Eh.
But not, but like “am.” I know. 19 is a very weird year. I did not expect it to be this weird. Because it’s like, “18 is going to be weird. 18 is going to be crazy! That’s a crazy year. Like, whoa!” And then 18 was nothing. Like, 18 went straight by and then 19 came around, I was like, “Whoa! What happened! Everything’s so adult now!”
What’s been adulting? What’s been the hardest part?
Everything’s more serious. It just is. Because even as an 18-year-old you’re still not taken seriously or really respected. You’re just 18. But there’s something about turning 19, it’s like a real level of responsibility. Like, it kind of just made the shift of like, “That’s my call time, and my Mom or my brother is not going to come into my room anymore to see if I’m awake.” And you know, if I don’t make sure I get myself my lunch I’m going to get it. And if I don’t take care of myself I’m not going to be quite as taken care of. It’s just like a big, adult step.
Are you living on your own now? Do you have your own place?
No, so I just bought a home with me and my family. It’s Trevor [her brother] and Mom and I, because that’s the trio. My producing partners and my manager, we kind of do all of our thing together. So we decided to buy a home together. We spend eleven months of the year together anyway. But it’s all separated, so I have my own area, they have their own area. It’s kind of the best of both worlds, so I’m alone but I can walk upstairs for dinner.
Do you call it your “wing?” That would be cool.
Pretty much. I like to say it’s my “wing.” It’s not that big but yeah, I like to say it’s my wing!
Is it like your dream house? Do you have stuff in there that you always wanted?
It is now, yeah. I mean I’m renovating it right now so I’m kind of turning it into my dream home.
Universal Pictures
What’s the criteria? Everyone has a thing…
My theater. That’s my one thing. Because I love movies so much. I love the experience of going to the movies, and like a real projector, and I have… literally, the one thing I splurge on in my house, I was like, “I want a real film projector. I want the best sound system. I want couches, and I want it soundproof. And I just want to be able to lay in there for weeks on end, watching movies.” That was it.
Is it 35mm?
Yeah.
Do you need to hire a projectionist to come over to your house?
Yeah! But I’m going to train myself so that I can understand it and do it myself too. But I’m like, trying to get my films and watch them and screen them at my house and stuff. That’s cool!
That’s super cool. What do you have on 35mm? What are you collecting?
Well, that’s what I’m getting into right now. I really want to get into some older movies like Some Like It Hot, you know what I mean? I want to try and collect some really special pieces. Like, maybe Rear Window if I can get it. Like a classic, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, try and get some real classics and then get a bit more nouveau.
Nothing super esoteric, like the weird stuff? Like Jörg Buttgereit?
I want to jump into something like that. I want to go into some strange French cinema, or German, some very weird dark, twisted, Lars Von Trier…
You said you’re self-educating. Are you self-educating yourself in film or just everything in general?
Honestly the first thing I really chose to self-educate myself on, out of high school, was religion. I found it very interesting especially in this day and age. So I really educated myself on so many religions, like Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity and Catholicism…
What’s the winner?
That’s the thing. I realized that there was a ton of correlations. I even heavily looked into Native-American beliefs, which is more more earth-based and much more naturalistic, and astrology, and looking into all those different things. It made me respect a lot of different things in a lot of different ways and it opened me up a lot as a person. I’ve lived a lot of places. I’ve been so lucky to know so many cultures and people, but I think it was interesting learning stuff about religion and it explained a lot about our world, I think.
Would you do a religious film? Is there one you’d think about doing?
I think it could become just too polarizing. You know what I mean? And I wouldn’t not [make a religious film], I wouldn’t not. If it was a brilliant script that happened to incorporate religion into it, that’s fine. But I feel like if you just make a movie that’s like, just about Christianity or just about Judaism, you’re highlighting such a hot button group and you’re being so black and white, that I feel like it’s slightly unfair. I think there’s more we can do with our creativity, to broaden the spectrum and allow more people to enjoy it.
Top Photo: Gregg DeGuire/WireImage
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
