What Theo James Wants You To Know About Four & MORE

Moviefone sat down with Theo James & Shailene Woodley at Comic Con yesterday.
Check out some snippets from their interview below

Moviefone: What's the first thing you want people to know about "Divergent"?

Theo James: We want them to approach it as something different and new. Any preconceptions about it being a YA -- obviously, it has that tag -- but they're all unique in their own ways. And Veronica has created a very unique and strong and dynamic world, coupled with [director Neil Burger]'s vision of it. And then, hopefully, what we've done collectively as a cast with our characters and the choices we've made make something that is not just a YA movie. It's a movie in its own right, too. It's both. It's an adult movie and a YA movie. And a very strong action movie; there's a lot of action in it, but with a very central and emotional heart.

Shailene Woodley: I agree. That was prefect. I second that.

What do you want people to know about your character?

James: I think he's one of my favorite characters that I've played because he has this, um...

Woodley: He's amazing.

James: He's a really cool, complex character who comes from this broken world and broken home, essentially. He's from a family of abuse, which is an interesting concept in itself. But he's full of a sense of quiet self and purpose. He also has a very strong, settled masculinity. He doesn't need to push anything.

I've said this before, but when I first read the scenes, to me, he had this old-school kind of Paul Newman -- those old male, kind of "Hollywood men who weren't pushing masculinity," it just came naturally. And as a result, because they're not pushing it, they can actually be much more complex because they can be truthful about their weaknesses. And that's so great, because with him he can be truthful about what he's afraid of. He's completely honest about what he's afraid of. All those complexities I'd like people to see, as well as his motherf*ckin' toughness.

Would you say that this is a pretty faithful adaptation? Were there big changes?

Woodley: I think it's somewhat faithful. It was changed a little bit just for cinematic purposes.

James: We had to condense it. And also there were some structural things that Neil and Shai had to think about, i.e. the fact that this is a first-person narrative in the book and the exposition goes on a lot in her thoughts and in her head. Some of those needed to be tackled. But I think it's pretty faithful in terms of what it does. Some characters inevitably don't get as much of the limelight as they do in the book just because of the nature of "it's a movie," but all the characters get paid off. And they are dynamic.

Theo, don't be offended by this. We have to ask: Do you still get recognized as "the guy who died in bed" on "Downton Abbey"?

James: Yes. Some guy said that outside and he's dead now, so... [Laughs] Yes, occasionally, yes. It's usually by sexy grannies who are like, "Mr. Pamuk, are up for doing a sixty-niner?" Obviously, I always oblige.

Head over to Moviefone to check out  the rest of the interview