Isla Fisher Reveals How Being a Mother Impacted Her Performance in Wolf Like Me
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Isla Fisher may play a mom on screen in her role as Mary in Wolf Like Me, but Mary’s not a regular mom. (And no, that’s not just a setup to say she’s a cool mom à la Amy Poehler.) She is — as you may have gathered — a wolf mom.
There’s not a whole lot of method acting you can do when you play a woman who turns into a wolf each month, but Fisher said she was able to draw on her experience as a mother of three when Mary was pregnant. Fisher shares kids Olive, 15, Elula, 12, and Montgomery, 8 with husband Sacha Baron Cohen, and she said she remembers the physical aspects of pregnancy well.
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“Particularly the labor stuff, you know, it was quite easy to act in those scenes, just because having done it three times, I know what a contraction feels like,” she tells SheKnows’ Entertainment Writer Giovana Gelhoren.
At least the pain came in handy…?!
When talking with SheKnows, Fisher admitted that — contractions aside — filming the Peacock show brought back a lot of the complicated feelings and barriers that come with being pregnant.
“I do think that the human experience of being pregnant…is the fact you’re dealing with your changing body and your identity,” she says. “And also just like you’re physically incapable, particularly near the end, of doing the stuff that you — you can’t even see your feet in the shower!”
“[Mary] carries with her so much shame and fear, and she kind of struggles with self-acceptance and she’s super isolated.” she continues. “… So it was definitely challenging … to play that character going through those emotions.”
Not Having To Go It Alone
In the show, Fisher acts alongside Josh Gad, who plays Mary’s partner, Gary. Behind the scenes, they were able to bond over parenthood since the Frozen actor shares two daughters, Ava, 13 and Isabella, 9 with his wife Ida Darvish. Also, Fisher and Gad each have a relationship with a step-parent, which came in handy when discussing various parenting scenes.
“Having kids is so transformative in every sense, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and becoming a mother or a father just fills up every space in your life,” Fisher tells SheKnows. “And it’s such a gigantic shift. So I feel like I really enjoyed cracking that open with these characters in this world.”
Keeping Things Private
Though Fisher and Gad may talk about her kids behind the scenes, the Confessions of a Shopaholic actress makes a point to keep her kids’ lives as private as possible.
“If you speak about your children or if you take them to a red carpet event, you can’t be litigious later on when there is a picture of them in something and say, ‘Hey, they deserve anonymity,'” Isla told Today in 2017. “But they do. They have rights, too. It’s a very conscious decision and truly I would feel really disgusting about myself if I used my family to sell something. It wouldn’t sit right with me. It doesn’t line up with my values.”
Last year, she said putting her kids in the spotlight would be “unfair,” and that they deserve a “normal” childhood.
“I want them to be outdoors and play and run around [and] not feel self-conscious,” she said.
Childbirth is nothing like in the movies, as these beautiful photos show.
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