她們從唐頓莊園來到了灰姑娘家

‘Cinderella’ Has a Dusting of ‘Downton Abbey’

她們從唐頓莊園來到了灰姑娘家

Call it an ode to what might have been.

事情真是陰差陽錯。

As Lady Rose Aldridge née MacClare, the ravishingly feisty Crawley cousin on “Downton Abbey,” Lily James might have appeared the embodiment of a spoiled-rotten stepsister when auditioning for Disney’s “Cinderella.”

莉莉·詹姆斯(Lily James)在《唐頓莊園》(Downton Abbey)中飾演克勞利家的表親——活潑迷人的羅斯·阿爾德里奇·麥克克萊爾夫人(Lady Rose Aldridge née MacClare);為迪士尼的《灰姑娘》(Cinderella)試鏡時，她本該飾演被寵壞的繼女。

And as Daisy Mason, the series’ scullery maid turned assistant cook and budding revolutionary, Sophie McShera might have seemed the ideal candidate for the orphan girl sentenced to cleaning fireplaces and scraping plates until being rescued by Prince Charming. (But not before rescuing him first.) Then Kenneth Branagh, the film’s director, heard Ms. James speak.

《唐頓莊園》里的女幫廚黛西·馬森(Daisy Mason)，后來成了大廚助手，還醞釀著革新。該角色由索菲·麥西拉(Sophie McShera)飾演，或許她才是飾演灰姑娘的理想人選——被迫清掃壁爐、刷盤子，最后被白馬王子拯救(但她得先拯救王子才行)。但是后來《灰姑娘》的導演肯尼斯·布拉納(Kenneth Branagh)聽到了莉莉·詹姆斯的聲音。

“I loved the quality of her voice,” he said in a phone interview from London. “I loved the warmth, tone and range in it. I found it very expressive.” He especially loved that, across the drawn-out process of auditioning and screen testing, “she kept her good humor and she kept her patience and she kept finding a playful quality that in itself seemed to me like a great harbinger of good fortune for the part.”

“我喜歡她的音質，”布拉納在倫敦接受電話采訪時說。“我喜歡她聲音里的溫暖、音色和起伏，我覺得很有表現(xiàn)力。”經過長時間的試演和試鏡，他格外喜歡這一點，“她一直保持良好的幽默感，一直都很耐心;她一直都在尋找一種戲謔的特質，我覺得這是個好兆頭。”

That’s when he dangled the Swarovski crystal slipper before Ms. James — and later cast Ms. McShera (who, alas, never got to try the Cinderella role on for size) as Drizella, one of the wicked stepmother’s demon spawn — setting their upstairs-downstairs-at-Downton dynamic on its head.

于是他把施華洛世奇的水晶鞋放在詹姆斯面前，后來又找來麥西拉，飾演邪惡繼母的壞女兒德里茲拉(麥西拉并未試演過灰姑娘這個角色)，這下《唐頓莊園》里的等級秩序倒過來了。

“It was an easier leap of the imagination for me to play an ugly stepsister than the princess,” Ms. James said, her lilting cadence on full display as she explained her initial reluctance to step into the title role of the film, which opens March 13. “I was actually really looking forward to playing the off-center part, to not having to watch how I look or what I say.

“對于我來說，想像自己飾演丑惡的繼女姊妹要比想像自己是公主容易得多，”詹姆斯說，她解釋自己為什么一開始不愿意在這部3月13日上映的影片中飾演灰姑娘，聲音中充滿輕快活潑。“我其實不想演主角，不太想去過分關注自己的樣子或是臺詞。”

“I see it now as the right fit. And in the scenes where I’m tightening Sophie’s corset and cleaning her plate, I think she loved bossing someone around. There was a real sense of gratification that she finally had the upper hand.”

“我現(xiàn)在覺得這個角色安排很合適。有一場戲里，我得幫索菲穿緊身衣，給她洗盤子。我覺得她喜歡支使別人。能占我的上風讓她很高興。”

Ah, sweet revenge.

啊，甜蜜的報復。

“This time I had all the gorgeous dresses, and I was the one who was speaking properly,” Ms. McShera said giddily, her Yorkshire accent thick. And for an actress whose regular job requires her to go cosmetic-free, save for a smear of fish mousse or turnip purée, the three hours it took to apply Drizella’s ginger ringlets and scarlet Cupid’s bow were a kind of movie-set Nirvana.

“這一次，我有各種漂亮衣服，我成了那個說話體面的人，”麥西拉操著很重的約克郡口音笑著說。她在《唐頓莊園》里的角色一般不需要化妝，只要在身上涂點魚凍或者蘿卜醬污漬就夠了，然而德里茲拉的紅色長卷發(fā)和鮮紅雙唇需要三個小時的化妝，在片場簡直要出人命。

“We wore so much makeup,” she said, “that when I washed my face, I nearly didn’t recognize myself in the mirror.”

“我們的妝化得很濃，”她說，“洗臉的時候，我都快認不出鏡中的自己了。”

Harnessing the phenomenon that is “Downton Abbey,” which on Sunday wrapped its fifth season on PBS’s “Masterpiece,” might seem like savvy, even cynical casting.

《唐頓莊園》在PBS的“杰作”欄目里播出，到本周日，第五季就將結束。從這部劇中選演員似乎很討巧，甚至是雞賊的做法。

“For all of their youth, the great bonus was their experience in ‘Downton’ as performers rather than the fact that they happen to be in a hit show,” Mr. Branagh countered. “These were young people who were coming to me having been in front of the camera a great deal. And I knew that these two girls were on a daily basis exposed to Maggie Smith and Penny Wilton and Elizabeth McGovern and Phyllis Logan, and that they had very strong examples of terrific acting” — experience that helped when performing alongside Cate Blanchett, as Cinderella’s stepmother-tormentor, and Helena Bonham Carter, as the fairy godmother. “They turned out to be very responsive as a result.”

“她們很年輕，但額外的優(yōu)勢是因為她們在《唐頓莊園》中出演角色，而不是因為她們在熱門電視劇里亮相，”布拉納反駁說。“有很多來找我的年輕人都很有表演經驗。但我知道這兩個姑娘每天都和瑪吉·史密斯(Maggie Smith)、潘尼·威爾頓(Penny Wilton)、伊麗莎白·麥戈文(Elizabeth McGovern)和菲利斯·洛根(Phyllis Logan)打交道，這些人都是表演的好榜樣。”這樣的經歷對于她們和凱特·布蘭切特(Cate Blanchett，飾演灰姑娘愛折磨人的壞繼母)以及海倫娜·伯翰·卡特(Helena Bonham Carter，飾演仙女教母)一起表演很有幫助。“這能讓她們做出機敏的反應。”

Taking their cue from the Perrault folk tale and the 1950 animated Disney film, Mr. Branagh and the screenwriter Chris Weitz set out to conjure a contemporary heroine empowered by the conviction of her choices, however antiquated they might seem. (A 21st-century teenager who doesn’t rebel at being banished to an unheated attic, let alone forbidden to attend the prom? So not happening.)

電影故事來源于佩羅(Perrault)民間故事與迪士尼公司1950年的動畫，布拉納與編劇克里斯·韋茲(Chris Weitz)塑造出一個有現(xiàn)代性的女主人公，她因為堅持自己的選擇而得到力量，雖然看上去可能有些過時。(一個21世紀的青少年還會因為被罰關進沒有供暖的閣樓而憤怒嗎，更何況是不被允許參加舞會呢?這太不可能了。)

As for “have courage and be kind,” the mantra that some have suggested reduces Cinderella to an anti-feminist milquetoast, Mr. Branagh likened it to the nonviolent resistance of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.

有些人認為“保持勇氣，保持善良”這句箴言讓灰姑娘顯得像個反對女權主義的膽小鬼，布拉納把這句話和小馬丁·路德·金(Martin Luther King Jr.)、納爾遜·曼德拉(Nelson Mandela)與圣雄甘地(Mahatma Gandhi)的非暴力抵抗相提并論。

“I liked its simplicity,” he said. “It’s a challenging request to do something very simple, which is also very difficult.”

“我喜歡它的簡單質樸，”他說。“化繁為簡是非常困難的。”

He added: “I’m proud that a sophisticated, intelligent and passionate girl emerges out of a classical framework where her empowerment is not at the price of becoming like a man. I think it celebrates her specific femaleness in a way that encourages people to be who they are, not necessarily in competition with the opposite gender or with an attempt to be what other people appear to wish them to be.”

他補充說：“我感到驕傲的是，從經典作品的框架之中，我們塑造出了一個世故、聰慧而又熱情的女孩，她最終得到力量，但沒有因此而變得像個男人。我覺得影片贊美了她的女性特質，它鼓勵人們做自己，而不是和另一個性別去競爭，或者試圖去成為別人希望他們成為的樣子。”

Cinderella’s gentle qualities may not be as obviously superhuman as those of some other Disney princesses — say, Elsa’s cryokinetic powers in “Frozen” or the anti-aging qualities of Rapunzel’s hair in “Tangled” — “but I think her inner strength is something anyone can possess,” Ms. James said. “She’s not armed with swords or weapons to be strong. It’s from within, and any child can do that.

灰姑娘溫文爾雅的性格似乎不像迪士尼的其他公主們那樣，帶有清晰的超人色彩——比如《冰雪奇緣》(Frozen)里艾莎召喚冰雪的能力，還有《魔發(fā)奇緣》(Tangled)里長發(fā)公主令人保持青春的能力——“但我覺得她內心的力量是每個人都能擁有的，”詹姆斯說，“她沒有佩戴刀劍和武器，好讓自己顯得強悍，她的力量來自內心，每個孩子都能做到。”

“And the journey she goes through at the end, where she realizes that the greatest risk is to be who you truly are — that’s something we all want to be. If only I could have that for myself.”

“到最后，她在旅途中發(fā)現(xiàn)，最大的冒險就是成為真正的自己——我們都希望做自己。但愿我也能做得到。”

Their days of living in near anonymity, as both Ms. James and Ms. McShera once claimed to, are nearly over as Vogue and InStyle interviews, a licensing agreement with M.A.C. Cosmetics, and a luxury shoe collection are unfurled. BoxOffice.com recently estimated that “Cinderella,” to be introduced on screens by a new animated short based on “Frozen,” Disney’s 2013 blockbuster, will gross $68 million in ticket sales on its opening weekend in North America.

詹姆斯和麥西拉前不久接受了《Vogue》和《InStyle》的訪談，她們默默無聞的日子就要到頭了，報道中寫到同M.A.C.化妝品公司的合同，以及奢侈的鞋子收藏?！痘夜媚铩穼⑼侗┢婢墶?迪士尼2013年的轟動之作)的最新動畫衍生短片一起上映，BoxOffice.com網站最近估計，上映當周周末，北美票房將達到6800萬美元。