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Examiner.com: Bethany Joy Galeotti beszél a ‘One Tree Hill’-ről ‘The Notebook Musical’-ről és a terveiről a jövőre nézve!
Bethany Joy Galeotti kimeríti a tehetség fogalmát.Legismertebb szerepe a One Tree Hill-ben alakítja Haley-t.Megmutatta nekünk,hogy ő játszik,énekel,zenét ír és rendez is és mégis közvetlen.Kétségtelen,hogy Galeotti virágzik minden téren.
Bethany Joy Galeotti defines the word talent in just about every dimension. With her leading role on One Tree Hill, Galeotti has shown us she can act, sing, write music, and even direct. There's no doubt Galeotti has thrived these past seven years with the role of Haley James Scott. A role that if described into one word would be 'versatile', as we've seen her go from a high school student, to a wife, singer, mother, teacher, music producer, sister, friend, and just about everything in between! Yet as Galeotti told me in our exclusive interview, playing the diverse role of Haley has not been much different than the role she takes on in her own life, as a person with her hands dipped in various projects.
In addition to One Tree Hill and her band Everly, Galeotti most recently has transformed the New York Times best-selling novel and hit film The Notebook into a live musical production. And she's got a family restaurant on the side. I was quite honored when Galeotti generously took time out of her busy life to chat with me about the process of writing the music for The Notebook, her upcoming plans with Everly, and the exciting journey she's taken with One Tree Hill.
How is everything? I know you're waiting to hear whether One Tree Hill will be picked up for an eighth season. I hope it gets picked up!
Bethany Joy-I hope so, too! We've had a lot of fun. It doesn't quite feel over yet. I hope at least we get 13. That'd be nice.
You've been playing Haley for seven seasons on One Tree Hill, is there a storyline that truly stands out to you that you've had with her?
Bethany Joy-You know I always loved working with Chad [Michael Murray]. Any episodes where we had scenes together and storylines was just really fun for me. I just have a huge heart for him. He's great. And it's been a lot of fun this most recent storyline with Haley sort of having to deal with her mom kind of blowing back into their lives and then dying, and then having to deal with sort of the aftermath emotionally with that. That's been definitely a fun challenge for me acting wise.
I love everybody that I work with. I mean working with James [Lafferty] has always been great. Very steady, growing together, and learning more and more from each other as we've gone over the years so that's been really cool. I don't know if I have anything specific. It's just all been so much fun.
Haley has done a lot and has so many sides to her. We've seen her go from just a student to a singer on tour, to a wife, a mother, a teacher.
Bethany Joy-Yeah, it's definitely been a lot!(Laughs) But it's all fit for me because my life is sort of that way. I've got my hands in a bunch of different pots and I'm constantly trying new things. It's funny because I can just relate to that, always trying new things and always having sort of a spider web of activities going on.
Speaking of the depressin storyline we're currently seeing Haley in, what's it been like having to come to work everyday for a few weeks and just cry and deal with emotional, heavy stuff? Do you have special ways of preparing for the more emotional scenes?
Bethany Joy-I like to access the sad emotions from a place of joy for me, because sad things aren't always things that are going to make you cry you know. And for me I'd rather not torture myself to tell a story. I'd rather find a way to really access something in my life that I feel really grateful for and get to a place that makes me emotional because I have gratitude in my heart and then just use that for the sad stuff in the story.
How would you say you've grown as an actress playing Haley all these years? What have you learned from the role?
Bethany Joy-You know that's been the hard thing about playing the same character for many years, you don't quite to get experiment and find out what you can do with yourself and push your own limits in a way. Which is why these storylines are so welcome I think for a lot of actors when they get to step out of their comfort zone. I would say growing as an actress has a lot to with growing as a person and I've certainly done that on this show. The people that I work with are really amazing and we've definitely become a family. I think you learn so much just going through the ups and downs that families go through and growing with each other and having to work through things, having to you know switch up and work on days when you don't want to. Those are the kinds of things that build character and for me those are the kinds of things that I'm able to reach in and access. And to be in a scene with somebody that I maybe didn't have a deep relationship with but I have built one and now I trust them as my scene partner, those kinds of things make a really big difference.
You've directed two episodes of One Tree Hill, how was that experience for you, is it a challenge to be in the episode and direct as well?
Bethany Joy-That was really hard. I actually don't like directing and being in the episode at the same time. It's not fun for me. (Laughs) Because I like to be able to commit to one thing or the other and when I'm acting and directing at the same time, I feel like I'm half-assing both. So it was definitely a challenge.
I'm the worst critic of my own work anyway, but just in the moment when you're working and trying so hard to be in the moment as an actor but you also have to pay attention to what the other actors are doing and you want to give them direction, and what the camera's doing and you know you can't be at the monitors to see if the shot that you wanted is the shot that you're getting .You have to rely a lot on the people around you which is great because they definitely came through. But it was definitely challenging. So that was my least favorite part of directing. But everything else was a lot of fun. I love new challenges. I love trying new things. I'll try anything once so it was great.
How is work on The Notebook going? How was the process of taking such a popular novel and film, and turning it into a musical?
Bethany Joy-It was a great process. It was a lot of fun. We took it very seriously because we really didn't want to duplicate something that's already been done. We didn't want to just take the movie and add music. We didn't want to just take the book and add music. We wanted to create something that was new for our audience so that when they see it they feel like they're experiencing a classic story in a new way, they feel like they're seeing something for the first time. And that was definitely a challenge because we really do respect so much the work that was done in the film and we wanted to honor that without trying to duplicate or copy, so it's been a really great process.
Ron Aniello my friend and co-writer, who just got nominated for a Grammy this past season so that was really exciting for him, he's just really talented, so we got together and we just started writing and said you know let's just go on this journey together and see where it takes us. And even at this point, where we're at, we're still talking to producers. We want to make sure we don't rush into anything. We have a lot of people that are interested but we need to make sure that we're not just rushing an unfinished product because it'd be great to get it out you know, because everybody wants to see it. We want to make sure that what we put out there as the final product is really honoring to the story and especially to Nicholas Sparks and his family because that story was very close to his family. So it's been great, it's been a lot of fun. We really love our music. We just finished our score and we're doing re-writes on the script right now and just trying to beef up some of the older storylines from our workshop, which is why we had the workshop just for us to kind of watch it and see what we had. And we'll be moving forward from here.
I really hope we get to see it on stage in New York soon!
Bethany Joy-I hope so, too! And there's so many options you know. Maybe it doesn't go straight to Broadway, a lot of shows go on a national tour before they go overseas first. So we have a lot of options right now. We're trying not to rush any decision making. We're just not in any rush. We're enjoying the journey and we've been learning so much about each other and ourselves, our abilities. We just feel like god really has a story here that touches people's hearts and we feel like it's just love that gets to be poured out on people through this story. We don't want to get in the way of that. We just want to help lift it up. So we're excited!
What do you get out of being a singer, songwriter, that you don't get out of acting? Most rewarding aspect of being a music artist for you?
Bethany Joy- Maybe it's just hearing it get stuck in other people's heads. (Laughs) Or maybe in your head. It's the same kind of reward that you get when you cook a really great meal. It's like you sit down and you go wow I can't believe I just made this. This is so delicious. And then other people get to enjoy it also. It doesn't matter whether you cooked it for a group of 3,000 people or a group of four people, there's still a really great satisfaction in knowing that you've blessed someone and brought something into their life for a moment that really touched them and that they enjoyed.
What is a dream role you would love to explore as an actress in the future?
Bethany Joy-I don't know that I could just narrow it down to one. There's so many things I'm dying to do. I wanna do a movie with horses. I wanna get in kick-ass shape and do an action hero movie. I don't know I wanna be on mad-men. (Laughs) You know there's so many things. Which is difficult because you know I haven't been on an audition in three years because every summer I come home and I stay with my family and I rest and just work on my marriage and work on the restaurant. It's like I need that rest time. So the thought of getting out and working again especially with Everly moving forward and The Notebook moving forward, I don't know how I'd have a life if I pursued a full time acting career after One Tree Hill. I think I might just have to put that on hold for a little while. I have so many things going on.
What's new with Everly? What can fans look forward to?
Bethany Joy-We're writing right now. We're working on our first album actually. All the other things that we've released have been for One Tree Hill, the singles. And it's funny we've been doing really well with those and we've sort of found ourselves in this position where we didn't intentionally get into and now we're in this place where we're ready for a break out album, you know where we're ready to do our first album. We've got a built in fan base. We've got a live show that we're gonna be doing in August and that'll be at the Corn Palace music festival in Mitchell, South Dakota. And we're trying to figure out what our live show is going to look like right now.
Everything has been sort of backwards for us. A lot of bands do it completely the opposite way, but we did it starting out having singles on TV before we had an album. And now we're going to do a live show at a huge huge music festival and we have no idea how to do a live show because we've never really done one before. And we don't have musicians, we have to find some and hire some and find a band. We have to figure out what the shows' going to look like. I have to figure out what I'm going to do, if I'm gonna learn to play something before August because I'm a very very mediocre guitar and piano player while Amber [Sweeney] is extremely talented at those two instruments. So it's just kind of going to be interesting. We're still in a whirlwind right now and trying to figure out to how organize and handle everything in a way that is helpful to us and also doesn't make us go crazy. So it's been an interesting process.
Are any of the songs from Everly that were heard this season going to be on the album?
Bethany Joy-I think there might be a couple. I think our idea was when we started talking about Everly doing music for One Tree Hill before we had an album, we said okay so let's write songs for One Tree Hill with the intention of them being on like a b-track so that they could be things that fit on the album but we won't actually put them on the album. You know it would be something that would like go with it. So I think that's the idea. But we do have a couple songs that we might wanna actually put on the album.
Everyone on One Tree Hill gets this question from me; if you could go back in history and spend a day in the life of anyone, who would it be?
Bethany Joy-Oh wow! That's really interesting. I think it'd be really cliché for me to say Jesus because I'd probably die if I had all that knowledge thrust upon me in one day. (Laughs) I think it would be cool to be just an ordinary person actually. I don't know if a famous historical figure would be desirable for me. I like something more along the lines of a grandmother or just if you could plop me into the life of any random woman in the 40's while her husband was off at war and you know just having to take care of the kids. Something that was very ordinary I think would be really a desirable place to be dropped off.
If One Tree Hill ends this year or next year, or whenever, what's the most valuable thing you think you'll take away from the whole experience?
Bethany Joy-I think for sure the relationships that I've built. All the friendships, all the people, the good and the bad. The relationships that ended. The ones that will end, you know a lot of people don't stay friends forever. I think just overall it's going to be the journey that I went through. I grew so much as a person and I'm eternally grateful to this show and to Mark [Schwahn] and Greg [Prange] and the people that have been there from the beginning and stood by and walked us through every moment of on stage and off stage drama with us. It's been awesome. I'm forever grateful.