Full Transcript: Interview With Cast of 'Nine'

Dec. 10, 2009 — -- For the first and only time, "Nightline" got the entire cast of upcoming movie "Nine" together at New York's legendary Plaza Hotel for a feisty and intimate conversation. Anchor Cynthia McFadden led the actors -- Sophia Loren, Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Dame Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard and Fergie -- and director Rob Marshall in a discussion of the new film, life backstage, eating habits, the pain of rehearsal and more. The following is a full transcript of the interview.

Watch Cynthia McFadden's interview with the cast of "Nine" on "Nightline" Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009 at 11:35 p.m. ET.

Click HERE for a slide show from the interview.

Cynthia McFadden: So first of all thank you all for coming, and I thought it would be appropriate to start with a toast to Fellini who inspired this film.

Rob Marshall:That's lovely. Thank you [all raise their glasses].

Marshall: Sophia knew him.

McFadden: Yes. So would he approve?

Sophia Loren: I think he would, yes, of course he would approve. Yes.

McFadden: You think so?

Loren: Yes, absolutely. Cheers.

McFadden: What was he like?

Loren: Fellini?

McFadden: Yes. I read that he was rather self effacing and shy, true?

Loren: Well it depends on what kind of people he was meeting. But otherwise he was somebody that was very open. He was a great artist because he drew very well. He did things for children, characters for children wonderfully, and that's how he started in this business. And then he um, he, uh, he started to be very much in love with cinema and he met Alberto Sordi and he started with him and he did a wonderful picture with him that was very, very, very successful.

McFadden: Was Fellini also a Casanova?

Loren: He pretended to be.

[everyone laughs]

McFadden: Is that better or worse than being one, I don't know—

Loren: No, no no. But that's it's not fair what I say. He pretended to be for what I saw, for what I hear. But really I don't think so.

McFadden: [to Daniel] So you studied Italian to play the part.

Daniel Day-Lewis: So I'm told.

[everyone laughs]

McFadden: Why?

Marshall: Everyone is saying that you spoke Italian.

Day-Lewis: I know, I know.

McFadden: Did you?

Day-Lewis: What else did I do?

[everyone laughs]

McFadden: You tell me.

Day-Lewis: I didn't study Italian, no. I mean I studied it in as far as I prefer to know more of than less Italian while we were working on this but I am certainly not an Italian speaker, yes. I understand quite a lot.

McFadden: You didn't speak in Italian the entire time on the set, that's all just, bad reporting?

Marshall: Yeah, because I wouldn't have understood a word he said. He speaks, he has a beautiful Italian accent, he speaks beautiful Italian, but it wasn't, that wasn't something that we did because we were making this film in English. The truth is, what was nice is there is Italian throughout, pieces of it, which gives it a flavor which was great.

Loren: Yeah, but when I spoke Italian he understood what I was saying.

McFadden: Did you?

Day-Lewis: I think so.

Loren: Yes.

[everyone laughs]

McFadden: Is Guido the man that every man would like to be or is he not. I mean do you think men really aspire to that kind of… fantasy. Or is he, or you know, what do you think. Judi?

Dame Judi Dench: He is the man he wants to be and women in their fantasy may well want that kind of man. Most of us do [little laugh]. I mean we have a long, long relationship Daniel and I, for 30 years or so, so he is everything that Guido is to me is everything that Daniel and Guido have completely fused to be the same person. I'm off to Italy next year to just look around for him.

[everyone laughs]

McFadden: That's some bad news for your wife, but OK, I'm hearing you.

Fergie: But Guido's very tortured though, I don't know if every man would wish to feel that way, constantly having that dilemma between the Madonna and the whore and all of that and you know I certainly know men like that and my advice is you want to work with them, they're genius, but you don't want to date… and uh, that type of man.

McFadden: Do you have any personal experience?

Fergie: Yes. Yes.

[everyone laughs a lot]

McFadden: Would you care to elaborate.

Fergie: No!

[everyone laugh]

McFadden: Marion, what do you think? Is Guido something men aspire to be and Guido is just charming enough and talented enough to be able to pull it off, at least in his mind?

Marion Cotillard: Well, I'm close to what Fergie just said. I don't know… I don't know if you want to be—can you be Guido, that's the first question. Can you be this man, this creator, this artist, this…maybe about his relationship with women, maybe men want to have that, but I don't, no, I don't think so. With all my respect to Guido and all my love I don't think—but, actually, you know I'm thinking, which men, which man men would like to be and I have no answer. So, it might not be the right sentiment.

Kate Hudson: I would actually like to say something, because when I saw the movie just as a female watching it I felt like watching Guido and how he saw each woman and what each woman represented, and I thought Rob did this amazing job of, every woman here is specific in their own sensuality and their own sexuality. He casted it very specifically what each woman would represent to Guido and when you watch the film all these women have something that Guido thinks he needs. And as a comment on men and what men think they need from women inevitably it all comes down to who you are. You know, who the man is. We're not going to help him, his temptations and his ideas of what a woman should be or what he needs from that woman. He has to figure that out for himself. Um—

McFadden: But do you think that's what men want? I mean if they were being honest about it. Is the fantasy—are Guido's fantasies the fantasies men have?

Hudson: Well, I mean—

Dench: Some men. Yeah.

McFadden: Yeah.

Hudson: Men like sex. I mean—

[laughter]

Hudson: You know, I mean in terms of that, that's what I think. That's, in my small, short, 30 years… I mean no, I think, I think, I think, yeah, I mean, fantasy is wonderful. It's wonderful to have fantasy. It's wonderful to dream up things that you want. And sometimes, you know—

Marshall: We meet this man in crisis, that's the thing. This is man who has been trying to spin these plates for so many years and it just doesn't work anymore, that's the problem, you know, all these…and I think Louisa says it so beautifully when she says he's just an appetite, you're an appetite, you want so much and you can't have all that.

McFadden: He wants to be everything, have everything—

Marshall: Yeah, but you can't, you can't—

Loren: Yeah, but the most wonderful character in the film, I mean, is the wife, of course, because the wife has to cope with the genius like Fellini's and she is a woman too and she is an artist too and how can she cope with everything that is wrong with Fellini. It's a very difficult role she plays.

McFadden: So Penelope, in your experience, are all men really nine?

Penelope Cruz: Well just to continue to talk about Guido and my opinion on that, I think he is, even if every man would dream about being Guido he is a very special human being. He is one of those people that you know when you are around him you are going to be at a high risk, because if they are happy you are going to be happy. If they are sad, they enter a room and they have an effect on everybody else. Because they are these big personalities—

McFadden: Do special rules apply then, if you're that kind of person.

Cruz: Well, he has to face the same lessons in life and he has to get to a point in his life where he has to make some decisions and make some choices and the movie talks a lot about that, about how even someone like him that can get away with so much because people allow him to get away with a lot because he is that special, in the end he is confronted by the rules of what life is for all of us, for everybody.

McFadden: Nicole, is that how you see it?

Nicole Kidman: What was the question?

[everyone laughs]