Interview with Roo

Return to Oz is the action-packed sequel to one of the memorable fantasy adventures ever: The Wizard of Oz. We spoke to Fairuza Balk (known simply as Roo), who stars as Dorothy, after the film's recent Royal Premiere in London, about how it was made and why she'll never forget making it!

The Wizard of Oz was first shown in 1939. with its legendary characters the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, it was child actress Judy Garland who captures the hearts of audiences around the world as Dorothy.    She traveled to the strange Land of Oz, and to its capital the Emerald City, with her three curious companions before coming down to earth again with a bump.  Return to Oz continues the weird and wonderful story: but the Emerald City is in ruins with all its inhabitants turned to stone and the Scarecrow imprisoned by the evil Nome King.  His accomplice, the Princess Mombi and the strange Wheelers, terrorize Oz.

     And 46 years on from the original, Dorothy's role has been taken over by an unknown Canadian schoolgirl making her major feature film debut.  Fairuza won the part amid fierce competition after three grueling auditions in Vancouver, Hollywood and London.   Although Return to Oz was filmed in various outdoor locations in England, most of it was shot beneath the huge rafters of Stage 5 at Elstree Studios.  It was there that Roo experienced some of the most frightening moments of her life!

     Those moments include falling from great heights and getting helplessly swept away under a raging river, or at least making it look convincing as if she was:   "I can't forget the sequence when I was flying through the air and falling."  she told us.  "in fact, I was suspended about 20 feet above ground by a pole which came out of the wall.  I was perfectly safe up there because I had straps and belts holding me in all over the place." 

      "I'd stay up there for a long time and just wave at people.  But it was so far down, and I'd get scared."  The point of this exercise, Roo explained, was to give the illusion that she was plummeting through the skies after slipping on some rocks.  To add to the effect, the camera was set up to revolve and produce the special shots that make her seem to be tumbling in mid-air.  "they could have made me revolve on the pole and go round and round," she sighed.  "But they didn't want to because I'd have been sick!  If I'd been upside down with all the blood running to my head then I'd soon have been screaming for them to bring me back up!"

     But even that hair-raising episode sounds like a piece of cake compared to Roo's most startling moment.  "I had to fall into a river with currents flowing everywhere," she said.  "It was the most frightening thing I've ever done.  It wasn't a real river, but a specially-made set in the studio.  The flow was controlled electronically and there were these big pipes which the water would come rushing up."

     "I had to stumble into the river, hold my breath and go under water.  In the next scene, I had to grad a branch and then it breaks!  I float backwards under the water.  Once my dress got caught on one of the currents and I got held there.  I was so terrified."

     Keeping a watchful eye on Roo during all the action was her mother, Cathryn.  "some of the things Roo did were pretty nerve-racking and they did make me nervous," she admitted.  "But usually we check it all out ahead of time to make sure that everything goes well.  Even so, there's always a chance that something could go wrong, so she had a stuntman with her at all times."

    Roo agreed it could get a little tough.  "Yes, it did at times, especially as you're working from 10am to 4pm every day except weekends,"  she said.  "They'd work and work  and work and you'd get pretty tired after doing that for a long time."   On tom of all the filming, Roo also had to learn her lines, of course!  "I'd do that at night before the next day's filming.  They'd give me a 'call sheet', which tells you what to memorize, who's in that scene and what's happening, and I'd learn my bits before going to bed.  If you do it like that, you can just go to sleep.  It's much easier than doing it on the set!"

      When Roo first began making the film in January last year she was nine years old, but, over the six months it took to complete the movie, something happened to her which nobody could do anything about!

      "I grew two inches while playing Dorothy, " she laughed.  "I was a bit worried about it but all they did was alter the camera angles so that nobody notices!"  Roo says she had great fun with the larger than life-size animal puppets, such as Billina the talking hen, used in the film.  "They're puppets made around a wire frame," she said, "but not the ones you can put your hands in.  It's called animatronics.

     "I really loved that because I like animals and missed the ones I have at home.  I have GP the guinea pig, Burns the rabbit, two budgies, a labrador and a beaver!" 

      Now aged 11, Roo insists that she is determined to continue with her acting career.  She has already completed a television program for America called Deceptions.  It also stars Stefanie Powers of Hart To Hart fame as Roo's mother.  "I don't really know about ambitions for acting," she said, "but if something very nice came along for me and it was the right time...well, you never know just what's going to come along until it does!"

This article is from the Look-In Magazine No29

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