If you’ve been under a rock, you probably haven’t heard that Quentin Tarantino, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway have all been nominated for Academy Awards. Tarantino is a Best Screenplay for “Django Unchained,” Hugh Jackman for Best Actor and Anne Hathaway for Best Actress (both for “Les Miserables”). Not only that, but both “Django Unchained” and “Les Miserables” are up for Best Picture nominations. The three sat down with SiriusXM hosts to discuss their nominations.

On SiriusXM’s Opie & Anthony Show, Tarantino said about writing and casting:

“I think it’s a three-pronged thing. I write good characters, I write interesting characters, and then I cast them well. But part of casting well, usually, unless I am writing it for someone in particular…it’s about the character first, it’s not the actor first. I don’t have an obligation to give a groovy actor a role. I have an obligation to find the best person to play my character. They’re my characters, they came from deep in my DNA and I want them to have the perfect person to play them. I am not writing theater, where everybody for the next twenty years gets a crack at it—this is it.”

Jackman told SiriusXM On Broadway’s Julie James why working with director “Les Miserables” director Tom Hooper was so important:

“Whoever loves theater and loves Broadway is forever going to put [Les Miserables director] Tom Hooper right up there with Sondheim. What he did was trust the performers. If you think about the risks he took…every day was like an opening and a closing night…I remember…I was singing ‘Who Am I?’ that day, and I got up and I looked at my pillow and I immediately thought ‘When I put my head down, I may never sing that song again. I certainly won’t in this film. He made it very clear—there was no going back. We were going to use live, what we captured.”

You can view the clips of these interviews and more from “SiriusXM’s Town Hall with Quentin Tarantino” and “SiriusXM On Broadway” below the post. The full interviews are available on SiriusXM On Demand.

Oscars 2013

By Monique Jones

Monique Jones blogs about race and culture in entertainment, particularly movies and television. You can read her articles at Racialicious, and her new site, COLOR . You can also listen to her new podcast, What would Monique Say.

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