A Conversation with Kristen Cui

At only nine-years-old, Kristen Cui has landed the lead role of “Wen” in M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie, Knock At The Cabin. Scheduled for a worldwide release on the 3rd of February, the film centers around a family of three and their vacation at a remote cabin in the woods. This twist on a home-invasion thriller aims to question the viewer’s perspective on faith, belief and morality; pondering the question, “if you had to choose someone in your family to kill to save the world from the apocalypse, would you?”

To gain a little more insight into the film, and into her career as a young actor, Kristen sat down with Overachiever Magazine to offer her experiences working on the set of Knock At The Cabin.

RP: Hi Kristen! Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. To start off, could you tell me a little bit about yourself and your interests?

KC: My name is Kristen and I love skating. I also love golf, I usually speak Chinese at home and I also play the piano. I also love to draw and we’re actually thinking about getting art classes since I really like doing art.

That’s really cool! On the subject of the movie, you play a character called “Wen”. Can you tell me a little bit about her? What’s her personality like?

I think she’s pretty interested in biology since she ws basically catching grasshoppers in the beginning of the movie which, actually gives me a bit of a clue. She’s very curious and she’s very kind; she’s a good person. 

Do you think you have any similarities with her?

Hmm.. I’m pretty interested in the science stuff as well but I think I’m just a bit more aggressive.

Oh, interesting! Do you think you would be friends with her in real life?

Oh yes, definitely.

And when you first read about the role, how did you feel?

I thought it would be a bit hard but, it was actually quite easy. I mean it wasn’t too hard, I thought it was really fun on the set.

Ok, without spoiling it too much for me, what would you say is your favourite thing about the film?

I like the behind the scenes, I think it was really fun. There was a scene that was really fun, it was a water scene and we were swimming in it and was so fun because we had a race on who could change and do their hair faster and who could arrive to the set faster. 

It sounds like you had a great time. Do you have any other fun stories of being on set?

Well, it was at the place we were filming the water scene at. There was a bunch of plants and a bunch of seaweed and “Daddy Eric” (Jonathan Groff) was actually swimming in long sleeves and long pants. He could actually catch more seaweed than we could so he actually caught so much it covered his entire body. Some guy was taking it all of him and he joked that it was a “cool service” haha.

So, you said that when you first read the role you thought it was going to be hard. Did you find that you struggled with anything in particular? Was there anything you thought you would struggle with?

I thought I was going to struggle with memorising the lines…

How do you memorise your lines?

Well, I usually split the script up into like, four parts. Then I memorise one part every like- Ok, let’s say I have 28 days or 21 days to memorise my lines, I would divide the script up! I would use 21 days divided by four and I would get my answer. I would take that answer and divide my script up into four parts and I would use that number of days to um.. Finish memorising it. I would also do an overall goal every single day to make sure that I continued to memorise it. And if there was an odd number of days, I would pick which part would be hardest then I would get an extra day working on that one.

For the last week (before filming, I would work on the entire script to make sure I was doing it - with emotion that was high enough and hard enough.

Wow! Ok, so you would have such a strict schedule to follow. I, personally, don’t think I could do that. Did you have anyone to help you with memorising your lines?

My mom did help. My mom actually looked closely through it to help me understand more details. It helped me a lot throughout memorising the script and… Yeah, my mom basically helped me and she would be the other person in the conversation.

That’s really nice! Ok, so, for this film you had the chance to work with M. Night Shyamalan as well, did you learn anything surprising about acting while you were working with him?

I really didn’t learn anything surprising but I did learn a lot of things. Like, he always said, “think the thoughts” which, I really couldn’t understand at first. Then, when I thought about it, it was life-saving! When he said, “think the thoughts”, he really helped me sink into Wen’s character without making it too hard or too easy.

When he said, “think the thoughts”, how did you go about doing that? What do you think he meant by that?

Well, I thought he meant to think what Wen would be thinking at that time.

Ok, cool! So you also got the chance to work with a lot of big actors in the film, how did that make you feel?

I mean, they were all very nice, they were all excellent actors. I think, it just made me feel a bit embarrassed when I met them at first but when I got to know them for a while, it was really fun on set with them and.. I think I had a pretty good time!

That’s good, I’m glad you did! So.. are you a fan of horror movies by any chance?

Not really…

Did you feel that it was difficult working in a horror movie?

I mean.. I’m scared of heights. And I’m also scared of blood.

Oh no! Was there a lot of fake blood?

Well yeah, but I’m not scared of fake blood but there were a lot of corpses (I think she meant fake ones).

Oh I see, so would you say it was less scary on set?

I mean… I know what it feels like being scared of a corpse and there was always at least one corpse on set. So, it was really easy to act out being afraid.

That’s interesting, yeah. So, coming back to you, is there anything that inspired you to start acting? Do you have any role models or favourite characters?

I think so. I think I’m named after her, Kristen Stewart. She’s a really great actor and I saw her in Twilight and it really inspired me to do this role of an ‘actor’.

And do you have dream role that you would like to have in the future?

Hmm.. I’m really not that sure because I’m not sure what future movies will be…

What about, if you could be in any kind of movie? 

A comedy!

A comedy? Like a romantic comedy? Or just a really funny one.

Like a comedy comedy!

That’s great! I’ll be sure to look out for that in the future!