QUESTION: Working on “Godzilla x Kong” must be like a big playground for you. I mean, what must it be like to come back to the Monsterverse and return to this great character who has such authority?

REBECCA HALL: Oh, it’s a complete playground. That is such a good way of putting it. It’s just so fun. I love every second of making these movies. I love working with Adam Wingard. It really made a difference that he was doing the second one, for me, because it was just so relaxing. You go in knowing that it worked the first time, that he understands how to make these movies; you know that he’s going to understand how to make the next one. So, I just got to turn up, have fun and be silly with my friends, which is the other thing about it. Brian Tyree Henry is a good friend. Dan Stevens, I’ve known since I was 19. So we had a ridiculously good time making this movie. And I do think it shows—I know people say that kind of thing all the time, but it does, like it really does.

QUESTION: No, it does. And without giving too much away, what are the driving forces that are setting up this new adventure?

REBECCA HALL: Well, some time has lapsed since the last film. My character, Ilene Andrews, has gotten a job promotion. She now has a much more fancy pants job at Monarch, being representative for all things Hollow Earth. She’s even a sort of minor celebrity—she’s going on chat shows to talk about how humans can live peacefully alongside monsters, and things like that.

Meanwhile, Jia, her daughter, is hitting preteen time and there are all the regular emotions of being preteen, individuating away from your parents, et cetera. But in her instance, it’s a little bit more intense, because she talks to Kong and she’s saved the world. So, not your average teenage relationship with her mother. And things are all about to kick off again in various different ways… and it’s all very exciting.

QUESTION: So what is Kong going through at the beginning of the film?

REBECCA HALL: In the last film, Kong found home and thematically, there was this sort of notion of what home means, which was paralleled in the relationship between Jia and Andrews, being a family with an adoptive parent. And those parallels continue in this film, in the sense that Kong is lonely and curious if there are, or ever have been, any others like him. And similarly Jia, as the last remaining member of the Iwi people, feels that she is an isolated island. So they’re both kind of navigating that—where they’ve come from and what that means. And meanwhile, Godzilla’s napping in the Colosseum.

QUESTION: How was it working in these remote locations, particularly Daintree Forest? I mean, when I read about slugs that fall from trees, I think I wanted to crawl under my bed.

REBECCA HALL: Oh yeah. And there was this thing called… oh, what was it called? It had a really dodgy sounding name. The gympie! The gympie. Someone described it to me as that it looks like a leaf, but it has just hundreds of tiny little claws. And if you brush past it, they’ll hook into you and then you won’t stop itching for, who knows, the rest of your life, potentially. So all these things, horrors, and cassowaries! Don’t…

QUESTION: Don’t look them in the eye.

REBECCA HALL: Yeah. We were shooting during the season when they have their babies. And the mum is apparently fiercely protective. I understand. I don’t have a problem with this, but don’t look at cassowary in the eye. But I did see a cassowary and I kind of did look it in the eye, but it was very brief. Then, I looked away and it was fine. But it was truly one of the most bizarre animals I’ve ever been in proximity with… You suddenly understand dinosaurs, especially since I have a six-year-old and she is teaching me all kinds of things I didn’t know about dinosaurs. Like for example, some were actually covered in feathers, which it’s not how “Jurassic World” presents it, but I guess more information has come out since then. And knowing that and reading about dinosaurs… and then seeing a cassowary, I was like, “Oh, it is a dinosaur. Dinosaurs still exist. It’s right here in the Daintree Forest.” Amazing, amazing creatures. Crocodiles, snakes—we got everything.

QUESTION: But the wonderful thing is you’re not in a sound stage surrounded by green screen. You’re in a real world surrounded by green.

REBECCA HALL: Oh, even when we were on a soundstage, they built everything. The production design on this was astonishing. We shot a ton of it onstage, but it was never a green box. I never had that experience on these movies, either of them. It’s always something that you can fully imagine. I mean, Godzilla and Kong don’t show up to work, but that’s okay. I’ve worked with actors who have given me less.

QUESTION: So, what is it like to work with Titans?

REBECCA HALL: There is really such movie history with them. I mean, I know they’re not there. I know I’ve never met them. I know I never saw Godzilla. I know that they will be put in after my time on the film. But there’s something about them that you just believe they might be a little bit real.

QUESTION: Perfect.

REBECCA HALL: They feel real.

QUESTION: They do. And thanks to Adam, they are real.

REBECCA HALL: They are. Exactly.

QUESTION: For all intents and purposes, you are our guide. Dr. Andrews is full of knowledge about this world. You have a lot of dialogue.

REBECCA HALL: I find that there’s something that just tickles me about playing Andrews, how serious she is, how she has all this knowledge. And I just get to do a very serious action movie voice that I really enjoy doing, if I’m being honest with you. There’s a certain kind of delivery that I just don’t get to do in any other kind of movie. And I really enjoy doing it in these movies. It’s fun.

QUESTION: How would you sell this to someone? What are audiences in for?

REBECCA HALL: If you want to go and be transported and exhilarated, and have fun and laugh and be moved and have all the experiences that come with going to see a really great, wonderful popcorn movie—and I say that in the most exultant way—this is the movie for you!

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is Only in Cinemas March 28.