Cats star Francesca Hayward has discussed the controversial use of CGI in the new live-action film.
The second trailer for one of the year’s most divisive films came out yesterday (November 19).
There has been a lot of talk around the use of technology in the new film, which comes out on December 20, and Hayward admits that the criticism around the CGI in Cats “took a while to process”.
“It takes time maybe, for people to wrap their heads around the whole thing,” she told The Evening Standard. Maybe they are comments from people who haven’t seen the musical.
“If they had been on the sets themselves, [they would’ve seen] they were absolutely extraordinary. It was like a playground for us. We really did feel cat-sized compared to everything we were seeing and everything that was around us.”
She continued: “When I saw the trailer, I hadn’t seen myself with fur yet. We recorded in the motion capture suits and the fur was digitally added.
“It took me a while to process myself as a cat – it’s not something you see every day.”
Earlier this month, Ian McKellen became the first cast member to defend the film’s controversial use of CGI.
“The stage show, Cats, was not about a lot of people being convincing as cats, but it was about human beings discovering their cat-like nature,” McKellen said. “And it was hugely successful.”