Unlike many of the guys, Amanda Bynes acknowledges that sports were not exactly her forte coming into “She’s the Man.” “I’ve never been really good at playing sports and had never played soccer before in my life, so not only was I playing a sport I’d never played before, I had to play it as a guy. I trained for about two months, so hopefully I did the sport justice.”
Metcalfe contends that she more than did it justice. “Amanda’s awesome. She’s full of energy and enthusiasm, but she’d be the first to admit that she struggled with the soccer. What really impressed us was her dedication and willingness to learn. She became excellent. I was especially impressed by how quickly she got it. I’ve trained athletes who didn’t get things as quickly as Amanda did. She’s a great girl.”
That being said, Metcalfe had to make sure she didn’t play like one. “I had to teach Amanda how to run like a guy, because guys run differently than girls do. We had to work on her being heavier in her step without putting more pressure on her knees, and to run leaning a little more forward than a girl normally would.”
Soccer notwithstanding, Amanda Bynes relates that the most physically challenging aspect of her role was wearing all the accoutrement required to transform her into a boy. “One of the hardest parts of playing a guy was the extensive amounts of padding and binding and glue needed to make me look manly. In addition to the sideburns and eyebrows—which were very uncomfortable because they were glued onto my bare skin—I was bound up in like an Ace bandage.”
On top of the binding that hid Bynes’ girlish figure, she had to wear a heavily padded “muscle suit” to put some masculine bulk on her decidedly feminine frame. The tight-fitting suit was especially taxing on her on the soccer field. “I was playing soccer and it was like 90 degrees out and it was really hot and sweaty under all that padding. But in the end, it was all worth it.”
Bynes’ hair stylist, Nina Paskowitz, and makeup artist, Peter Robb King, were charged with coming up with a look that would work for both Bynes as Viola/Sebastian and James Kirk as Sebastian. The two actors went through numerous hair and makeup tests, mostly involving wigs of all lengths and styles, before they found the right combination.
Apart from hair and makeup and physical padding, Bynes accompanied Fickman on “field trips” to malls and other teen hangouts to observe how guys act in order to, as Bynes succinctly puts it, “master ‘the art of the man.’ It was interesting to see the differences between guys and girls, and I tried to weave them into my character.”
Bynes offers, “Playing a girl pretending to be a boy, I started to see that when I was a guy, I somehow felt more confident. As a girl, you’re worried about if you look bad or if your hair isn’t right… It made me realize that you don’t need any of that exterior stuff. Everybody just wants to be accepted and treated equally. Makeup and clothes are fun to put on and wear, but it’s all just gravy. It’s one of those things I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to experience on this film. I think I’ll forever be better for it.”
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