You can continue reading the article in its entirety over at The Associated Press

Chris Pine is boldly going where Capt. Kirk has never gone before. In his sibling drama “People Like Us,” he gets slapped around by his mom and pummeled by his sister.

The earthbound sibling drama is light-years from Pine’s role as forceful ladies man Kirk in “Star Trek. And it’s a departure for “People Like Us” director Alex Kurtzman and producer Roberto Orci, who moonlighted on the intimate screenplay for nearly eight years as they co-wrote such action epics as “Star Trek” and its upcoming sequel, the first two “Transformers” flicks, “Mission: Impossible III” and “Cowboys & Aliens.”

In very un-Kirk-man-like fashion, Pine gets a sharp slap to the face in his first scene with Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays his mother, angry that it took his father’s death for her self-absorbed son to finally come home for a visit.

After discovering his dad had a daughter with another woman, Pine’s Sam ends up getting the stuffing beaten out of him by his newfound half-sister, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks).
Pfeiffer and Banks put their all into it, recalls Pine, who unlike action man Kirk, had to stand there and take his lumps.

“Liz is a tornado when you unleash her,” Pine said in an interview alongside Kurtzman and Orci to promote “People Like Us,” which opens Friday.

As for taking a palm to the cheek from Pfeiffer, Pine remembers it coming in the first scene the two shot together.

“I recall very, like, method-y, whispering conversations between Alex and Michelle before the first take, and then she slapped the (crap) out of me,” Pine said. “There’s something to be said for it, because there really is no way to duplicate the shock of that.

“And similarly, the scene with Banks, there’s just no way. The way that they shot it, it was very kind of handheld, super-present, really in the room, fly-on-the-wall kind of stuff. There’s no way to mime that to make that real. It wasn’t going to be really violent, she never hit me in the face or anything. So you could let her go rip-riot with a certain amount of safety involved. That was important to capture, because Liz, Frankie, in that moment is rightfully, righteously angry at Sam.”

While promoting their new comedic drama “People Like Us,” Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks faced off over their two franchises – “Star Trek” and “The Hunger Games.”

Make sure you check out the interview in full over at USAToday.com

The franchise shot the actor to fame in 2009 when he took on Captain Kirk. And years after filming it, its co-writer delivered just the kind of meaty, dialogue-driven role Pine had been on the hunt for.

Filming the first Star Trek, “I was so focused on not (screwing) up that I just had blinders on to everything and everyone on set who was not in my direct path,” says Pine, who recalls meeting the film’s co-writer Alex Kurtzman briefly.

But then Kurtzman “called me up really out of the blue at home,” says Pine, 31, and he sent over a script for People Like Us (out Friday), a film inspired by Kurtzman and writing partner Roberto Orci’s own lives.
The script was packed with emotional minefields: an absentee father who’s hidden his adult love child, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks), from his son, Sam (Pine). A narcissistic, secretive mother (Michelle Pfeiffer). And a payload in the form of $150,000, left in Sam’s hands for Frankie upon their father’s death.

Pine signed on to the Kurtzman-directed dramedy within days. “I love the character,” he says of Sam, his cocky, fast-talking salesman. “I thought he was flawed and funny and dark but in a really human kind of dark way.”

Sam, an “epic plate-spinning, super-adroit cocktail-party chatterer,” is challenged with ditching his honed salesman shtick and facing his boxed-up past.

For Pine, the beauty in this family was in its flaws.

“What I loved about (the film), which was on the page, is that there are no golden pink bow ties by the end of the film,” he says. As his character navigates the waters after his father’s death and confronts the women in his life, including his hard-edged mother, Lillian (Pfeiffer), and his girlfriend (Olivia Wilde), “they all kind of still hate one another, and Sam doesn’t fully get along with his mom, (but) he chooses to love her for all of her faults. He and Frankie, they were all just kind of entering the town of people — almost becoming human to be like, ‘I’m screwed up, are you?’ That was kind of the message of it I liked.”

Check out the interview in full over at SeattlePi.com

Chris, what was it like getting into your character Sam. Dealing with the loss of his dad but not having a good relationship with him?

Chris Pine: Jerry was a difficult character because he affects everyone in the film, but he’s not there. I think what was really important, what Alex stressed, and what we had the luxury of having was a longer rehearsal time. We had two weeks to rehearse and the actors would meet in twosomes, all for of us would meet or three of us would meet. We all had enough time together and figure out this incredible past that all of us shared. Especially that first scene when I walk in on Lillian [Michelle Pfeiffer] in the kitchen, there’s so much tension and awkward weirdness. I knew that it had to be charged but all of it unspoken. The whole journey for Sam is to talk and he’s not able to really communicate with anyone.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Sam finds the money. He’s so excited and he reads the note [everybody laughs]. How did you do that without a single word?

CP: I love that scene. We talk about that scene a lot. First of all, I love Philip Baker Hall. Philip talks about hanging out with Jerry and the crazy times they had. [laughing] You look at Philip and he looks like he’s always been a great-grandfather. You can’t imagine Philip with the cocaine and the hookers. What I knew going into that is that Sam is so hungry at that point for cash. He’s so hungry at that point because he realizes the biggest deal of his life has gone south and he’s mired in so much debt. It’s like his lies unraveling. I thought two things – the thing that we found day [of the shoot] was that Philip gives me a shaving kit. If you got a shaving kit and someone said that’s what your father left you. Initially you’re like ‘It’s a [expletive] shaving kit. My father who I never talk to left me a shaving kit. What is it? A bunch of razors and a magic hair brush?’ [laughs]. I also thought there was some humor in that. It was knowing at that point of the film, Sam’s driving force is Sam. When he goes in that scene it’s like ‘Great to see you again. It was great. Where’s the money? Show me the money? I don’t care about your stories. I’m sure my dad was a great guy. Give me the money.’ I guess when I dialed into that, I was righteously ecstatic and relived when he sees the cash……

AK: You’re like ‘Maybe my dad didn’t just completely [expletive] me, then there’s this weird ‘What is this note?’ and we watch your face crash.

CP: It was a nice scene. It’s also one of the only scenes when you get a chance to see and hear what Jerry was like. I also thought ‘What a prick’. Here’s this lawyer that’s like ‘Your dad was such a neat guy’. Excuse me? I even get worked up talking about it now [laughs]

We’ve all dealt with people when they pass away and there’s nothing but good things to say about them. You think I knew that guy and he was kind of a dick, but no one can say that.

CP: I’m sort of excited to hear about you two. Your reactions to the film are hopefully why the film plays. You saw it and it made you think about your family. Your dad going home to Jacksonville, and your girlfriend had the same exact experience of what happens in the film. Some of the reactions have been people saying it’s such a unique film and there is a very small percentage of people who have relatives in their family who’ve lived a separate life. If you look into it, maybe the percentages aren’t humongous but it does exist. Lying does exist in crazy forms. Here’s is the scope and the polarity of the film. It makes you think about family.

You can check out the interview in full over at RedEyeChicago.com

What’s the best way to tell someone that you are their previously unknown sibling?
Alex Kurtzman: I think you have to be direct about it. I think you just have to say it. “I’m your brother or I’m your sister” is pretty much the best.
Chris Pine: There’s no way to really soften that—[laughs]—fastball, is there?
AK: Or you just don’t tell them at all and you get involved in a relationship with them without telling them the truth.
CP: “You know, dad used to say.”
AK: “Whose dad? Oh …”

The movie revolves around a big secret. What’s the biggest secret that ever blew your mind, in real life or a movie twist?
CP: That Santa Claus was not real. And that they dubbed—
AK: Glenn Close …
CP: Glenn Close in [“Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes”] …
AK: [Laughs.] [Being the voice for] Andie MacDowell. Biggest cinematic mind-blower was the end of “Seven” for me, I would say.
CP: [Screeches like Brad Pitt’s character.]
AK: “What’s in the box?!”

Chris, in interviews you seem very down to earth about fame, but you’ve played several characters that have an energy that borders on arrogance. Why do you think you’ve been drawn to these roles?
CP: I guess it is odd because I would hope that people in my life, if they were to describe me, that the first word that would pop into their head would not be “arrogant” and “brash.” I also think a lot of the characters that I’ve played—not that I’ve played so many and I can talk about my “oeuvre” or something—in the films that I’ve made my characters, while they tend to be brash, and maybe borderline arrogant, there’s also a sense of humor to ’em.
And what I love and appreciate is sharp wit … what hopefully will resonate with people is I think we all in the world put off what we want to be seen like. This is who I am, and this is who you are and I’m going to present myself and my mom taught me to stand up straight and shake hands firmly and look someone in the eye because that’s what you do.
We learn all these tools of sociability and for Sam in this film, the first major crack in that armor is when he finds out that the money that he earns is not going to be his. And the second humongous crack is that his father dies, and once that crack happens, all that self-learning about how to shield yourself and protect yourself—and Sam uses wit and charm and words, being highly articulate and funny and charming—all that gets thrown out the window, and he can’t hide behind that stuff anymore. If you parallel that first scene with [Sam’s boss, played by Jon Favreau] to that last scene on the doorstep with [Frankie, played by Banks], those are two completely different human beings.
That guy at the beginning as we first met him, we would never imagine him being that vulnerable or true. The guy … meets Hannah’s [Sam’s girlfriend, played by Olivia Wilde] announcement that she finds out that his father died [with the response,] “What’s for dinner?” That man is incapable of talking about authentic, true, human, real, looking-someone-in-the-eye-and-connecting-with-them kinds of things.