By this point, the Twilight series knows no introduction. You are already reading this article because you know of it, or you’ve already skipped over it for the same reason.

Over and over, well before having the opportunity to interview Nikki Reed, we have heard that this third installment in the film series, Twilight: Eclipse, is a fresh departure.

Nikki agrees: “My experience while making the film and promoting it has been total 180, a very different situation for me. I was much more involved. They kept me there from start to finish: on my call sheet I actually had more days on than Rob [Pattinson], which was sort of funny.”

One of the biggest changes in Eclipse is the electrified action sequences. According to Nikki, preparing for these “was very physically demanding. We stepped off the airplane and were given a schedule. It said, ‘bring tennis shoes to rehearsal’ and we were like, ok cool, and actually the training turned out to be in this broken down, freezing warehouse in the outskirts of town. 

“That warehouse became our home for the next seven weeks of training, every morning at 7AM. We had no idea. We all knew the scripts, we all knew what might have to happen, but we just assumed it would be like every other movie and we’d just show up and there would be a bunch of stunt doubles. We weren’t expecting it to be like this. We had a whole crew of people that trained us to feel like we were professional athletes.”

David Slade, who directed his first Twilight in Eclipse, “definitely had his own approach,” Nikki says. “He really came to the table with a very intense vision, and it was his own. He also took individual meetings with us constantly. Which, if you think about the size of the cast, 25 actors in this movie, is pretty amazing. He opened up my mind to ideas about the whole series, and about Rosalie, that I’d never even thought of and I’m the kind of actor that needs that, and I didn’t even know how much until he gave it to me.” 

And what about Rosalie Hale, the character Reed plays in the series? “Rosalie is very misunderstood. I would describe her as the most loyal in the family, and also the most maternal and protective. And also the most ferocious. I think her attitude is a form of compensation. A lot of people receive her as being really envious and jealous and insecure. I definitely think there’s an envy there, because Bella has a life, but I don’t think she’s unhappy with who she is as a person or regrets anything in her past life. I think she just wants that back, and there’s an inevitable frustration there. 

“I didn’t feel this way about Eclipse, but certainly shooting Twilight and New Moon I felt really responsible for how Rosalie was going to be received by people who hadn’t read the novels.” 

With the Twilight movies, Reed says, it is always important in preparing “to go back to your manuals, the books. We’re given so much information in there and although Melissa does a fantastic job of translating in some cases 1,000 pages and condensing them, I think it’s really important as an actor to feel you’ve gone through yourself and made sure.

So, what does Nikki think viewers will get from Eclipse that they didn’t from the first two films? “There’s  this heightened love triangle that’s becoming more and more intense and explosive. There’s more action, so men will naturally be more drawn to it. 

“And there’s also this additional history: even though it’s only my back story and Jasper’s back story, I feel like it adds a depth to the whole family. You start to realize the darker side of the whole situation with the Cullen family. I mean, on the one hand we are a very happy, functioning family and we try to be normal, but on the other hand you realize that not all these characters are happy characters. It brings up questions like ‘Why did Carlyle do what he did, and was it the right thing to do, and he struggled with that on a daily basis and you start to realize where did Esme come from and is she really happy ... it gives it another layer.” 

Having worked with this material so long, why does Nikki think Twilight is so popular? “I think we all like to live in fantasyland a little bit. These books take you there, by creating dynamics and relationships that are just out of the realm of possibility, just a bit exaggerated and amplified and heightened. 

“This relationship that Bella and Edward have, this is that first silly, naive, ‘I’m obsessed with you, I can’t live without you, I don’t want to spend one second breathing if you’re not with me’, that feeling that we all have -- but it only happens once. And you can’t recreate it, and you can’t define it, and once you realize that first love is not going to be your love forever, you never step into the next one with the same ‘I’m just going to dive in head-first’ feeling. I think people are really drawn to that.”