'Elio' star Zoe Saldaña lives for winning 'cool mom points' with her kids
How does Zoe Saldaña follow up an Academy Award win? By starring in a Pixar animated movie.
Her kids think one is cooler than the other, and it might not be the one you expect.
“Definitely winning an Oscar, because they're playing soccer right now,” Saldaña says. “They're like, ‘Mom! Oscar is like the World Cup!’ And then my third son was like, ‘What? You got it for supporting actress, right?’ And I'm just like, ‘Oh, Zen. Thank you for keeping me on my toes.’
“But they're always proud of the fact that I'm making an effort in wanting to cater to films that they can watch right now.”
Saldaña has starred in big franchises like “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Avatar” but also stayed busy in the animation space, with roles in the “Maya and the Three” miniseries, “Missing Link,” “My Little Pony: The Movie” and now Pixar’s “Elio.” Saldaña voices Olga Solis, the aunt and guardian of an 11-year-old boy named Elio (Yonas Kibreab) who wishes he could be abducted by aliens and is picked up by a spaceship full of colorful creatures.
The "Emilia Pérez" star always wants her sons – twins Cy and Bowie, 10, and Zen, 8 – to be proud of her, and “my kids are absolutely revelations to me every single day,” Saldaña says. “They're my biggest teachers. And obviously I say that behind their backs. I never want them to feel completely responsible for my growth, but they are teaching me a lot by just growing around me and evolving and setting their boundaries and claiming their space and revealing themselves to themselves.”
By being in stories that appeal to younger audiences, “it just contributes to my deeper education on wanting to know how to be a better mom to my kids,” she adds. “I just want to be cool for a longer time than possible. In my mind, I feel like that this gives me cool mom points.”
Her character in “Elio,” though, has to figure out how to be a mom. Olga is an Air Force major who’s put her dreams of being an astronaut on hold to care for her nephew, and they struggle to get along. When Elio gets beamed up to space and goes on his adventures there, a clone Elio is sent back to Earth to take his place. And this one, Elio 2.0, is agreeable, generally compliant and overall “too perfect,” Saldaña says.
“That sounds in theory like a perfect Mother's Day, where the mom has a yes day,” Saldaña says. “Can I make you some broccoli with that? Yes. Do you want to pick up after yourself? Absolutely. But if that were to happen in reality in my life, I would be like at the hospital with my kids, like there's something wrong with my child. Why he's saying yes to everything I'm proposing?!
“With Olga, even though everything on the surface was fine, something was unsettling. That woke up that maternal instinct in her to, to really say, ‘OK, I may not understand my kid, but I love my kid so much so that I know when he's off, I know when he's not being himself.’ ”
Saldaña, who next stars in "Avatar: Fire and Ash" (in theaters Dec. 19), enjoys collaborating with kids on movie projects. “It's shorter work hours when you work with children,” she says. “You don't have to do those long 14-hour days. If all your scenes are with that child, you get to go home when they go home and I kind of love that.
“It's easier for me to work with other kids than to work with my own. I can't really imagine ever being able to work with my own kids because I wouldn't be able to separate being their mom at all times.”
A couple of Saldaña’s sons have expressed some interest in acting. She and husband Marco Perego “would support our children if this is what they would want to pursue," Saldaña says. "But so far, the moment we go, ‘Well, come on, let's wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning, let's get on the road for two hours, let's memorize these 10 pages,’ they’re like, ‘Uh, I don't think so.’ ”