Guy ArochBlake Lively has nothing but wonderful things to say about Woody Allen.
The actress has come to the controversial director's defense before, and during her latest interview with Hamptons magazine, she continued to gush about Allen and her experience working with him on her upcoming film Café Society, which costars Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carell, and Parker Posey.
"[Woody] creates a very pleasant set where everybody's just happy to be there and happy to be making a movie, and happy to be a part of film history," she said. "For him to have that confidence in you almost gives you the confidence in yourself to just go with the flow. And those are the moments that he really likes, the found moments, the moments that aren't written but just happen."
She continued, "It's really cool to work with a director who's done so much, because he knows exactly what he wants. The fact that he does one shot for an entire scene—[and] this could be a scene with eight people and one to two takes—it gives you a level of confidence because when he's got it, he knows he's got it."
Lively added that Allen will give his actors free rein to improvise in scenes, which can be a daunting task. "He also is really encouraging as to why he cast you, so he'll say, 'Say the dialogue that's written and then you can improvise for a while.' And his dialogue is so specific, and it's speaking in a 1930s dialect and [with period] references, so it's intimidating to think, Oh, let me just improvise there and hope that my words blend seamlessly alongside Woody Allen's. Which they clearly wouldn't and don't. But he's very empowering."