Yahoo Lifestyle Angelina Jolie Described Her Daughter Vivienne As A “Complex Young Woman” After Reports She Requested To Drop Brad Pitt’s Name From “The Outsiders” Playbill
Angelina Jolie gave some rare comments about her relationship with her daughter, Vivienne.
In case you missed it, the mom-and-daughter duo recently collaborated on The Outsiders on Broadway. Angelina served as a producer, while 15-year-old Vivienne lent a hand as a producer’s assistant.
Ahead of the Tony Awards this weekend, where The Outsiders is up for 12 awards, Angelina sat down with Deadline to share more about how she got involved with the production thanks to her daughter.
“My daughter Viv loves theater,” the Oscar-winner said in her new interview alongside The Outsiders director Danya Taymor. “She appreciates all theater but she certainly knows what she feels close to and what she responds to. She went to see The Outsiders at La Jolla about five times and was telling me about it, and I had read the book, and I’d seen the film years ago.”
After Vivienne encouraged her to come and see the show, Angelina said she was instantly moved by the way her daughter connected with the story, saying: “As a mother, as a person, I was watching it, but I was really watching the effect it was having on my young daughter and what she was telling me about herself.”
“I was learning what about it was important to her and why it connected so deeply to her… It was a very different experience of understanding of how this is having a significant effect on her as a young person right now,” she went on. “She’s communicating something to me, and that is the power of this material, which was in really good shape even by then.”
Noting that Vivienne was present in the show’s development from the very start, Angelina said working closely with her daughter, more than anything else, “was a moment to learn more about Viv.”
“After we saw it, we were contacted by the producers, and they said, ‘Did you enjoy it,’ and we said ‘Yes,’ and they said, ‘What did you like?’” she recalled, describing her daughter as a “complex young woman.” “So Viv and I sat together and we wrote down what we liked, what we were curious about, and they responded to our notes.”
As well as Vivienne, Angelina shares five other children with her ex-husband, Brad Pitt: Maddox, 22; Pax, 20; Zahara, 19; Shiloh, 18; and Knox, 15. And her comments about her close relationship with Vivienne come amid much speculation about Brad’s apparent estrangement from the kids.
In case you missed it, it was reported last month that Shiloh legally filed to drop her dad’s name on her 18th birthday, changing her last name from “Jolie-Pitt” to “Jolie.”
Sources told People that Shiloh “hired her own lawyer and paid for it herself.” And while she may be the first of her siblings to make legal moves, she isn’t the only one to have seemingly attempted to drop “Pitt” from their last name.
Last year, Shiloh’s older sister, Zahara, notably omitted her dad’s last name when introducing herself at Spelman College, where she’s an Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority member. In a video from a ceremony in November, the 19-year-old called herself “Zahara Marley Jolie.”
Moreover, Vivienne also appears to be following in her sisters’ footsteps. In The Outsiders playbill, the teen is credited as “Vivienne Jolie” instead of “Vivienne Jolie-Pitt.” Last week, a source told Entertainment Tonight that she personally requested to be credited without her dad’s last name.
Though neither Brad nor Angelina has commented directly on the kids’ apparent attempts to distance themselves from their dad, a source told People that the Fight Club actor is “aware and upset” by it all.
“The reminders that he’s lost his children, is of course not easy for Brad,” an insider said after the news of Shiloh’s recent filing. “He loves his children and misses them. It’s very sad.”
You can find Angelina’s full interview with Deadline here.
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