TRANSCRIPT OF DAKOTA FANNING GUEST APPEARING ON THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO
December 13, 2006

Jay: Alrighty, my next guest is one of our favorites. Probably the nicest, happiest actresses in Hollywood. She's 12-years-old, she's starring in Charlotte's Web which comes out this Friday, December 15 - please welcome the lovely Dakota Fanning! (cheers and applause)
*Dakota walks out waving to the audience and hugs Jay*
Jay: Thanks for coming!
Dakota: Thank you for having me again!
Jay: You look beautiful!
Dakota: Thank you!
Jay: Now, did you eat your vegetables, are you a big vegetable eater?
Dakota: You know, I am not as good as I should be, about vegetables.
Jay: Uh huh. Right.
Dakota: But I'm trying, I'm doing a lot better.
(Jay laughs)
Dakota: A lot better with vegetables. But I like potatoes...
Jay: Potatoes.
Dakota: French fries...
Jay: French fries. (laughter)
Dakota: Ketchup! That's tomato!
Jay: President Reagan called that a vegetable, that's right, very good, very good.
Dakota: Oh right, that's a fruit.
Jay: And I like your dress, what is that, a spider web?
Dakota: That's why I got it!
Jay: Oh, very good.
Dakota: Cause I thought it looked like spider webs, for Charlotte! I just need a Charlotte on there somewhere.
Jay: Very pretty! Now what's new in teeth world? Remember every time you come here we talk about your teeth cause that seems like a huge deal, now what are those there, do those light up or something? *points to Dakota's teeth*
Dakota: (laughs) No, I just, I have blue rubber bands around them right now.
Jay: Oh, I see. They're sparkly.
Dakota: Are they sparkly?
Jay: Well yeah, they look good.
Dakota: Thanks!
Jay: Yeah, cause they, weren't they pink last time?
Dakota: They were pink, I changed them out - I do pink, and then blue, and then darker pink, and then you know, different kinds.
Jay: Okay.
Dakota: But my newest teeth update is I had a surgery.
Jay: Wow.
Dakota: I had a surgery on my teeth, I had to be put to sleep, for 45 minutes.
Jay: Wow.
Dakota: Yes.
Jay: Well what for, what was the surgery for?
Dakota: Well - okay, here's the interesting part of the surgery. The surgery was, I have a tooth that's up here - *points on her left cheek*
Jay: Up here?
Dakota: It's up, like, right up here. And, I, that was coming down, and was going to, was gonna touch the root of this tooth. *point to one of her teeth*
Jay: Ow.
Dakota: And it was gonna distintegrate.
Jay: It's like a meteorite from space!
Dakota: (laughs) So then they had to cut up in here, like cut up here (*points to cheek*) and expose that tooth, and glue on one of these, one of these braces, that has a chain that dangles from it!
Jay: A chain.
Dakota: Right. A chain, a little gold chain.
Jay: And they glue it on, with like that glue with the guy in the crazy commercial? (laughter)
Dakota: No, then, what they have to do they cement it on, and then they attach the chain to the braces. These braces.
Jay: Yeah, okay.
Dakota: And then I wake up, you know, I wake up from the surgery - and then, the next week I went to the orthodontist, and then they unhooked the chain from the braces, and pull it! *pretends to pull a chain*
Jay: And what, it pulls it..?
Dakota: Yes, it starts pulling this tooth down.
Jay: What, do they put a tyre iron in your mouth and go like this?
Dakota: One millimetre a month, it comes down.
Jay: Really?
Dakota: And they have to pull it every two weeks. First they thread an elastic string through the chain, and then they pull it! And then they knot it to this thing that I have, like this other brace - (laughter) - it's true! There's this other brace that's glued to my back tooth, and that's what they knot it around.
Jay: You're like the bionic woman! (laughter)
Dakota: But it hurts!
Jay: That's really, that's someone putting a chain in my mouth, "ow, ow, ow!"
Dakota: That would hurt! I was asleep for the surgery, so that was fine.
Jay: When you go in for your weekly chain pull, do they put you to sleep for that, or -
Dakota: No, they don't put me to sleep for that. And then, I went one time and the nurse was saying, she was like - I did it once, I did it the first time they pulled it, and then I went in two weeks, I went again, and the lady was like "Oh, well, we can put some numbing stuff on it." (laughter) I was like, "Yeah. I'll take that, that's great." (laughs) But then, the next time I went, the numbing stuff didn't work.
Jay: Oh, wow, that's interesting.
Dakota: So now it just doesn't work anymore.
Jay: Do you ever just get, like, a cavity? (laughter)
Dakota: Never had a cavity!
Jay: Yeah, see I've never had a cavity either.
Dakota: Never had a cavity in my life.
Jay: See, my teeth are all crooked, you know what my mother used to do? See you don't need the orthodontist, that's what my mother used to say. She'd say, whenever you get a few minutes, go like this - push your teeth out and guide them. *sticks his thumbs behind his two front teeth and pretends to push them out* So I'd walked around the house "ugh, ugh" (pushes teeth). I was sitting in school going "ugh, ugh, I'm fixing my teef!" - but it didn't work, they came in crooked.
Dakota: Well, my - I've had so many teeth problems.
Jay: Really? And you're like, twelve now.
Dakota: Well the first problem was I've never lost a tooth on its own. They've always been pulled.
Jay: Really?
Dakota: Yes, because my roots don't disintegrate so they come out with like, roots that long.
Jay: Wow.
Dakota: And then I've had a top and bottom retainer twice. I've had an expander, which my mom had to turn to open up my palate. And then I've had braces twice... I've had this chain. (laughter)
Jay: And you're now sixty-one years old? (laughter)
Dakota: That's the thing, I feel like I'm never gonna have a mouth that doesn't have some metal in it.
Jay: But it looks beautiful.
Dakota: And then the head gear, which I showed you!
Jay: Oh, the head gear! I thought you were playing for the raiders or something with the big head gear on. (laughter)
Dakota: Oh, no. That was at night.
Jay: I remember that, I remember that.
Dakota: That was at night, yes.
Jay: We'll take a break and have more Dakota right after this!
Dakota: Alright!
(Cheers and applause)

Jay: Welcome back, I'm with Dakota Fanning! Charlotte's Web is the new movie. Uh, now you probably read the book, right?
Dakota: I have read the book, you know, so many times. And I've read it, you know, I had it read to when I was younger, and I read it when I was about six for the first time, and while we were doing the movie my sister read it.
Jay: Okay.
Dakota: And so she, kind of, got to read the pages and then see them being acted out!
Jay: Oh, that's cool.
Dakota: Which was really cool, so.
Jay: Now what's the record you set today with this book, tell me about that.
Dakota: Right! Well they're, the Guiness Book of World Records, we attempted to break the world record for the most people reading the same book at the same time.
Jay: Oh cool!
Dakota: So this morning, uh, Beau Bridges who's in the movie, and Dominic Scott Kay who's the voice of Wilbur, and I, all went to a school here in LA and we read Chapter 5 of Charlotte's Web. And all the fifty states participated, and twenty-four countries.
Jay: Wow!
Dakota: So all of them, uh, it's gonna be, they're tallying up all the people that, you know, read it, so it was cool to be a part of that.
Jay: Well congratulations! That's exciting! (applause)
Dakota: Thank you! Yeah, I love that!
Jay: Now you worked with, obviously, you worked with pigs in the movie - do you like pigs, are you scared of pigs? Tell me what you think.
Dakota: You know, I like them. I had worked with them once in Uptown Girls, there was one pig in that. But I - (laughter)
Jay: (laughs) Sounds terrible - there's one pig in this movie I worked with.
Dakota: No, no, it was great, it was great! But on this movie, there was fifty that played Wilbur.
Jay: Wow.
Dakota: So I worked with a lot. Cause they were all different sizes -
Jay: Right, right.
Dakota: You know, and I went and trained with them, and I fed them and held them, and you know, just kind of got used to all the Wilburs.
Jay: Now would you like to have a pet pig? Is that something you'd like?
Dakota: I would one day, you know, cause I worked with them for so long, I worked with them for three months - every day. So, you know, I really got used to having them around.
Jay: But they're not really messy, are they?
Dakota: No, they're so cute! And they're my favorite color.
Jay: Yeah.
Dakota: They're pink! (laughter)
Jay: That's right. And aren't they, aren't they supposed to be pretty bright?
Dakota: They're very smart. They're really, they're very smart, and they learned their tricks in Summer -
Jay: Did they come when you call them by name?
Dakota: Oh definitely. And they all had different names.
Jay: Right, okay.
Dakota: So we had, like, Maisy, and Lily, and Daisy -
Jay: Okay.
Dakota: - and Lily. I said Lily, but we had lots of different names.
Jay: How about spiders, are you scared of spiders? See my wife is frightened, my wife will fight anybody, but a spider? "Eeek!" And she actually goes "Eeek!" like they do in the cartoons. (laughter) You know, I never saw "Eeek!" but if I hear that I know it was a spider. You know, she'll beat the Fed Ex guy to death but "Eeek!" it's a spider. Are you afraid of spiders?
Dakota: You know, spiders I now just think of them all as Charlottes, and Julia Roberts, you know. (laughter) I imagine that their voice, their voice would be like Julia Roberts, so how could I be too scared of that?
Jay: Uh huh. But even those big ones... (imitates a big spider)
Dakota: I wouldn't want them, you know.
Jay: Would you ever kill a spider?
Dakota: I wouldn't now, you know, I would just let them go outside.
Jay: Well, how do you do that, do you get them on the paper, or?
Dakota: Yeah, I do the paper thing. You slide it under there, and -
Jay: But then they run real fast up here, and up your arm.
Dakota: Well then you fold the paper up. (laughter)
Jay: Oh. I would just go like that. *pretends to smack a spider on his arm* (laughter) Well let's set up this clip, what's happening here?
Dakota: Alright -
Jay: (re: pictures showing on screen) Oh no, there's you, that's you and your sister -
Dakota: That was my sister!
Jay: Go back to that picture, that's you and your sister Ellie, look at how cute they are.
Dakota: There! That is at the pig farm.
Jay: Right.
Dakota: With the pigs, that was the first day I met the pigs, and so we were, that's their barn, that's their little stalls and I was holding the pig, my sister was feeding it one of the bottles.
Jay: Cool! Look at the happy girl and pigs.
Dakota: They were so cute.
Jay: They are cute. Now let's - and they just drink the whole thing, don't they, they just (slurps).
Dakota: Very fast! Very fast, too.
Jay: Yeah, they're like I am, I'm like that too. That's why people often call me a pig, cause I drink very quickly. (laughter) Now what's happening in this scene?
Dakota: Now, in this scene, this is when Fern, my character, she brings Wilbur to school. She loves him so much she brings him to school the first morning that she gets him, and she hides him in her desk. And then he starts making some noise and then the teacher notices, and you know, that's just bad. (laughs) So, here we go.
Jay: Charlotte's Web.

(A clip from Charlotte's Web plays)

Jay: Cool! You excited for Christmas, what are you doing? You're gonna be here, you're not on the road for Christmas are you? You're gonna be home, aren't you?
Dakota: No, I'm here for Christmas.
Jay: Oh, good.
Dakota: I'm always here for Christmas and Christmas is my favorite holiday.
Jay: Cool, cool. And you got a new dog and everything, too, congratulations.
Dakota: I do! Yes!
Jay: Quickly, tell me his name, what's his name?
Dakota: Lewellen is her name -
Jay: Lewellen.
Dakota: And she's a schnoodle, miniature schnauzer toy poodle.
Jay: Cool, okay, well give her my best.
Dakota: I will, I will!
Jay: And say Merry Christmas! Thank you Dakota!
Dakota: Thank you!
Jay: We'll be right back with Aaron Eckles right after this, Dakota Fanning! (cheers and applause)