Deadline Hollywood - AwardsLine - Oscar Preview/Actresses - 12/20/23 by Deadline Hollywood

D EC E M B E R 2 0 , 2 0 2 3 OSCAR PREVIEW

Slay Ride EVE HEWSON retunes her guitar for FLORA AND SON

Follow The Star N ATA L IE PORTM A N tra nsfo rm s into JU L IA N N E M O O R E i n MAY D EC E M B E R

Let It Show V F X A RT ISTS l ea p i nto the future of a ni m ati o n

Plus C l a i re FOY Lily G L A DSTON E Sa nd ra H Ü L LE R Va nessa K IR BY G ret a LE E Rosa m und P IK E

The Worst Noel Why Alexander Payne’s Christmas instant-classic The Holdovers, starring Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa, could be your Best Picture dark horse.

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“

F O R YOU R C O N S I D E R AT I O N I N A L L CAT E G O R I E S

energized throughout by a sense of artistic freedom and uninhibited creative passion... A single frame of the film packs such profuse and exquisite detail– of costume and settings, gestures and diction ...

INCLUDING

David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Robbie Brenner,

p.g.a. p.g.a.

.”

p.g.a. p.g.a.

THE NEW YORKER / Richard Brody

I NCLU DI NG

Musical or Comedy

Greta Gerwig

For screenings and special content please visit www.wbawards.com

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V IC E P R E SID E NT, C O R P O RAT E C O NT RO LLE R

Tom McGinnis

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First Take 4 EVE HEWSON: The rising star is pitch perfect in Flora and Son. 8 QUICK SHOTS: Shooting to thrill in The Killer and dressing the part for the reimagining of The Color Purple. 10 THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES: Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman see double in May December.

Cover Stories 14 CLASSROOMS AND COGNAC: Alexander Payne and his cast on their bittersweet ’70s-set holiday comedy The Holdovers.

Dialogue 24 LILY GLADSTONE 28 SANDRA HÜLLER 30 GRETA LEE 32 VANESSA KIRBY 36 CLAIRE FOY 40 ROSAMUND PIKE

Craft Services 44 STRANGE NEW WORLDS: Three VFX artists go into graphic detail about taking animation into uncharted territory.

On The Cover

M I CH A E L BU C K N E R FO R D E A D L IN E

ON THE COVER: Alexander Payne, Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa, photographed exclusively for Deadline by Andrew Zaeh.

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Golden Globe

NOMINATIONS

DRAMA

BEST ACTOR BARRY KEOGHAN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS ROSAMUND PIKE

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Q U I C K S H OT S 8 | N ATA L I E P O RT M A N A N D J U L I A N N E M O O R E I N M AY D EC E M B E R 1 0

STRUMMER TIME By Joe Utichi

A P P LE TV + P H OTO C R ED I T

How Eve Hewson learned to stop worrying and start singing for John Carney’s Flora and Son

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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The ominous task that faced Eve Hewson when she first read John Carney’s script for Flora and Son had been accepted before she even realized it. Sure, she knew Carney’s work, almost exclusively delivering features that baked music into the very fabric of their construction. She’d seen Glen Hansard belting at the top of his lungs in Carney’s debut, Once; Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo making sweet music together in Begin Again; Ferdia Walsh-Peelo embracing ’80s pop in Sing Street. She knew what was coming, but still hoped it never would. She fell madly in love with Flora, a single mum living in a Dublin apartment block with her delinquent teenage son Max, turning each page as Flora salvaged a guitar from a skip, had it tidied up, and gifted it to Max. She followed along as the character started taking guitar lessons by Zoom with a dreamy American man named Jeff that Flora couldn’t resist flirting with. She had determined, having traveled this far into the screenplay, that she was going to try for this part. So, with naïve optimism, Hewson hoped that Flora might turn out to be the silent guitarist in this man’s rock band. But then… “Then she started singing,” groans Hewson, rolling her eyes. “Oh no!” Memphis Eve Sunny Day Iris Hewson likes to say she’s the daughter of hippies. It explains the name, she smiles. Her debut role in The 27 Club in 2008, while she was still a teenager, brought her to the Tribeca Film Festival and landed her an agent. It led to parts in This Must Be the Place with director Paolo Sorrentino, Enough Said with Nicole Holofcener, and Bridge of Spies with Steven Spielberg. She had grown up in a musical household—her father plays professionally in a small Irish band called U2—and she loved music. By the time she was born, her dad’s band had been doing a relatively decent job of becoming the biggest thing in music, and she was able to benefit from an affluent upbringing with her three siblings. She took piano lessons,

This quality of Hewson’s is what helped her over the hump when it came to Flora’s frustrating insistence on singing in Carney’s script. “I felt like if I said no to the meeting because I was scared of singing, what kind of an idiot would I have been?” she says. She met with Carney over Zoom, made her case to play the part, liked him enough that she became even more determined to get it, and didn’t dare to tell him she didn’t think she could sing. He gave her the part the next day. “I said to myself, ‘You know what? Forget it. I’ll figure out how to sing. It’ll be fine.’” Ahead of the shoot, she rented an Airbnb in Los Angeles, bought a guitar, and started vocal coaching. For two months she worked to get in shape, and it built her confidence. “But it was funny, John and I didn’t even really talk about the part for that whole time. Finally, it was like, ‘Shall we rehearse?’ And we decided, ‘Nah, let’s have a few dinners and then start shooting.’” Momentum, then, became her guiding light. “During the shoot, it was five weeks of keeping going. ‘Don’t think about what you did today, think about what you’re doing tomorrow. Get it done, don’t secondguess yourself.’ And then after, I’m like, ‘Oh my god, what did I do? What’s going to happen?’ It was about six months before I saw the film where I thought it was going to end my career and might be the worst thing I’d ever done.” Hewson capitalizes on the way John Carney describes his approach to filmmaking to explain her own lack of faith in her musical talents. He describes his movies as rickety, like a stool with only three legs. Full of character and lovable, but far from perfect. “Flora and Son definitely feels imperfect, and I love that about

M I CH AE L B U C K NE R FO R D E A D LI N E / A PP LE T V +

learned to play the drums and the guitar, and always assumed music would be her path. If music was the obvious vocation, drama was the hobby… until it wasn’t. Her drama tutor Erica Dunton was also a filmmaker who’d made a couple of nobudget features when she cast a 15-year-old Hewson in The 27 Club. She spent two weeks in North Carolina shooting the movie, and something just clicked. “I fell instantly in love with acting,” she says. “I knew I wanted to study acting, to go to college for it.” The guitar lessons fell by the wayside—she had never been a fan of the instrument—and music in general took a back seat. But her parents told her she could only apply to one drama school: her other choices had to be purely academic. “They were like, ‘Good luck,’ basically.” In a bold move, Hewson decided that the drama school she’d plump for would be the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at NYU; not exactly a safety school. “I had to do two monologues for my audition, and I remember doing them in my dreams for literally months beforehand,” she says. “I thought, ‘If I fuck this up, I’m screwed. I’m never going to be able to move to New York and go to college.’ I swallowed my nerves, rushed the audition, and went home and puked all night long. The nerves came flooding back. I kind of learned that I’m good under pressure; the anxiety comes after the fact.”

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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it,” Hewson says. “It feels scrappy, like it’s an emotional outburst. It feels like the story has come out of him involuntarily. So, Flora doesn’t need to be a perfect singer.” As anyone who’s seen the movie and heard its soundtrack can attest, both Hewson and Carney are being modest. Pushed to believe in herself a little, she reluctantly admits, “I actually really like my voice, now. It was such a psychological thing in my head that this was the one thing I would never do that I’d just completely written off the possibility. So, it’s wild—and important for me, actually—that this happened to me, and that I overcame it.” Since the film’s debut at January’s Sundance Film Festival, Hewson has been hearing about how well Flora and Son has been connecting. “Women come up to me after screenings in tears, saying, ‘I’m a single mom and this really moved me.’ I have friends who’ve always been honest with me about the stuff I’ve done that they haven’t liked, and they’ve all been taken in by it. One friend sent me a video of her and her husband dancing to ‘High Life’ and ‘Dublin 07’. It has been so much fun.” Carney heavily invested his cast in shaping the journey of the film, so Hewson feels a greater attachment to it. “He’s quite childlike as a director,” she says. “If he gets an idea, it’s like, ‘Ooh, let’s try this.’ He creates an atmosphere where everyone’s having fun, and everyone’s involved. The whole thing is so playful.” Halfway through Flora and Son, she sings a song with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Jeff, called “Meet in the Middle”. As the date approached to shoot the scene, she was cognizant that she hadn’t received a song to learn. She quizzed Carney, who told her that she’d be joining him in the recording studio, with Gordon-Levitt and songwriter Gary Clark, to find the song together. “I’ll never forget the day we all got together to write that song,” she says. It was also the first day she’d met Gordon-Levitt. “It was like we all got together, and magic happened. We all met in the middle.” It comes from Carney’s openness to collaborate, she insists. “You get the best ideas out of everybody. Yeah, you’ll throw in a few shit ideas, but those won’t get used, and we’ll only use the best of everybody. His approach creates the space for that to happen.” It’s noted in the movie that the song is missing a bridge, and as the plot marches on, it never does get one. This nagged at Clark, who has, in recent weeks, gathered the gang back together to finish it. Everything in Flora and Son is designed to be homebrewed, but this special version of “Meet in the Middle” has it all. “There’s strings and an orchestra, and it just goes off into this beautiful middle eight,” Hewson notes. The plan is to shoot a little music video and put it out as a single release. “It’ll make you cry,” she says.

Hewson is hard at work shooting the second season of Bad Sisters, the Apple TV+ series whose first go-around picked up four Emmy nominations. It’s an arduous, long shoot during a British and Irish winter, but reuniting with her castmates makes it worthwhile. “Since I started in the business, I definitely remember having that feeling of ‘Smurfette syndrome’, where for some reason you’re the only girl in a cast full of men,” she says. “Doing Bad Sisters has changed my approach to work, I think, because when you’re in a group of women and everybody gets along, you feel genuinely supported. We actually feel like sisters. The bond is so deep when we work together, and you don’t realize how much you miss that.” One of her castmates, Sharon Horgan, also cowrote and developed the show. Working with her, and with director Dearbhla Walsh, has inspired Hewson’s own ambitions behind the camera. “Seeing them and working with Susanne Bier who I just did The Perfect Couple with, I’ve been learning so much that I would want to give directing a go at some point. And I wouldn’t call myself a writer, but I could definitely be into coming up with some ideas…” She wouldn’t have called herself a singer, either. “Yeah, not until last year, that’s true,” she laughs. Hewson has no grand ambitions to forge a second career in music. “But under the right circumstances I’d do it again. I still do my vocal lessons every day because I’ve found that they’ve really helped my acting; they’ve opened up my voice. I just don’t know if I could write an album or become a pop star.” One might quietly suggest that there are smaller ways to make a mark in music than shooting for a residency at the Las Vegas Sphere. “Yeah,” she laughs, “But that’s just what it’s like in my house. ‘Have you written an album? Is it number one in the charts? No? Then get out of here!’” A

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Eve Hewson as Flora.

With Orén Kinlan as Flora’s son Max.

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Silent But Deadly For The Killer, editor Kirk Baxter was challenged with creating a pace around a mostly silent character. “The whole movie lives in a lot of subtlety until it explodes into action,” he says. “It’s about stretching tension and being exacting during the killer’s process, and then exploding into action when things are out of control.” The film opens in Paris, with the Killer, played by Michael Fassbender, giving an internal monologue about his process as he waits silently for his target. “It was strictly POV-style editing,” says Baxter. While the killer himself almost never speaks out loud, his voiceover is of “internal musings”, rather than narration, so nailing the POV shots were critical to give insight into what was going on. “When he brought the scope up and he’s studying people across the street, and

The Killer editor Kirk Baxter’s disciplined approach to highlighting an assassin’s process

Michael Fassbender in The Killer.

we still use the POVs in silence, it makes the whole thing a bit more ’70s and foreign,” he says. “Doing that whole opening in Paris gave me the disciplines of how to apply everything to the entire movie.” “The opening kind of gave us our rules for the film in how we applied music, not score, but music in his headphones with it being full blast on his

POV shots.” The use of music was intentionally more through sound design than score, as Baxter says director David Fincher didn’t want the score to “cue the audience how to feel”. “It became this language we applied to the entire movie, of POV shots that are silent except for the music and they never get to hold voiceover.” —Ryan Fleming

Dress Code Costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck worked on the original 1985 version of The Color Purple as costume supervisor, so she was thrilled when director Blitz Bazawule approached her for the 2023 musical retelling. “[Blitz] is really into the visuals of color and texture,” she says, “and he invited all the department heads to view the storyboard… [because] it was important for all of us to collaborate together and be unified and cohesive.” The costumes are an important part of telling Celie’s story as she is influenced by everyone around her. “Young Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) and Nettie (Halle Bailey) are running through the beach when the film opens, and Blitz

loved the idea of these young girls in white cotton dresses feeling free, and also the cleanness and purity of their relationship as sisters.” As the story progresses, Celie’s outfits start to become dirtier as she begins working laborious jobs. “Then she gets married to Mister, and that’s when her misery escalates and her life is downtrodden, which the clothes needed to reflect.” When Fantasia Barrino takes the reins as adult Celie, the colors and textures are more somber and darker, because she was constantly broken down. “Things started changing when she was introduced to Shug (Taraji P. Henson), who brought in colors and dresses that touched Celie’s heart.” At this point in

From left: Phylicia Pearl Mpasi and Halle Bailey as young Celie and Nettie.

the film, Celie starts to feel worthy of being herself, and the costumes become brighter and more colorful. “We see the very first color purple in her clothing in 1935, when she gains the strength to leave Mister… and then we come back to white at the end of the film when she just really restored her soul.” —Ryan Fleming

N ET FLI X / WA R N ER B ROS./ E V ER E TT C O LL ECT IO N

How The Color Purple costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck matched Celie’s emotional journey through color and texture

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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NATALIE PORTMAN 1. How did you get involved with May December? Jessica Elbaum, who’s another one of the producers, sent me the script, and I was just so blown away by Samy Burch’s writing. It was just astonishing, and I was so moved by the specificity of the characters and the exploration of subjects like performance and identity. I sent it to Todd, who I had always wanted to work with, and I had previously sent him other projects that he had not responded to. So, it was very exciting when he was taken with this story. And the rest just kind of rolled from there, into this dream assembly of people.

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore go head-to-head in Todd Haynes twisty melodrama May December By Damon Wise

As part of the preparation for May December, Todd Haynes gave his cast and crew a “mood file”, which included a list of 20-odd movies that would indicate its look and feel. Key to stars Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore was the 1966 film Persona, by Ingmar Bergman, in which a nurse assigned to tend to a famous actress, who has suffered a nervous breakdown, starts to absorb her patient’s identity. Similarly, there are two women at the heart of Haynes’s drama: a TV star, Elizabeth Berry (Portman), who is about to start work on a true-crime biopic, and Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Moore), the film’s subject, a married woman whose affair with an underage boy caused a scandal in the ’90s and again, 10 years later, when she married him. The two women couldn’t appear more different, but, as Elizabeth gets closer to her quarry, their personalities start to merge. By answering the same questions each, both of May December’s leading ladies share their perspectives on the season’s thorniest film… 10

3. How did you approach the character of Elizabeth? My approach is similar to a journalist’s or documentarian’s when you’re telling a story that is true; you try and not get involved in it, even though there is the inevitable aspect that how it’s being told already affects the course of a story—the fact that it’s being documented, being publicized—even if it’s as faithful to the source as possible. But of course, Elizabeth goes so much farther into getting involved in their story. As for the preparation, it was really layered. It’s this meta thing where I’m an actress playing an actress playing a character. Julie keeps joking about how she studied with a baker to learn how to bake the cake that she bakes in real time in the movie. Then I watched her to learn how to bake a cake. It’s just very layered, but I think it’s kind of emblematic of how our identity is made up of various performances, particularly female identity. And even Elizabeth’s first entrance into this barbecue of being like, “I’m this big actress, but look how down to earth I am.” That’s a performance of a sort. 4. How did you prepare to play a character that’s going to be studying—and copying—Gracie? We didn’t have rehearsal at all, and I didn’t know what Julie was going to do ahead of time, so it was very scary showing up to work on the first day. We shot the whole film in 23 days, and we had two bouts of luck on this. Point one was that we shot relatively chronologically at Todd’s insistence, so that I got to observe Julie in real time, which, of course, was exactly what my character was doing, which is looking at what she was doing and then practicing copying it. And then, the second thing that was just so lucky is that, obviously, Julie’s such a brilliant

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2. It’s inspired by the real-life story of Mary Kay Letourneau. How much did you know about that? Of course, I was very aware of the tabloids as a young person growing up in the U.S., I think it was really everywhere, and her story was really just splashed everywhere. So, I was quite aware of it, but hadn’t really thought much about it and certainly hadn’t considered, I think most of us, quite callously, what happened to those people whose lives we consumed. What happened to them 20 years later? Where were they? What was the effect on their lives of the story that was told over and over again in such a lascivious way?

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actress, and she makes these bold choices that are so extreme, yet always completely human and believable. Julie was very thoughtful in creating her character, choosing identifiable traits for Gracie that I could mimic and hold onto, which was very generous of her—to consider my performance when she was crafting hers. Things like the lisp and her very feminine hand movements, those were choices that were incredibly right for her character that she had thought through—the childishness and naïveté of the character made sense—but also it was something that I could really grab onto and identifiably copy. 5. The camera is literally a mirror throughout the movie. Could you talk about how that idea came up, and how it worked for you? It was an incredible innovation of Todd’s that he brought to the script: the camera as a mirror, and it’s so evocative of performance as identityreflection, because, of course, the mirror is literally the audience here. And it was technically quite difficult because we weren’t actually looking in a mirror. We were looking in a camera lens, and there was an X mark for where we were supposedly seeing ourselves and an X mark for where we were supposedly seeing each other. And we’d have to react off of it without actually seeing the other’s reflection, which was quite complex, but it was really an incredible way to absorb the artifice and play with that. 6. The makeup scene is especially important. Could you talk a little bit about it? The makeup scene is, for me, the most moving, and shooting it was the most revelatory scene in the movie, because Samy’s writing, which was deceptively simple on the page, just exploded with meaning when we started saying the words. Because it wasn’t the words, it was the silences between them and what goes unsaid that is so full of trauma, particularly when my character says to Gracie, “What was your mother like?” And Julie takes this long pause and then says, “She was beautiful.” It’s just the most devastating line to me because of everything she doesn’t say about her mother, and then during this act of putting on makeup, which is, of course, the performance of being female and how you’re supposed to be, and being kind of trapped in this way that society prescribes you to be. It’s just these two women confronting not having the mothers they needed.

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7. Michel Legrand’s music is crucial to the film, and Todd said that he played music on the set. How was that for you? It was incredible. It’s the first time in my life that I have worked with the actual music as we’re shooting. And he not only had the music, he had the exact pieces of music, like which part of the original Michel Legrand score from The Go-Between, this 1971 Losey film, would be in which part of the movie. So, when I was driving, he was playing one part. And it was so incredible, tonally, to understand that while we were shooting.

The makeup scene: Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in May December.

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8. The film doesn’t judge the characters, and it builds to a very unsettling climax. How do you feel about that, and what reactions have you had from audiences? Yeah. Well, it’s been really remarkable to hear audience reactions, because people have been so excited and provoked by it. And everyone’s just enthralled by being challenged in this way of not being told what to think. It’s something where you want to talk about it afterwards, and I think that’s rare. It’s supposed to make you uncomfortable, and I think one of the big questions it poses is about whether art can really be amoral. I think so many of us—and Elizabeth says a version of this in the scene with the theater students— think that bad characters are the most interesting to watch and to play, because we just kind of want to get into the human heart: It’s not about judging characters; it’s about understanding human behavior. 9. Are you relieved that people see the humor in it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it was very clear that Samy had a view of the ridiculousness of a lot of these situations and that she could hold the tragedy and the melodrama alongside the absurdity of our celebrity culture, of moviemaking, of the pursuit of truth in art that she had. I mean, even if you just look at the writing of the last scene of the movie that they finally get to, it’s ridiculous. At the end of this entire artistic pursuit that’s overturned everyone’s lives, they make this movie, and you’re like, “That’s the movie?” [Laughs] I mean, so much of the kind of ridiculousness is pointed out. And I think it’s also thanks to Todd’s incredible grasp of tone, that you can hold all of these things at once, that they can be incredibly moving and real emotionally, and have this comedy and feel deeply unsettling and kind of off-kilter. I mean, that’s masterful direction. 10. Do you have any plans to work with Todd and Julianne again? I would love to work with them again. We don’t have a plan now, but we will make one soon because it was too fun. A

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JULIANNE MOORE 1. How did you get involved with May December? Well, this is my fifth collaboration with Todd. We’ve been working together for 30 years, which is kind of crazy. Jessica Elbaum, from Gloria Sanchez Productions, sent the script to Natalie, and Natalie sent it to Todd. And Todd, because we had this very long, really wonderful artistic collaboration, slipped it to me. I read it, and I flipped out. It was so complicated, and emotional, and strange, and demanding, and also incredibly unusual in that it had these two female characters in, like, a Face/Off sort of relationship. So often when you find two female characters opposite each other, either it’s a love story or it’s a familial relationship. And this was unusual, because here are two very strong women in a struggle for narrative dominance. I said, “Yes, absolutely,” right away.

3. How did you approach the character of Gracie? It was challenging. I mean, for me, I think one of the things that was so compelling is her insistence on her personal narrative. I think that, psychologically, when someone has transgressed, but insists on presenting their narrative as not a transgression, as something utterly ordinary, I think people have a feeling of danger around them. Something feels uncomfortable, like being gaslit. I was so interested in it, and so compelled by it, and even frightened by it. It’s really scary when somebody demands—when somebody insists on—a narrative that’s patently untrue. 4. How did you prepare to play a character that’s going to be studied—and copied—by Elizabeth? Well, that was something that Todd and I spoke about explicitly, because we had very limited time, and Natalie was going to have to become me, or learn my mannerisms immediately. Therefore, I needed to really think about who Gracie was, be prepared with who she was, and then offer up things that were absolutely concrete for her to imitate. So, as I was doing my

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2. It’s inspired by the real-life story of Mary Kay Letourneau. How much did you know about that? Samy Burch, who was our screenwriter, grew up in the ’90s, which was kind of the height of tabloid culture. Those were the days when we still had magazines on stands, and all these images were splashed across them. There was Mary Kay Letourneau, Monica Lewinsky, O.J. Simpson, and all of these kinds of tragic and somewhat lascivious stories were everywhere. So, yes, I was aware of it. In the United States, it was impossible, if you were around at that time, to not hear these stories. But I wasn’t highly educated.

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research on her, I realized that she was someone who was so incredibly inculcated in gender, it’s as if she’s swallowed gender whole. I thought about her having this kind of hyper-femininity, so, physically, I came up with the way that she moved, and held herself, and her presentation was super, super feminine. And then there’s her insistence on her naïveté. I started thinking, what would be an outward manifestation of that? And I hit on this idea of a lisp, which is a childlike characteristic, and often happens when kids don’t have enough musculature in their mouth. And I called Todd, and I said, “I’m thinking about this. I think it’s something very concrete then that I could have, that Natalie could imitate.” It was really an interesting process, because I’ve never done that before—like, establish these physical characteristics for two explicit reasons—but it was exciting. And it was exciting to work with it with Todd, and to offer it to Natalie. She didn’t hear the lisp until we did the first scene together.

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5. The camera is literally a mirror throughout the movie. Could you talk about how that idea came up, and how it worked for you? Todd is a master of construction, he really is. He has a formidable intellect, and a real knowledge of cinema, and how you shape a scene, how you tell a story. And he created this wonderful distance in the way that he framed us, in these wide masters, where we all kind of step in and out of the shot. And then all of these images were reflected back to one another. As I said before, Natalie and I played these characters who are incredibly self-regarding, so the idea is that we can look into a mirror and see ourselves, but not examine ourselves. And so, the film is asking: what does it mean to see yourself but not look at yourself? And how does it change your own performative identity when somebody else is looking at you, while you’re looking at yourself? Is this really who you are? Are you simply performing your identity because you’re being seen? I think both of these characters are people that are certainly performing all the time. 6. The makeup scene is especially important. Could you talk a little bit about it? That’s absolutely my favorite scene. I think that it’s remarkable, because it’s a moment of their truest intimacy. They’re in this one shot together, and it’s in one take, doing something that is performatively female: putting on makeup. I think that Gracie is really saying to Elizabeth, at this point, “I want to put my face on you. I want you to feel what it is to be me.” And so, the two of them face each other, and then have this incredibly intimate conversation about their mothers. It’s so revealing of who they are, what their background was. Particularly Gracie. When Elizabeth says, “What was your mother like?” Gracie says, “She was beautiful.” And that’s it. One of the things I loved about that scene is that, of course, technically it was challenging, because I needed to get my makeup on Natalie in real time, so that when we turned into the mirror to look at each other, the level of saturation of makeup, color-wise, would be the same as mine. Honestly, that was my biggest challenge. 7. Michel Legrand’s music is crucial to the film, and Todd said that he played music on the set. How was that for you? He emailed me about it really early on, and he just said, “Julie, I want you to listen to this score from The GoBetween, because this is an idea that I have for the film.” What happened so wonderfully in this Joseph Losey film is that you see all these relationships, and all this behavior, and then this striking score pops in as a book end. So, it indicates to the audience, like, “Oh, you think you’ve been watching something that’s fairly normal, but I’m going to tell you, as a director, no—there’s something else happening here. He was like, “I’m really interested in using music in this way.” And so, when we were on set and doing these scenes, he would play these tracks, and we would have

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an indication of how he was going to shape the film, cinematically. Later on, he became very, very attached to the Michel Legrand score. So much had been created with that in mind, he and his composer ended up reinterpreting it and using it in the film. 8. The film doesn’t judge the characters, and it builds to a very unsettling climax. How do you feel about that, and what reactions have you had from audiences? You’re right, it doesn’t judge the characters, it sort of presents them. And I think we enter into this movie with Elizabeth, and we believe that she’s going to be a reliable narrator. And then, of course, she turns out not to be. So, I think it makes you question the nature of storytelling itself and how we present our stories to the world. What do we believe? What actually is the truth? Are we ever going to get to the truth of anything, or of any human being? This idea of a shared truth—does it even exist if people are always telling their own stories? I love the ending of the movie. People keep asking me, what happens next? I mean, we’re all so soothed sometimes by films, and books, and storytelling, where everything is sewn up, where there is an ending. But, in fact, there very rarely is that feeling in life, and we don’t know. We live in a state of suspension, in a sense. And this movie sort of ends on an inhale, rather than an exhale. And so, I think it promotes discussion about behavior, and identity, and culture, and narrative, and our desire to tell stories. 9. Are you relieved that people see the humor in it? Oh god, yeah, of course. Life without humor is deadly, right? 10. Any plans to work with Todd and Natalie again? Oh my god, I hope so. Todd and I have been doing this for 30 years now, and it’s been the great honor of my life. I never feel more free than when I’m working with Todd. He’s a wonderful, great artist, and an extraordinary collaborator. And Natalie’s my new friend. We’d known each other a little bit socially, and I had always admired her work. And I think we worked very similarly, and are not dissimilar even personally, and I just adore her. So, I really, really hope that we get to find something to do together again. A

Portman and Moore on set with director Todd Haynes.

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The House of Payne

The Holdovers reunites Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti for the first time since Sideways, 19 years ago. With Da’Vine Joy Randolph and newcomer Dominic Sessa, their winter’s tale brings a festive message of unexpected connection and hope.

By ANTONIA BLYTH Photographed by ANDREW ZAEH

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Back in 2004, during a press tour for Sideways— Alexander Payne’s wine-soaked buddy movie starring Paul Giamatti as a depressive divorcé—the filmmaker and the actor were in Omaha in front of an audience.

In a moment of showmanship, Payne whipped out a local phone book, declaring Giamatti so skilled, he could make even that sound interesting. And sure enough, as Giamatti recited the listings, he brought the house down. “Thanks for rolling with that stunt,” Payne tells Giamatti now, some 20 years later, in a New York City hotel room, where they are, once again, on a press tour. The film reuniting them is The Holdovers and Payne designed Giamatti’s role just for him. Paul Hunham is a beleaguered Classics professor at Barton Academy, a New England boarding school steeped in history and privilege. Like Giamatti’s Sideways character, Hunham also likes a drink (more on that later), but the other throughline is a theme Payne’s films have often favored—something The Holdovers screenwriter David Hemingson calls “quiet heroism”. Nobody likes the wall-eyed and odiferous Hunham, yet on he soldiers, railing against his pupils’ entitlement, a curmudgeonly Scrooge doling out homework for the Christmas break. He believes in his teaching mission and will get it done, regardless the effect on his own popularity. Payne recalls his own version of Hunham from childhood—a “prick Latin teacher” from his Jesuit school. “Father Michael Hindelang. A magnificent Saint Prick. He made kids cry in class. It was a centuries-old method of, how do you say the word? Pedagogy?” Payne thought of him often during filming. “The moment class was over, and you talked to him, he was the nicest guy. So, it was, ‘You’re willing to be fucking hated in order to instill this discipline in us?’ The willingness to be disliked. In fact, welcoming it.”

“That’s definitely in the movie,” Giamatti says. An early scene shows this exact characteristic in Hunham. Barton’s headmaster Dr. Hardy Woodrup—who is, in fact, a former pupil of Hunham’s— sits behind his stately desk, basking in the glow of a gifted bottle of Louis XIII cognac (retailing today at around $4,000). He berates Hunham for failing a pupil whose parents have deep pockets. But Hunham will not bend. He tells Woodrup: “Our one true purpose is to produce young men of good character, and we cannot sacrifice our integrity on the altar of their entitlement.” And then Hunham is landed with his worst nightmare: the task of caretaking ‘the holdovers’—those kids who will remain in school over the holidays. That group will eventually be whittled down to one boy—the insolent Angus Tully, played by newcomer Dominic Sessa—and together with Mary, Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s recently-bereaved school cook, Hunham will attempt to be in loco parentis. The trio make a motley sort of crew, but it turns out that each has something to teach the other. In the hands of another director, that message, along with the Christmassy, ye olde East Coast setting, might devolve into syrup. Instead, The Holdovers goes after the twisted humor and painful truth of the repressed and lonely: Tully, the privileged pupil whose parents don’t want him at Christmas; Hunham, the hated teacher with no family, and Mary, the low-income employee mourning her beloved son. All three know what it is to be left behind. Hunham is both a sympathetic figure for his awkward solitude, and his own worst enemy for his pedantry—peppering his speech with incomprehensible Latin, and even taking a man dressed as Santa to task for his historical inaccuracy. And it is clear that Barton, which is also his alma mater, is all he has. It was always Payne’s wish to work with Giamatti again, it was just a case of timing and the right project. So, when Payne read David Hemingson’s television pilot, loosely based on his own boarding school experience, an idea for a movie began to form. And, as Payne and Hemingson batted ideas back and forth, the director imagined Giamatti in the professor role, and called him up to tell him as much. “I was like, ‘Fine, where do you want me to show up?’” Giamatti recalls. Payne later told his longtime editor Kevin Tent that he and Giamatti were both “just giddy” to be working together again. “I think there’s just deep, deep mutual respect for each other,” Tent says. “And they’re both so good at what they do, and they both just have enormous respect for each other and they’re so collaborative.” When Giamatti read the script, he felt its From left: Paul Giamatti and director Alexander Payne; right, Da'Vine Joy Randolph.

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authenticity, and he has a particularly gimlet eye for this stuff since he himself went to an East Coast boarding school—Choate, a rival school to Deerfield Academy, where among several other schools, the movie would be shot. “He gets this stuff really right,” Giamatti says of Payne. “Oftentimes, classroom stuff bothers me in movies because I don’t believe it.” “Like what, for example?” Payne cuts in. “I mean, offhand, I just often feel like it just isn’t convincing. It’s like I don’t believe this is a real classroom. I don’t believe this is really a teacher. It just is all too simplistic-seeming and sounding. But this actually felt… I believed all the details, even in the script. I was like, ‘I buy this.’” Hemingson came up with the character of Mary the school cook, and Payne had admired Randolph’s work in Dolemite Is My Name. Randolph herself instantly related to the story’s setting and theme. “I studied at prep schools my entire primary school education, and then went to Yale,” she says. “I also know what it feels like to feel othered as an outsider.” Once she was cast, Payne mailed her a carton of cigarettes as a sort of invitation. Mary is a smoker and Randolph is not, but she would learn to make it real. And she dove deep into understanding the mindset of a woman who has lost her only son. “I tried to chart her from the start of the movie to the end of the movie, to go through all the stages of grief,” Randolph says. “I quickly understood, while I was doing it, but also in my research from reading the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] and certain psychological novels, that this whole ‘stages of grief’ and the order that they put it in, I don’t know who came up with that, but a lot of times it’s false. Sometimes it happens out of that projected order. And you could be here, and then jump back to anger or denial.” She also started to feel out Mary’s long spaces of silence in Hemingson’s script. “David, beauti-

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fully, wrote almost like it would turn into a novel.

“It couldn’t be a contemporary story, there are no more single-sex boarding schools.” Alexander Payne

He would just write in prose the environment. And I had to fill three pages, which usually translated as 20 to 30 minutes of me being on camera, just being in my room doing a puzzle and smoking a cigarette. And from that, I had to create a whole world for myself.” THE CHOICE TO SHOOT AT VARIOUS Massachusetts prep schools would provoke in Giamatti a “triggering” memory of freezing cold bus rides for swim meets. It would also be where they would find the actor to play Tully. Casting director Susan Shopmaker, emptyhanded after so many actor auditions, had begun searching school drama departments, and at Deerfield, she finally found Sessa. After several meetings with Payne and Giamatti separately, Sessa realized they were actually serious about casting him. He had previously only known Payne’s film The Descendants—“We studied the book in eighth grade,” he says. During what would be a final audition, Sessa and Giamatti read through the entire script for Payne. “[Payne] didn’t say anything about what we had read or what we had done. There weren’t really any acting notes,” Sessa says. “We finished. It was silent for five to 10 seconds, and he was just like, ‘OK, come be in my movie.’” If shooting at Deerfield felt surreal for former prep school pupil Giamatti, it was “the twilight zone” for the 18-year-old Sessa, who would be shooting scenes in his regular, real-life classrooms. In The Holdovers, the year is 1970, an era Payne

chose partly for practical reasons, he says. “We knew it couldn’t be a contemporary story, because there are no more single-sex boarding schools. Somehow Hemingson said, ‘What about 1970?’ And it just felt like an unusual year in which to set a movie. And then just for screenwriting tools, it gave him higher stakes for the characters, the sword of Damocles hanging over the kids’ heads.” Mary’s son Curtis—a recent graduate of Barton—has recently been killed in Vietnam, so the era brought in “the war’s impact on her, giving mournfulness and poignancy to her life,” Payne says. He went all in, having ’70s title cards created for Focus Features—before the studio even existed— complete with all the scratches and pops of a well-worn cinema reel. And then there’s the soundtrack. Along with editor Tent and music editor Richard Ford, Payne selected a mixture of ’70s-era artists and contemporary music with a throwback sound. He also set his heart on one particular song, “The Wind”, by Cat Stevens, which, following negotiations with the singer, ultimately ate up a hefty chunk of budget. “All I know is if we ever meet for lunch, when the check comes, I’m going to the bathroom,” Payne says. Ahead of the shoot, Payne set about showing some films to Sessa. “Just ones I like that more or less straddled 1970,” he says. “Dominic had never seen The Graduate, so you had a sense of the alienated young person with an anti-authoritarian streak. That was a common kind of archetype

Above, from left: Giamatti as Hunham; director of photographer Eigil Bryld on set with Sessa and Payne.

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Clockwise from right: Randolph and Payne between takes; Sessa as Angus Tully; Tully, Mary and Hunham attend a holiday party.

prototype of the period. So, we screened that, three Hal Ashby pictures, The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail and Paper Moon—one of my favorites from that period. I watch that about once a year. And then, I think All the President’s Men maybe. Not that any single one of those films was to be the influence on the film, but just so my colleagues and me were splashing around in those same waters.” Once they were gathered on location, Giamatti felt “it was kind of nice to go back to that world. As rough as it was, you’ve got to love all that. The old wood and the leather. That stuff is really seductive. The old dining halls… and the guy I’m playing loves the fantasy of that stuff.” Randolph also found a sense of recognition in Giamatti, both having studied drama at Yale. “The only way I can describe it for me would be me being in Tokyo and being like, ‘I’m struggling. I don’t know what you’re saying,’” says Randolph, “And being in a mass of people and having one per-

But sometimes he would step back and go, ‘I don’t know. Was that...?’ Because I’ll just be like, ‘What do you want me to do? Where do you want me to go? Sure.’ You know what I mean? It’s like I’m a dog in some ways that’s been trained. And without all of that stuff, there was a really great freshness to that thing. It was really great sometimes. It made me step back and slow down and think things through.” “It’s so nice when actors bring you little gifts,” Payne says, citing Sessa’s own decision to push two beds together for his character. “I never would’ve thought of that. Dom said, ‘Well, that’s what I would’ve done. I would’ve pushed two of the beds together.’ [I thought] Thank god you’re here. I can’t think of all that shit myself, I’m just the gatekeeper.” “But you have no idea how much that doesn’t happen, how rare that is,” Giamatti tells him. When I later repeat this to Sessa and Randolph, Sessa tells her it was actually she who taught him to advocate for himself. “When I saw you asking questions about your character, it’s like, ‘Maybe I can ask questions about my character?’”

PAYNE IS NOTHING IF NOT OPEN TO suggestions from his cast and crew. He recalls shooting a scene where Hunham and Tully walk through a Boston park, and in the background, a woman feeds a squirrel. He was determined to get this squirrel thing squared away and handed the woman a handful of nuts the dolly grip happened to have in his pocket. In the film, we see her in the corner of the screen for a second, the squirrel finally taking a nut from her hand. So, I have to ask, why the squirrel? “Because who doesn’t want to see a squirrel?” “That poor woman,” says Giamatti. It took about 10 takes and was the “best shot in the movie”, Payne says. But the reason he is telling this story is to credit the key grip for his expert input. “I had to move the camera, and the key grip whispers in my ear, ‘What if you just do it here?’ I go, ‘Oh, my god! Thank god you’re here!’” Randolph brings up this aspect of Payne’s direction too. “I’m just so grateful to have worked with creatives that were so collaborative and open. Alexander didn’t have to be like that, as decorated a director as he is.” One big takeaway for Sessa was Payne’s instruction to show less on camera. “The great Jean-Louis Trintignant used to say that the best film actors are those who feel the most, but show the least,” Payne says. “The camera’s going to smell it on you. The big schnozzola of the camera smells it.” And Payne is right up there with the camera. “He’s literally five feet away from you,” says Sessa, “he is literally the camera. He’s right there.”

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son speaking English and being like, ‘My person!’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to be good.’” Sessa had never done any acting on screen before, only on the school stage, as he says, “The process, the bulk of it, was beating out the performative aspects that I guess become natural when you do a lot of stage acting. You really are bringing that performance through the space to an audience.” But his newness to film was in Randolph’s mind hugely helpful. “With Dominic, it was just, similarly for myself, when I went to Yale, I hadn’t had much prior training at all, actually, maybe a year of acting, whatever that means at an undergrad, non-conservatory level. And so, something that I saw in him and that I tried to help foster and facilitate, what he had at his advantage, was that he didn’t have so much inundated practices already. Like a baby, and I say that in the best sense, when a baby is young, you can throw them in the water and innately they’re doing breaststroke and they’re swimming. So similarly, we threw him in this situation, and he quickly caught on, adapted, threw the ball back at us, you know what I mean? “I think if we had a child star or a Disney star, I’m telling you right now, they could have been lovely, but it would’ve been a different experience because they would’ve come into it with their own things. By him being so open and generous and willing to learn, it just afforded us a much more, in my opinion, fruitful experience.” And Giamatti found Sessa’s lack of training personally inspiring. “He would advocate for his character in a way that I’d kind of forgotten about. I’m more adept and professional and whatever.

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“As rough as it was, you’ve got to love all that. The old wood and the leather. That stuff is really seductive.”

FO C U S F E AT UR ES

Paul Giamatti

“His face is up against the camera,” adds Randolph. There’s no video village. Now that, I’ve never experienced, even in the jobs I’ve done before, I’ve never heard of that. And I remember the first week I was like, ‘So Paul, does he leave at some point?’ And he says, ‘No.’ “In a way, at first it was daunting, it was different. I was like, ‘I feel like he’s invading my space a little bit.’ And then very quickly, it grew to be a comfort for me. I would look for him, like, ‘Where’s he going?’ I would wait for him.” I tell Payne and Giamatti my favorite scene takes place in a Boston liquor store. Hunham and Tully have gone to Boston against school orders, because Mary has pushed Hunham to be kinder to the boy. And Hunham, forced into connection, begins to reveal he is not a simple Scrooge at all. He is, in fact, a little like Tully—a thread Payne will gently tug when we see they have been prescribed the same anti-depressant. After a painfully revealing run-in with a former Harvard classmate, Hunham needs a drink. As he searches the liquor store shelves, Tully pushes him to explain why his Harvard roommate caused him to be kicked out of college. Tully: You got kicked out of Harvard for cheating? Hunham: No, I got kicked out of Harvard for hitting him. Tully: You hit him? What, like punched him out? Hunham: No. I hit him with a car. The scene was a long walk-and-talk around the store caught in a single shot. “I kept screwing my lines up terribly,” Giamatti says. “But it was great because it was one shot and you really wanted to do it like that, which is great,

Above, from left: Mary, Hunham and Tully celebrate Christmas Day together.

but I just kept blowing it.” “A cook is only as good as the ingredients,” counters Payne, “so, if a pianist could play Liszt, give him Liszt to play. If you have actors who can sustain four pages at a crack, take advantage of it.” But this is not Giamatti’s favorite scene. He prefers one with no dialogue at all: Hunham has taken Tully to an ice-skating rink, and as the boy careens around on the ice, the usually bah-humbug Hunham watches, smiling. “That was something on the page I really liked,” Giamatti says. “And then to actually shoot it, I really enjoyed it because I was actually watching that kid Dom enjoy himself skating. And it was really, really nice to do.” “It worked out nicely in the construction of the film,” Payne says, “because what precedes it is the professor being told [by Tully], ‘Everyone hates you, even your colleagues.’ And then watching the boy skate gives the audience a moment to sink into that feeling with the character. And then, who has given him this thing? That boy who’s now onto something else, which is a moment of joy. I mean, for me, that wordless ice-skating scene is the love scene. There’s love in that scene.” That undercutting of deep sadness, the quickswitch to humor or joy—a Payne hallmark—is there even when Mary is alone on her couch, smoking, clearly desolate without her son. Payne won’t let us linger there even a beat too long. Instead, he switches to a genuinely funny TV show she’s watching. Then Hunham appears and she simply hands him a coffee cup of whiskey. And here at the end comes Payne’s master stroke. It’s the kind of ending where we feel held but not patronized, satisfied but not mollified. Hunham has sacrificed his job, his entire life at Barton, to save Tully’s future. And, despite his old adage of “Barton men don’t lie”, he has indeed lied to protect the boy. As Hunham throws the last of his things into a U-Haul, the pupils stare, gleefully whispering about their most-hated teacher’s departure. But Tully ignores them and approaches. He has only a vague idea of what Hunham has done for him, and he has no idea at all of what he himself has done for Hunham—a man who both needed to care about someone and to be pushed out of his rut in equal measure. As they stand there, with all that they understand about each other, they make only small talk. And it is the saddest and best of scenes. “They don’t need to hug. It’s in their eyes,” Payne says. And once again, in the midst of poignancy, Payne makes us laugh out loud. As Hunham drives away, he pulls a gleaming bottle from his bag—the Cognac from the headmaster’s desk. Taking a swig, he spits what must be about $200-worth out of the window. “The old setup and payoff,” Payne says, smiling. “The smoking gun.” ★

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GL A DSTONE

The Killers of the Flower Moon star aimed to honor Mollie Burkhart and the tragic history of the Osage Nation with honesty and accuracy B Y A N T O N I A B LY T H

Before Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon debuted at Cannes, audiences had a preview of what his leading lady Lily Gladstone could do in the Sundance title Fancy Dance, in which she played a Native American aunt who would do anything to keep her family together. Family plays a big part in Scorsese’s adaptation of David Grann’s 2017 bestseller too; in his telling of the horrific true crimes committed against the oil-rich Osage people of Oklahoma. Gladstone’s real-life character, Mollie, marries Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and stumbles on a plot devised by her husband’s duplicitous uncle William King Hale (Robert De Niro) to kill her kinfolk for their money. Here, Gladstone discusses what it meant to tell Mollie’s story.

M IC HA EL BU C K NE R FO R D E A D LI N E/ PARAM OU NT P I CT UR E S / E V ER ET T C O L LECT IO N

Lily

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Blackfeet has a completely different

But modern audiences are so used

I met with Osage consultants on the film, Chad Renfro, Addie Roanhorse and Julie O’Keefe. It was a really moving conversation. Tell me about the ways they helped you find Mollie and the accuracy of representing her.

to going in and seeing content that

Yeah, that was everything. All of

centuries of trade with French,

sometimes you forget what the

my instincts about who Mollie was

with Spanish. So it’s an incredibly

story’s about. And I know Native

and how to approach her, they were

unique and very difficult language,

people, Native audiences, weren’t

instincts that I wanted to vet and

and was spoken at a pace that just

forgetting that element walking in.

check with our consultants always.

every time I thought I was going

Seriously, yeah, me too. I knew when

A lot of it was things that I’d been

And a lot of the times, the bedrock

slow enough, I needed to still slow

we talked about it at Sundance that it

wanting to say the whole time, and

that I drew from, within my own

it down.

was going to have some parallel, and

honestly in a lot of ways, kind of

community and own family, was

When I got to set, I continued

I was hoping that Killers would help

regretted that I didn’t find a way

a really good starting point, but it

the language lessons, and started

uplift it a bit, but then having it be out

of doing so earlier, or just wished

was so invaluable, every single day,

working with [Osage language

and seeing just how complementary

that I could have, because what I

knowing that there was an Osage

consultant] Janis Carpenter

they are. Same place, in a lot of ways,

was saying in private messages to

person somewhere within earshot,

to refine the women’s dialect,

same story, just a hundred years later.

friends was what I wanted to say to

that if I needed to check something

because men and women have,

Congratulations on your Golden

from people that were so excited

Globe nomination.

about it, and I just kept having this

Thank you. I’m amazed. But I’ve been

feeling of, ‘I hope the excitement’s

chronically amazed for the last two

not overwhelming what the story’s

and a half years.

actually about.’ Marty [Scorsese] pushes back against it all the time,

Before we talk about Killers of the Flower Moon, I just want to say how much I loved Fancy Dance and I love that you get the chance to talk about it more in tandem with the success of this film.

calling film and cinema ‘content’.

phonemes, all of it. Osage was hard. Osage has a lot of overlap with Lakota language. They both share a similar, or the same language base, but Osage also has a lot of influence from

everybody—it was a very triggering

in the moment, they were there

and had, especially at the time, two

Right after the actor’s strike, you released a message on social media about Killers of the Flower Moon, saying, ‘If you’re going to watch this, be ready.’ You’d had some time to process while the actors’ strike was going on. Tell me about the decision to post that online.

experience for a lot of the audience

and that they were really part of the

different dialects of the language.

who went. And I think a lot of that had

storytelling and really part of the

So I say that Chris helped me lay

to do with who you saw it with, and

character shaping.

the foundation and put up the

how you were able to unpack it later

For the early preliminary work, I

framework of the house and Janis

because this was a really traumatic

knew I was going to find Mollie in

is the one who helped me pick the

time. And a lot of the Osage that

the language first, and I did end up

wallpaper and dress the windows

consulted on the film have seen the

finding that when I was performing

and get it really refined and lived-in.

film and are proud of the film. It’s

her in Osage is where I found her

their incredibly triggering history told

voice, I found her movement, I found

emotional scenes are the ones that

In conversation with, particularly

in a way that people care about it and

her. I was often more comfortable

I still have language for. They’re the

Native women, since the film had

are shocked by it as they should be.

performing Mollie in Osage than I

ones that I still remember. If you

was in English.

were to ask me to speak Osage

come out, that kept coming up. together and having a way of

It’s opening old, deeply painful wounds for people.

unpacking it was crucial. And not

The idea of seeing it in community

M IC HA EL BU C K NE R FO R D E A D LI N E/ PARAM OU NT P I CT UR E S / E V ER ET T C O L LECT IO N

syntax, different syllabics, different

I do find that the heightened

right now, I would go straight to the argument that Mollie and Ernest are

Yeah, even though it’s opening old

How tough was learning Osage and how long did it take?

just Native women. A lot of Osage

wounds and bringing up traumas,

The day that I got cast, I

because that was performed in

people that I’ve talked to since, who

that’s a big step in the process of

downloaded the language app and

such a heightened emotional state,

saw it together for the first time

healing. And I think ultimately, art

taught myself as best as I could the

but it was available to me only in

talked about how important it was

helps us do that, helps us process

orthography, the alphabet system.

Osage. We’d never once rehearsed

that they did see it together, and

these horrendous histories in a

About two months after that, I

that scene in English. It got in me

then what a different experience

way that is more living, is more

had a pretty good handle on what

it was to walk into a theater alone

animate and is more lasting in some

I thought it was supposed to be,

later, with a broader audience, and

ways, because of the emotional

but that’s when I got into language

really how triggering that could

investment you have in it. But that

lessons with [Osage language

be. People sniggering about the

healing process is painful. I think

teacher] Christopher Côté, and we

length of the film, people laughing

healing has been so commodified

met three times a week, an hour

at inappropriate moments, hearing

in modern society that we think it’s

per session, for about two months

Taylor Swift [her Eras Tour film]

supposed to feel good. It’s like we’re

before I ever even got to Oklahoma.

blasting from just one theater over.

sold a healing practice as something

And it was clunky, it was messy.

that feels good all the time. And

My greatest fear was that I was

entire theaters and dressing up to

that’s not the nature of it. A lot of it is

going to apply a Blackfeet dialect,

the nines, wearing traditional regalia

opening wounds and allowing things

which is the Indigenous language

and modern beautiful clothes they

to breathe, which stings, it bleeds, it

I don’t speak fluently, but I’m able

were waiting to bust out. There

hurts, but it’s essential to let it out,

to introduce myself in. I can count

were little premieres all around,

to really do some restorative justice

to 10. I can say the bad words and

From left: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily

and I kept getting photos and texts

about this history.

animals and stuff like that. But

Gladstone and Robert De Niro.

Indian country was booking out

having, the one that’s not subtitled,

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and it stayed in me.

But one thing that stood out to both Leo and I was how much

What was the casting process like for you?

of a puzzle it was, and how much

The first time that I met Marty was

task for Leo and I, to really find what

over Zoom. I keep wanting to say

that marriage was. Because it’s so

Skype because I’m a millennial.

impossible to believe that there was

Margie knew it was going to be a

I got the request to speak with

real love there, even though Ernest

Marty. I remember being really, really

insisted it until his dying day, and

grateful that I was allowed to have

even though the community has

this life-changing audition moment

said there was love there, Margie

in my own bedroom. I would’ve

has said there was, but then she was

been a mess if I’d been in person

incredibly skeptical in our meeting

with him and had a whole plane ride,

about how we could accomplish it.

had a whole weekend. I didn’t have

So we talked about it every which

to go outside of my own element.

way. And ultimately, I feel like I

And I think that was so crucial with

almost had her looking over my

Mollie and went into a lot of our

shoulder the whole time and was so

understanding of her long-term, like,

nervous and was just convinced for a really long time that she would see it

From left: Gladstone, De Niro and DiCaprio.

her land. That’s where she’s from.

and just be appalled.

She was grounded in place, and I

it felt way too big. But luckily, there

Leo and I, but it was the offer. The

think it was actually really fortunate

were all of these little green lights

day I got the news was actually Mollie

that I was able to take my first

that you get, and sometimes in very

Burkhart’s birthday, December 1st.

meeting with him from home, where I

cosmic ways. When I was ultimately

could hear my parents, and overhear

offered the role, we did the reading

them in the other room.

with Marty, it was great. It was hard to

So, what happened when she finally saw the film? What did she say to you?

What was your impression in that first meeting?

having respect for actors, putting

Tell me about your connection with Mollie’s family. And how did they respond to your work on the film?

in the work in an audition and being

The person whose opinion I valued

just remarked on how incredible it

Honestly, Marty is so efficient when

kind no matter what. So, it was hard

most at the end of the day was

was to see how their dynamic may

it comes to these things that my first

to tell if the praise was kindness or

always going to be Margie Burkhart,

have been. It felt like she said, “This

meeting with him really was about the

genuine. But I got a call immediately

who was Mollie’s granddaughter

must have been what their marriage

text. It was performing the sides I’d

after, wanting to schedule a meeting

and Cowboy’s daughter. Margie had

was like,” in this way that’s been so

been sent with Ellen Lewis, his casting

with him and Leo.

tell because you get used to people

I got to see her in person at our Osage premiere. And she talked about how she was amazed that we had done it, we accomplished it. And she

never met her grandmother— Mollie

mysterious to her. She just embraced

director, and talking a little bit about

I think about how excited he got

passed away in 1936—but she had

me so tightly. She introduced me to

how the sides had changed. I didn’t

when I compared this new treatment

pieced together her sense of who

her grandchildren, so Mollie’s great-

want to be too effusive about it at

to The Quiet American by Graham

Mollie would’ve been from little

great-grandchildren. I remember the

the time, but it was such a relief when

Greene, that the history will hit harder

stories from her dad, but not many.

youngest one that I met. I could see

I got the new ones. I’d auditioned

if there’s an analogy in a relationship

I think this entire period of time

Mollie’s face just so perfectly, and for a

with different sides a year earlier,

story. And I recognize it now, when

was very much not spoken of for

second the way it felt like I was able to

and it definitely felt to me… there

something resonates with [Scorsese]

many generations. People wanted

look at her, it was like she was meeting

were monologues that were highly

it’s a little like a jolt of electricity

to move on. [William] Hale was cut

her grandma. It’s like the way she met

expositional. It just felt like this is a

passes through him, and he just gets

out of pictures and people stopped

her grandma was through this film.

tertiary character when I read those,

excited. He usually turns to whoever’s

saying his name. So, when we were

and it wasn’t the Mollie that I knew I

closest to him and taps them a lot of

meeting with Margie, I knew that

talked about he felt like I was channeling

would be able to perform. But when

times. Like, are you hearing this? He

she wasn’t going to hand me a list of,

her. I didn’t really necessarily see it that

I got the new sides, suddenly, there

has that energy constantly, and it’s like

‘This is Mollie and how to play her.’

way while I was performing. I was there

were spaces, there were reactions,

even though he and Leo weren’t in the

There was no blueprint, but where

to do a job. But I must have disappeared

there’s time to let things marinate.

same room, they were two faces on

you find that is the legacy they leave

in her a little bit because when I

There’s beats written into it. It clicked.

the screen, it almost felt like he was

within their family. So, there’s a lot

watched the film later, I felt Mollie so

tapping Leo’s screen.

of small gestures that came from

intensely. I felt protective of her. I felt

It felt like such a divine moment,

And Leo has said it before, he’s

and it gave me so much faith. It was

When the call came in, I was

that meeting. The way Margie just

the way that the rest of the audience

scary, the idea of booking this role,

expecting it was going to be to

is around people. A lot of that went

meeting her for the first time must’ve

of doing this story in a lot of ways,

schedule a true chemistry read with

into Mollie.

been feeling. A

M E LI N DA SU E GO R D O N / PA RA M O UN T P I CT UR E S/ E V ER ET T C O LL ECT IO N

why didn’t she leave? It’s like, that’s

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Sandra

HÜLLER

With The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall, this year was a double-whammy for Germany’s modest superstar BY DAMON WISE

You left Cannes this year with two

Bär, sent me two pages of the

I was, of course, very interested

to [represent] the atrocities that

major prize-winning films to your

script. It was a couple fighting about

because I adore his work and I very

happened behind the garden wall.

name. Which one came first?

whether they should stay or leave,

much respect his point of view on

Actually, I started with The Zone of

but I didn’t know who they were or

almost everything.

Interest [which was delayed because

who would direct it. It’s sometimes a

of Covid], then I did a German

big secret when directors from other

Did you need to be persuaded?

film called Sisi & I with Frauke

countries come to Germany. We don’t

It took a while, until we had the

Finsterwalder, and after that came

get any details about them or the

right conversations with each

You shot on location, next door to what is now the Auschwitz museum. What kind of experience was that for you as an actor?

Anatomy of a Fall. I think The Zone of

project, just pages. Most of the time

other, and I understood what he

Well, as an actor, I didn’t find

Interest started in August ’21 and we

we have to do a self-tape, which is

wanted to do with this project,

[the acting] very hard. Hedwig

finished Anatomy of a Fall in May ’22.

very painful to me. I really don’t know

that it wasn’t a biopic. I definitely

Höss doesn’t live a heavy life.

how to do this. I’m not a digital native.

wouldn’t have wanted to be part

For her, everything is really easy.

Let’s start with The Zone of Interest. How did you get involved with that?

So, she invited me to a casting. And

of anything like that. He wanted to

[The hardest part] was more the

then I learned what it was about,

experiment, by just watching these

personal aspect, to be in that place

and I was even more hesitant. And

people and their dull life, and then

as a German, and to be constantly

The casting director, the late Simone

I learned it was Jonathan, and then

adding this unspeakable soundtrack

aware of the fact that you’re there

N EON / A2 4

One title absent from the International Oscar submissions this year is the film that won the Palme d’Or in Cannes: Justine Triet’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall. France went with another option, but Triet’s film has created a buzz of its own, much of it focused on star Sandra Hüller’s dazzling performance as a German writer on trial for the death of her French husband. In any other year, that would be enough for a European A-lister, but, given her work in Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest, as the wife of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, it seems lightning has struck twice.

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as a German. And the fact that the

saw any material. But, as I said, his

created the world that she has to

people there welcome you in a very

way of working is very transparent.

survive in, if they would’ve been

kind way is not something that you

He walked us through everything

just slightly weaker than me, then it

would expect. It is so incredibly

that he wanted to do with it. There’s

wouldn’t have worked. So, I’m so glad

generous of them. So, as actors, we

an unsettling sensation you have

I met these people, really.

were aware of all the responsibility

when you watch it, which was

that was on our shoulders, and also

something we wanted to achieve

on Jonathan’s shoulders, as the

No. To me, that is so similar to life, in a way. No one’s life is like a linear

together, and which very much

What was the initial hook of the movie for you?

director. But how would I deal with

happened [onscreen]. Some scenes

Well, now, you read so many scripts

people only find out something

this subject matter and maintain a

weren’t in there anymore, but that’s

where people speak like they are

[life-changing] about their parents

distance between the character and

normal. I didn’t sit there and think,

part of a novel, or like they’re not

when they’re 60. These kinds of

my own personal feelings? That was

“What’s this!?” No, not at all.

even human. And this script was so

flashback things happen to us every

different, because I believed every

day. So, for me, it felt like the most

exhausting, in a way. The hardest

experience. For example, some

Do you have a favorite Jonathan Glazer film?

word of it, the way that people were

natural way to tell a story, because,

experience affect the process of

talking [laughs]. Maybe because it

coming from theater, I don’t believe

playing Hedwig Höss.

I don’t know, all of them. I mean, I

was written in another language,

in straight narrative anyway, it’s an

saw Sexy Beast when it came out,

and I couldn’t be nitpicking about

old-school thing. You can do it [that

Could you talk a little about Jonathan’s methods and how he directed you?

which is a really long time ago. I must

the German choice of words, or

way], and you can definitely lose

rewatch it. But they touch me in ways

grammar, or whatever. But it felt

yourself in it. It’s very convenient. But

I can’t describe. I love the questions

so modern, unlike anything that I’d

I think the experience that people

Well, Jonathan’s someone who

that they raise. I can sit with them for

ever seen and read before. Maybe it

have when they watch this film is

works very transparently; he

hours, days, months.

reminded me a bit of my experience

the same one that I had when I read

with Toni Erdmann, although, I have

the script. It matched the sort of

When did Anatomy of a Fall come along?

to say, I didn’t get that film in the

experience that I have in my own

beginning. It was too complicated for

life: some things don’t fit, there are

material do something to them and

I think Justine sent me the script in

me, because I didn’t have any idea of

some things I don’t know, and there

then transform it in their own way, to

2020 or something. And it was the

the corporate world or whatever.

are some things I can’t explain. It’s

make a personal contribution. I feel

finished script. I think she had been

But with Anatomy of a Fall, I found

complicated, all the time. Maybe I’m

that it’s really rare to have someone

working on it for three years straight,

it very challenging and very personal

doing something wrong, but this is

with such a strong vision who, at

with [her partner] Arthur Harari. She

at the same time. I was very aware

my life experience. So, it wasn’t hard.

the same time, is always aware of

just asked me if I wanted to be a part

of the fact that Arthur and Justine

It was the opposite. It made it easier

the ideas coming from the people

of it. It was a very simple decision. I

didn’t put their own marriage in this—

for me to be a part of it.

around him. He’s like someone from

said yes the next day, I think.

that would’ve been ridiculous—but

work was in not letting my own

gives a lot of trust to his actors, and everybody involved. Every department has permission to let the

theater, establishing a space where

it is sort of… I don’t know, what’s

In, Cannes there was the great discussion of whether the character was guilty or not. Has that pursued you?

It’s a big part. Were you ever daunted by it? In a way, you are the movie.

the English word for mutisch? Bold,

There’s no pressure, it’s more of an

[Crossly] Oh no, that’s not true. It’s

merciless in describing a relationship.

It’s part of the conversation,

invitation, which is very loving and

not that I’m fishing [for compliments],

It was something that I found very,

definitely. But also, people tell me

very kind. That’s how I felt. He makes

it’s really not. If my partners wouldn’t

very appealing. It drew me to it,

very personal stories about their

you grow.

have been so excellent and so

toward it, inside of it.

relationships, their marriages, or

everybody can do the best work that they’re capable of, without feeling that if they don’t, they’ll die [laughs].

daring, whatever. Yeah, it’s a bold choice to be this precise and this

challenging, I wouldn’t have been

He’s quite famous for adapting books and scripts, then taking them in a completely different direction. What did you think when you saw the movie? Was it the movie you thought you were making?

N EON / A2 4

always being withheld from the audience, that unravels in fragments and flashbacks? Is it confusing to have a script that is so non-linear?

able to play this character the way I played her. Because if they hadn’t

the breakup of their marriages. Or

What was it like to work from a script where things are

maybe people tell me about their households and tell me that they found it very accurate, this portrait of a multiple-language household. Some people ask me about motherhood and what I think about this particular mother that I play. Some people are

It was the movie that we knew we

judgmental, but only a few. But, as

were making, but, of course, we

you know, people who don’t like it

didn’t know all the details, because

don’t come up to you and say, “That

we were not there in the editing

was shit!” [Laughs]. They just don’t

room, and we were not there when

do that. They just go home and

the sound was designed by Johnnie

say, “Ah, I wasted my time.” So, the

Burn, or when the music was written

conversations that I have are very

by Mica Levi. We also never had

positive, very personal, and actually

access to the monitors, so we never

Sandra Hüller in The Zone of Interest.

very moving, most of the time. A

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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12/14/23 12:39 PM

Greta

LEE

The star of Past Lives explains how a background in comedy prepared her for a long-distance romance BY DAMON WISE

When did you first get involved

memory, like a bad breakup. And

and she ended up offering me the

with Past Lives?

I don’t think I’ve ever had that

There was a lot of crying. I mean,

almost exactly a year later, I got a

job on the spot that day. So, it has

I read the script a few years ago. It

experience, just trying to read while

phone call completely out of the

been a wild ride. My experience with

was sent to me by my agent, and the

by being blinded by my own tears

blue asking if I remembered Celine

becoming part of this project mirrors

subject line just said, “Korean: Do you

[laughs]. But I totally fell in love with

Song, and would I be willing and

the essence of the movie, this idea of

speak it?” To be honest, at the time I

that script. It felt like I immediately

able to meet with her that same

inyeon: destiny and connectivity. I feel

felt like, “Oh god, what a drag. I don’t

knew it was going to be something

day over Zoom? I was so confused,

like the script and I were soulmates

know.” I was immediately stressed

special, and I was desperate to be a

but apparently the casting had

[laughs]. Celine likes to say she’s

out at the idea of doing a movie in

part of it. So, I put myself on tape—and

gone another way and there’d been

certain we were married in another

Korean, frankly. I hadn’t done that

I didn’t get the job.

some changes creatively. They were

lifetime, although I’m not entirely

looking for—and I love this—“older”

sure she means that completely in a positive way!

before. But, anyway, I went in blind. I didn’t know who Celine Song was.

What?

actors. I said, “Oh, thank you very

Even though we both have a theater

Yeah, I did not get the job. I thought

much. Here’s where I come in!”

background in New York, I wasn’t

at the time, “Well, someone is going

aware of her. But I finished with the

to be very lucky to be able to do

big leap of faith, and I just dove right

script in one sitting.

this,” and I tried to erase it from my

in. We read some scenes together,

I had no time to prepare. It was a

Once you were on board, what was the process like? It looks like a very well-thought-out film.

J O N PAC K/ A2 4

The standout movie at Sundance this year, Celine Song’s indie hit Past Lives has touched the parts of the human heart not reached since Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. Starring Greta Lee, it tells the story of Nora, a Korean-born playwright on the brink of breakout success in New York, who is taken by surprise when, out of the blue, her childhood sweetheart from Seoul, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), makes contact on social media. Will it lead to some light nostalgic fun? Or is there something deeper— Koreans call it inyeon, the idea that some things are meant to be—that makes them soulmates?

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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12/14/23 1:44 PM

Absolutely. I think some people may

onto me a very conventional Seoul

while we were doing those scenes.

of the most fascinating things

assume, including myself, that a

Korean accent. Instead, we worked

It was difficult, but I think that was

about Nora for me was that she

project like this, with a lot of silence,

with this wonderful woman named

so important to convey the kind of

really is a modern kind of woman

a lot of restraint and a certain kind

Sharon Choi, who many people

tangible love that can be transmitted

who isn’t compartmentalizing her

of pacing, would be, like, a whimsical

know as Bong Joon-ho’s translator.

over oceans.

professional life from her personal

experience—the assumption being

A full-on superstar in her own right,

that we would be finding things

in my mind.

chance. But that was entirely not the

[the nuances of] being bicultural and

case. One of the things about Celine

bilingual was essential to the prep

We were at the Eccles, which is

coming from a place of strength, and

that is so incredible about her is how

for this film and this character. It was

a very large theater. And I just

knowingness, and self-assuredness,

meticulous and how surgical this

so thrilling to be that specific. Like,

remember having the shakes

with a very unapologetic kind of

was. I mean, it was, without question,

“OK, maybe Nora sounds essentially

and feeling like, “Oh god, is this

ambition for everything she wants—

the hardest thing I have ever been

white at the beginning of their

going to play? It feels like such an

not just professionally, but for her

asked to do.

conversations when she’s speaking

intimate movie.” And I will never

whole life. And it’s from that place

I walked in with a lot of comedy

Korean. And then, slowly, after hours

forget what that felt like at the

that she is really, unexpectedly,

on my back thinking, “Oh, how easy!

of being immersed back in her native

end of that movie. I assumed that

confronted by these ideas of destiny

Long days of just staring out the

language, maybe she would sound

we’d lost our audience, because

and other lives and loves. And so

window? No problem.” [Laughs].

more Korean by the end.”

there was a very distinct kind of

that ending… [Pauses] We talked at

shuffling and fidgeting. I thought

length, performance-wise, in making

people were getting up to go, but

sure basically that I was never going

people were reaching into their

to cry preceding that moment, and

of movie we were endeavoring to

There are a lot of Skype scenes in the movie. How did you navigate that?

pockets for tissues and starting to

what it’s like, metaphorically, for

make and being really hyper-specific

Celine and our department heads

cry. I’ve never experienced anything

a modern woman to be—quote,

about all of these pregnant pauses.

got together and created an actual

like that. Crying en masse as an

unquote— ‘strong’, and how much

It felt like following along some

Skype system for us. Teo and I

audience at a theatrical experience

vulnerability and complexity there is

sort of musical score, if that makes

were on our computers in different

was totally surreal.

behind that.

sense. We could not waste a single

rooms, acting across our laptops.

second, because we were shooting

And that was a huge concern: how

shot, one tracking shot. There were

with one camera on 35mm. We

to transmit chemistry through

only had so much, so there was this

really bad wifi? We had to watch

preciousness in the process.

these two people fall back in love

There have been a lot of love stories in cinema, but this one’s different, and the ending really underscores that difference…

over bad Skype. And Celine, in her

Yeah. The ending is the payoff. I

like it was an action film. I felt like I

How good is your Korean? Does your character speak perfect Korean or is there a certain rustiness to it?

slightly sadistic way, was playing sort

mean, from the beginning, we had

was training for a fight scene. And

of DJ, where she would freeze the

set our sights on what it would

it was a very kind of intentionally

connection at various points without

be like to trust the audience to

choreographed moment, the

us knowing, so we wouldn’t know

come along for this ride and to…

pinnacle, the end of the movie.

I was terrified to take this role. I

when the connection would go out

To wait, essentially. I think one

in the moment, leaving things to

The way she was able to navigate

And I was immediately humbled by how incredibly difficult it was. I think most of that comes from the kind

there’s a working woman who has a romantic crisis, or whatever it is. But for me, this was about a woman

So, yes, the ending. It was one some cuts ultimately, but the way we filmed it was in one take. We did it several times. We treated it

be dead in the water if I’m asked

Are you a very technical actor? What’s your background?

to do a table read.” Even in my

I have some training [laughs]. I went

personal life, there are so many

to school for it. But I’ve enjoyed

people who, when they heard that

trying to set out on this kind of

I was doing this, were shocked to

path where it’s like my own self-

know that I speak Korean. I think I

taught, self-inflicted curriculum.

was even asking myself if I could

I love comedy. Yeah, comedy has

actually speak Korean.

proven to be profoundly useful for

thought, “Oh my god, I’m going to

My parents immigrated from

J O N PAC K/ A2 4

life. We’ve seen that film, where

It premiered at Sundance. What was the reaction, and how did you feel about it?

me in dramatic acting. I think of it as

South Korea, and I was born in

the same thing, I do. I know that’s

Los Angeles. My first language

different for everyone, but if comedy

was Korean, but, as I became

is timing and tension, what is drama?

more assimilated and as I became

Past Lives is exactly an example of

Westernized, there was that loss

that for me. All of those moments of

of language. So yes, I had to figure

silence are timed. It’s timed tension.

that out. And I was lucky enough

I don’t think I’d be able to do that if I

that they were willing to forgo a

didn’t feel confident in my comedy

more traditional route of finding

experiences, and I feel very grateful

a dialect coach who could imprint

Teo Yoo and Greta Lee in Past Lives.

about that. A

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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12/14/23 1:45 PM

Vanessa

KIRBY

The Napoleon star reveals how she found the “quiet power” of the woman who captivated an emperor B Y RYA N F L E M I N G

Josephine Bonaparte was a woman with strength, elegance, and an unknowable nature that proved an irresistible combination for the French emperor Napoleon. In researching the role for Ridley Scott’s historical epic Napoleon, Vanessa Kirby discovered that behind this allure lay an unrelenting drive to survive, and, using that as a basis, she found a foothold: a way to show how this “internally mysterious” woman weathered a tempestuous relationship and its constantly shifting power dynamic. Although Josephine would ultimately fall from favor, due to her inability to produce an heir, Kirby notes that her integrity prevailed, in spite of the unbearable pressures she faced.

she got from all around the world, and she was really proud of it. It was very much an embodiment of her femininity in this very tough world that she was in. I went to all the Napoleon museums, although eventually I started avoiding some of the military strategy because she

Did you know a lot about Josephine before you got the role?

mercurial, and she did turn out to be

someone that really has lived, and

wasn’t playing that in the movie so

those things. But it was just such an

lived such an extraordinary life

much. I saw lots and lots of hats,

Not really. Actually, when Ridley called

incredible journey actually getting

that’s really, really far from any of

lots and lots of armor and things,

me and said, “I’d really like you to play

to know her and going through the

ours, or anything that I could relate

and I thought, “OK, there’s only a

Josephine,” as soon as he said the

whole research process.

it to personally. It’s a bigger stretch

certain extent of what she would’ve

in that way.

seen. She’d have seen that on

name, I had all these associations off the phone, I thought, “God, how

How much research did you do for this movie?

every single book I could possibly

lines.” But the more you go through

interesting. I wonder whether any of

It was as extensive as I could

find on both of them. I went to

the research process, the more it

those are accurate, and where I’ve

possibly do. I love most taking on

Paris, went to her house in [Château

teaches you what you need to know

picked them up from.” I definitely

things that scare me. This was scary

de] Malmaison, which was most

and what you need to follow.

didn’t study that time period at

just because it’s hard to play a real

iconically her. For her whole life, she

school and hadn’t read any books

person and it’s a different kind of

built this house about an hour and

on Napoleon myself, so it was very

process. You’re not inventing their

a half outside of Paris and brought

ground zero for me. My memory of

history, their lives, their childhood,

over loads of exotic animals and

hearing about her was that she was

their background, and their psyche.

decorated it head-to-toe in all these

incredibly sensual, very powerful, and

You are trying to accurately embody

different materials and fabrics that

I spent hours and hours reading

occasion, she visited the front

During your research, how did you view the relationship between Josephine and Napoleon? It definitely seemed a bit strange.

AI DA N M O N AG H AN

come up with her. Then after I got

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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12/14/23 12:40 PM

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WINNER

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12/14/23 4:54 PM

I’m so pleased that you think it’s

hold it all in. I just so felt for her. I just

strange. That’s exactly what we

so felt that this was the symbol of

wanted it to be, because if you just

something that her body wasn’t able to

read his letters to her, you see how

do. In many, many of the books written

strange it is. It’s volatile, it’s needy,

about her, they describe how she

it’s mad infatuation and obsession,

used a certain form of contraception,

kinkiness, jealousy, longing, desire…

it was very acidic, and it was just like

I mean, it’s all there. This man who

acid really, because she was very

was a military commander leading

promiscuous when she came out of

the battles and conquering land was

prison. She was with a lot of the top

running back to his army tent to write

generals, including Paul Barras who’s

these letters to a woman who wasn’t

played by Tahar Rahim, and there was

replying to him. Most of her letters

actually a scene we filmed of them

were destroyed, which is really disappointing because I bet they

having an affair, and she didn’t want to Vanessa Kirby as Josephine with Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon.

get pregnant all the time.

whole canon of her letters would’ve

because these are two very strange

came over completely on her own

been amazing.

psyches interacting. We played lots

and married this very young, very

What are you shooting in Australia right now?

and lots of different things in all the

cold aristocrat who then basically

I’m shooting a movie with Ron

It seemed like Napoleon was very tactical in most of his thinking but that really did not apply to Josephine.

scenes, and so there was never any

ignored her. She had two children

Howard, who’s wonderful, and it’s like

consistency. It wasn’t like, “Oh, an

on her own, was hardly let out the

a survival thriller. It’s wild. It’s totally

ever-evolving love that matures into

house really into society at all. Then

wild. We’re having a really nice time.

something stable and content in

they were imprisoned. She watched

We’re just in week one right now.

That’s a really good way to put it.

their older age.” It was always sort of

her husband get beheaded, and

I’m going to start using that line.

emotional and fractious, and yet this

she was 24 hours away from being

It’s so good.

codependent love somehow that they

beheaded herself before she got

Very different from shooting Napoleon, I assume?

couldn’t really be without each other,

out. And then, she became part of

Yeah. God, I’m really grateful for it,

There is an interesting power dynamic between the two. I think the first time you really see it is when Napoleon comes home to confront her after he finds out about the affairs. There’s a scene where, during the day, Napoleon is commanding her and she’s very submissive to him, and then right after at night, he changes and becomes so submissive to her. How did you navigate those scenes, because it seemed like that dynamic was constantly changing?

even though they weren’t creating

the most iconic group of women

actually, because you just always want

the life that was able to hold space for

who were leading the fashion

to step into a very, very opposite world,

that and really have it healed.

movement and the new sensual,

as far away as you can from the last one.

open, feminine emancipation, and

I play a German woman who has MS

then she met this general.

[multiple sclerosis], and could not look

It was constantly changing. There

experience of so many women

was no kind of arc or journey of it,

in that time. You needed to have

to the point where both of them

a boy, it was your duty, and you

were crying as they were divorcing

need to fulfill your duty, and if you

and didn’t really want to do it, but

can’t… In that, I learned so much

because of the pressures of… Oh

about her elegance actually, her

my goodness, I could not imagine

integrity and her quiet power in a

the pressure and pain of having your

way, to last and to withstand that

body needing to perform for the sake

would’ve been just… To have that

It was just so fascinating. She

further from Josephine, and they’ve

was a complete survivor. I mean,

been living on this island for a few

she just withstood so much.

years. It’s a real story, and it really is the

Somebody that has the resilience

opposite of Josephine in many ways.

of navigating all those things, and Actually, I’m just going to go back

Do you have anything else coming up that you’re excited about?

to Martinique. This is all just too

Yeah, I do. I’m really excited about

much.” She just kept going.

the next couple of years. What I’ve

at no point said, “You know what?

I know. I mean, it was the

really been enjoying doing over the last 18 months is building a company

whole journey from when she was

Talking about that quiet power and elegance, it really hit me in that scene where Napoleon brings the baby after they’re divorced and her composure as all of these emotions must have been going through her head. What were you, as Josephine, thinking in that moment?

of the empire that your partner had

16 on the boat from the tiny little

It was really hellish, and so much of

from the female experience that we’ve

created. I mean, that to me was the

island of Martinique, that never

me wanted to just scream or just wail

never seen on screen before. That’s

ultimate pain for her.

had seen any kind of conventional

actually, but because he was right

my biggest dream, to put as many as

We spoke continually about how

society, or at least not cold Paris

behind her and because you don’t want

possible in cinema because there have

this is going to feel strange to play,

that was harsh and difficult. She

to upset the baby, you had to kind of

been so few female creatives. A

with Lauren Dark and my sister, Juliet. We’ve got a really big slate of things now with a lot of people I love so much creatively—directors, filmmakers, writers—and we are just about to go into production with a few of them. That’s been the most fulfilling thing ever, because you get to create stories

A I D EN M O N AG H A N

You mentioned the divorce, which happened because Josephine was unable to conceive an heir. But not only did she need to suffer through that overwhelming pressure, she was also blamed for not being able to get pregnant as if she was responsible, which is wild to think.

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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Claire

FOY

All of Us Strangers star Claire Foy tells some hard truths in director Andrew Haigh’s supernatural love story BY STEVIE WONG

Actress Claire Foy is ready and braced for a lot of personal reactions to her latest film All of Us Strangers. Adapted from Taichi Yamada’s novel Strangers, writer-director Andrew Haigh’s emotional reimagining finds gay screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) working on a script inspired by a devastating personal tragedy: in the early ’80s, both his parents died in a car crash when he was just 12. Seeking inspiration, Adam travels back to his childhood neighborhood where he encounters his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell)—not only still living in his former home, but looking exactly the same as the last time he saw them. I don’t know whether he was basing

and Andrew were really natural to shoot.

U.K. And that’s quite a specific

When you knew that Jamie Bell was going to play your husband, did you spend some time with him to work on the relationship we see on screen?

It was actually three or four months

group of parents who were the

before we started shooting. One of

children of war babies in the

my agents, Billy Lazarus, had a very, very emotional response to it, and

generation of people. You have a

Not really. I had never met him

each other a long time. And it was

I knew that it was something quite

specific set of values and beliefs

before in my life, and so when

immediate. We were all there. We

special. Then I met Andrew [Haigh]

that have come out of the war

he signed up, I just knew that it

were kissing each other on the lips to

and he’s just so open as a person,

generation about how they were

wouldn’t be a problem. I think I have

say goodbye in that scene where we

and unassuming about what he does,

brought up, what you do and don’t

loved Jamie Bell since Billy Elliot,

say goodbye. And it could have been

which is so encouraging because

do, how you express yourself, what

as everybody else in the world, and

a sort of weird thing where Adam

what he does is so tender and truthful

you talk about and don’t talk about.

sort of feel a deep affection for him.

is kissing his parents on the lips as

and not precious in any way. I just

And then it’s like, someone like

He’s so engaged all the time, and his

an adult, but it just didn’t feel weird.

thought, it’s going to be really special

Adam is the fruit of those people.

emotions are so close to the surface.

It just felt so right. And I just don’t

I’m from a family where there’s

It’s the most beautiful thing to see in

think you can fake things like that. I

a hell of a lot of women. I’ve got so

a man that has such access to it all

just think that’s incredible casting by

many aunts in my family, so ‘mum’

the time.

Andrew [Haigh] in that he knew we’d

to be a part of this film.

Did Andrew tell you whether your role of Mum was loosely based on his own mother? Or was it less specific?

it on his mother or a generational

became an amalgamation of the many different women in many different moments to me.

I can’t really put my finger on what it was, but it was the coming together of three people who’d known

all get on. But we’re also quite similar

It sounds like all the family moments between you, Jamie

to Andrew, to the point where we had very little friction ever on set.

C H R I S H AR R I S / S EA RC HL IG H T P I CTU R E S / EV E R E TT C O LL ECTI O N

How did you first hear about All of Us Strangers?

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Is it true that this is the first film where you’re not performing with an accent?

also just a very kind person, very

I was very much gunning for being

him a great director. As someone

Irish. My family is Irish, and I’ve

who is interested in human beings,

always said I’m going to do an Irish

I feel like he wants to get to the

accent in a film. There wasn’t a lot

heart of most things in a truthful,

of prep time, but I was like, I don’t

honest way.

funny, very cynical, but also full of hope and love, and that’s made

think it’s going to be a problem.

so the problem is, you speak with

love, he feels judged just by virtue of

truthful. I knew when I was shooting

The film is very subtle in its portayal of the ghosts that haunt Adam, and the way his denial of the past catches up with him.

the accent of someone who lived

what she’s saying. I think it would short-

it that people would have visceral

There’s a scene in the film where

in Ireland a hundred years ago and

change both the audience and the

reactions to my portrayal of that

Adam tells his new boyfriend Harry

was a rural farmer.” I guess my

characters to make her say the right

person and they’re completely

[Paul Mescal] about the fact that

accent was inspired by Barry, my

thing. I think it had to be that scenario

entitled to it. In fact, it is most

his parents died. And I think it’s

granddad, who is 94 now [laughs].

where you had to see the difference

truthful how these interactions go

the most brilliant piece of acting

But what’s so amazing about this

in a time period that they haven’t had

from what I have learned.

because it could be, “My parents

film, is that it suspends everyone’s

with each other.

So, I spoke to my friend who’s a From left: Andrew Scott, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy.

my Irish accent.” And he went, “OK,

died when I was 12.” But what he does is he says, “Oh no, it’s not a big

parents died, and hence he’s Irish

She’s also processing the information at the same time.

Was there ever a scene that was even too much emotionally for you to be in?

and they’re not.

When we try to understand off

The final scene in TGI Fridays with

body, in his muscle, in his bones, he

thoughts and emotions, that’s when

me, Andrew and Jamie. Sometimes

can’t touch it. He’s desensitized to it.

The moment when Adam comes out to his mother is quite tough to watch. She doesn’t respond in a way that he hoped.

people get hurt because it comes out

something happens in a scene

This is what I’m projecting onto him

before you assimilate in your brain. I

where you think it’s going to be one

in the film. He can’t access that, and

think she felt upset about missing so

thing, you do all your prep, you have

the film is all about him attempting

much out on his life. She didn’t know

in your head what you think your

to access that grief in some way in

It’s not sentimental. Andrew Haigh

what his teenage years were like. She

character wants out of the scene

order to be able to allow himself to

had written it as complicated. I feel

didn’t know what his twenties or his

and then an actor does something

love someone again.

like Adam’s journey in the film is

thirties were like. She didn’t know

and it changes everything.

one that isn’t tied up in a bow. He

any of that. And then to have your

has suffered a great tragedy. His

son say something so fundamental

this bloody scene, and by the end,

being brave enough to try the whole

parents died at the beginning of his

about who he is, and she doesn’t

Andrew and I were just like howling,

thing all over again because what a

adolescence. It’s terrible to lose to

know it, I think she’s deeply wounded

crying. All three of us were just bawling

terrifying concept that is. You have to

your parents in any way, but for Adam

by that and goes on the defense in a

our eyes out and we were like, this

live in denial or live every day knowing

about to step out into the world, he

mundane way.

is wrong. We shouldn’t be like this. It

they could go, because either way,

reality. Adam moved back to Ireland with his nan after his

So Jamie just sat down and we did

deal,” because the trauma and the pain and the loss is so deep in his

I can think of nothing braver than losing someone you love and then

doesn’t have them in a formative

I felt a very strong instinct that

was really, really incredible. I suppose I

you can’t deal with it. It’s too much,

period of his life. That in itself is

she felt she was being criticized.

believed everyone so much that I was

that human connection. And it’s the

so heartbreaking.

Everything about who he was now

just in there with them. And then at the

one thing that makes human beings

as a person was an indication of

end I just worship and bow down to

incredibly special is that we have the

into that scene from a position of

how she hadn’t fulfilled her job as

them. That’s what I do.

ability to do that.

having the two Andrews talking about

the mother properly. Everything is

their own experiences. I think Andrew

an exclusion from his life because

the feeling of having parents—I think

Scott didn’t want it to be a coming out

she died. Because if she had lived,

What is it like to work under the direction of Andrew Haigh?

scene. He didn’t want it to be that he

then she wouldn’t have a gay son.

He’s very similar to Sarah Polley,

life. He didn’t have them, and then

had gone there to his mum’s house

She would have a son who was

who I’ve worked with [on Women

suddenly he has them, and he doesn’t

with the idea that he had to come out.

married with twenty-five children

Talking]. Like Sarah, he doesn’t

want to leave them.

Because he’s a man in his forties, and

and living in a house. It was really

pretend to be the big all-knowing

In the end, we’re all going to the

has an understanding of himself and

interesting because I genuinely felt

director. He often says, “I don’t

same place. We like to pretend we’re

his sexuality. There was no unresolved

like everything Andrew was doing was

know.” He’s very human and you

not, but we’re all going to die. And

business there for him.

a criticism.

feel like you’re genuinely having a

inevitably it involves people being

I also didn’t want to make her

conversation with him. I love how

left behind. And that’s just the most

to get in the way of the fact that whilst

nicer. I didn’t want to make her say

he picks up on little things you’re

incredibly painful concept, I think, of

everything she says is said dripping in

the right things. I wanted it to be

doing. He’s very observant. He’s

what it is to be alive. A

It was really interesting being invited

I didn’t want my modern sensibilities

To play the smells, the textures, that’s what he misses his whole

SE A RC H LI GH T P I CTU R E S/ EV ER E TT C O LLECT IO N

dialect coach, and I went, “Here’s

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F O R

BEST PICTURE

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Rosamund

PIKE

In gothic thriller Saltburn, the actress leans hard into toxic upper-class eccentricity, with chilling results B Y A N T O N I A B LY T H

As Elspeth Catton, Saltburn’s bohemian but bloodless matriarch, Rosamund Pike strikes an unnervingly accurate note as the crushingly careless mother of Jacob Elordi’s character Felix. When Felix brings home Oliver (Barry Keoghan), his apparently lame duck of a new friend from Oxford University, Elspeth is delighted to add a new tragic case to her collection of playthings. Already among them is Carey Mulligan’s lost soul character, Poor Dear Pamela—an old friend on the run from a messy breakup with a Russian oligarch. Here, Pike pays tribute to the world created by writer-director Emerald Fennell, and its unpredictable outcome. was offering it to me. But I think

you just know that you’re hearing nice

Tell me about the first meeting you had with Emerald about this role, and when you knew you wanted to play Elspeth?

words like ‘clever you’ and you just

Well it was a bit like when I first met

and she, in a very roundabout way,

know it’s a criticism. So to be Elspeth

David Fincher. You think you are

plants the seeds of exactly what

was really refreshing, it was really fun

having a conversation with someone,

she’s expecting of her cast, which

to be able to live inside that skin.

just a general conversation, and then

is total camaraderie, no isolation on

at some point later on you realize

set, together all the time, don’t step

that that’s absolutely not how these

away, have fun.

seriously, and it’s not really the done

I remember going on holiday with a really posh family when I was 14 and the mother announcing to me at breakfast, “You know, guests are like fish. After three days they smell.”

thing to take anything too seriously. I

Oh my god. That could come

really care about acting, and I’m very

would always be people who would say to me, ‘Oh, you got some work? You’ve got a film? Clever you,’ and

No. If you’re overdressed, you’re wrong, or if you're underdressed. You are somehow wrong and you don’t quite know why or how. And even

people work. They’re not ever having

she’s very clever because she sows seeds from that first moment, right through to when you’re filming,

You do have films where an actor

a general conversation. They’ve

will come, and you realize they’ve

absolutely got an idea and they’re

got it all bottled up and they know

seeing whether you fit. And there

exactly what they’re going to do, and

was a certain point where clearly

would do exactly the same whether it

Emerald believed wholeheartedly

was you playing the other character

straight out of Elspeth’s mouth!

that I fit. Emerald clearly had this

or somebody else. But I think Elspeth

serious about it, and I’d be a terrible

And she would’ve thought she was

idea that I had what she wanted for

is Elspeth because Richard [E. Grant]

bore to someone like Elspeth. There

saying something funny.

Elspeth, and I didn’t realize that she

is her husband and Jacob’s her son

being an actress is wrong, for a start, because it means you take something

M G M/ EV ER ET T C O L LECT IO N

As a Brit like you, I’ve been waiting for someone to skewer this upper-class world for so long—there are rules that you’re never told, and if you figure out what they are, they change into something else, so you are never allowed to fit in or get it right.

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION IN ALL CATEGORIES INCLUDING

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and Alison [Oliver]’s her daughter, and

somebody’s bottom, or some really

Carey is Pamela. It’s in relation to all

intimate part of the body!’ And it would

those people. There’s a version of

actually only be a shoulder. But it was

Elspeth, but the specificity of Elspeth

the way it was looked at, the gaze

is because of everybody else.

was so erotic and so intimate and

I think with Carey and I, because

uncomfortable that you kept thinking

we knew each other since she

you were looking at something more

was 18 and I was 24, for Pride and

shocking sometimes than you actually

Prejudice, we have this familiarity

were. And then vice-versa, something

and shorthand. Sisterly things. So, I’m

would seem like it was benign and

sure that feeds in, I’m sure I knew it

suddenly you’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s not at all.’

would feed into what you feel with

I remember being very

Elspeth and Pamela.

uncomfortable when I first saw From left: Rosamund Pike and Barry Keoghan in Saltburn.

When we first meet Elspeth it’s her and Pamela gossiping about Oliver behind his back. Was that a bit of improvisation just between you and Carey?

the film. I couldn’t really watch myself at all. I hated how I found it

deeply about these characters, she’s

have to cling to drinks and dinner and

uncomfortable the way Elspeth was...

always so funny. But underneath, you

lunch and things like that, because it

I don’t know quite what it was, I was

realize she feels and cares hugely and

shows you how to behave.

made to feel quite uncomfortable. I

is devastated by what happens in the

think the camera is so personal, the lens is so close and you really see

in the maze was, “I’ll never show that.

It’s embarrassing in that kind of culture to show yourself, it’s sort of shameful.

little bits of that are captured. It

You can never see a mother’s grief on

Yeah. Why is that? It’s just insane,

So yeah, I was shocked and very

was fun with Elspeth because I

film. It’s just too awful. It’s too much.”

isn’t it?

could just look up anything from

So, by the time we hear Elspeth, and

2006/7 and riff on it at dinner. It

by the time the others come in, she’s

I think it’s generational avoidance.

experience that others will have, being

was the time that Keith Richards

already battened down the hatches

Which has become, to show an

taken on the ride. But maybe, sometimes

was reported to have snorted his

and buried the feelings, immediately

emotion is self-centered.

that can come in a few years’ time.

father’s ashes…

overridden it and suppressed it. But

Like caring about acting. Never show too much care.

What about in the script?

film. And one of the things she said

to usually improvise our way into

when Elspeth discovers Felix [dead]

most scenes, and sometimes

that doesn’t mean I didn’t have to play

Oh my god, yes. Which was later discovered, I think, to

it [off-camera].

very fine and detailed. uncomfortable, the first time I saw it, for sure. And I regret never having the

I think the script fooled many people.

Keep everything light, not caring, not

I don’t think we did know. She added

be not true. But Elspeth was like, “Oh,

at, Jacob was there in full makeup,

trying too hard, but behave perfectly.

things like the scene with Barry and

of course I knew Keith. Of course.

generous person that he is, for me

I also loved the way she did the

Archie [Madekwe] where Oliver

Absolutely. Of course, he always said

to have that experience. So, for me,

breakfast scene, the completely

comes to Farleigh in the night and

he’d snort his father’s ashes. When

as Elspeth, I have that as an absolute

baffling rules about eggs are

gives him a hand job and almost

we were in Mustique, he had his

reality, even though the audience has

ordered and everything else is on

spits in his mouth. She just said, “Oh,

ashes with him. He offered all of us

never seen it. That’s Emerald. That’s

the side. Why?

I’ve written another scene.” And the

his ashes.”

how she as an actress understands

So basically, any story from Heat [a British tabloid magazine], or

We never see what Elspeth looks

everything. And our editor was very,

what an actor needs. I couldn’t have just said, “Darling,

amazing speech that Archie does to

Just a tradition to make people feel excluded if they get it wrong.

Barry, where Archie says, “This for me is life, and for you, you’re going to look

whatever at the time, I could just riff

come away. It’s lunch,” if Elspeth

I wonder how it plays… Does the same

back and this was just a hand job in a

on at dinner. I had a ball because I’m

hadn’t already been through her

creature exist in America?

golden haystack big boy summer.” I

not a great improviser unless I know

moment in private, or the beginnings

exactly who the character is, and with

of it, and immediately numbed. We

Elspeth, I just had to pitch everything

just see her once the shock has set

to the most extreme and most vain

in. And I think some people maybe

version of whatever it was. She’s

miss that, or don’t understand that

usually getting any story and placing

those social codes become absolute

herself in the center of it. And it was

lifelines for certain members of the

really fun to just live in that shallow

British upper class who’ve never

I think there’s a certain posh East Coast aristocracy that does a similar thing, so it really does translate. Did you have any sense that Emerald was going to make us look long and hard at some really uncomfortable stuff?

space. And of course, but then

really been taught to deal with their

Well, I did because Linus [Sandgren],

my lap saying, “These are your

because we’d been having so much

emotions ever, because of boarding

our wonderful cinematographer,

lines for tomorrow,” I would rejoice.

fun, it came as a shock to us as well

school, being raised by people who

would show us photographs from the

Everything that comes out of her

as the characters when tragedy falls.

don’t love them. And so an emotion

day before. And some of them you’d

mouth, or out of her pen, it’s just

Emerald is unusual. She cares very

is a terrifying thing. So that’s why you

think, ‘My god, what is that? That’s

specifically delicious. A

was like, who writes that?

It’s so good. How does that even come out of you? When? How? Because it’s exactly what it is, a hand job in a haystack golden big boy summer. If someone just dropped that in

M G M / EV E R E TT C O L LECTI O N

Yeah, it was. Emerald allowed us

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“A MASTERFULLY RENDERED FILM. Fills our senses with an exquisitely brutal yet beautiful mix of sights and sounds.” RICHARD ROEPER, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

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CRAFT SERVICES VFX

Artistic License VFX supervisors Mike Lasker, Archie Donato and Matthieu Rouxel on layering visuals to create new styles of animation

By Ryan Fleming

Since the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was awarded in 2002 to DreamWorks’ Shrek, the animation industry has made incredible strides. This awards season, such films are pushing the boundaries of what animation can be, and VFX plays a huge part in infusing new artistic styles into every frame. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse pushed the animated comic book style of the 2018 film even further with six new, distinct worlds and a visually complex villain. Nimona eschews depth of field for “depth of detail” to give a graphic-novel quality to its medieval future. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem integrates 2D elements in a 3D space to fight against the clean CG look.

Watercolor brushing of Gwen’s world in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

VFX being applied in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

D N EG / M IK ROS A N I MATI O N / SO N Y A NI M ATI ON

3D render and final image of the Kingdom in Nimona.

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Above: final composite image of the Spot; below: layers of effects being applied to create the final image.

D N EG / M IK ROS A N I MATI O N / SO N Y A NI M ATI ON

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse amazed everyone in 2018 with an interpretation of animated comics, and set a bar for what animation could look like. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse exceeded expectations with the introduction of six new worlds, each with a new style of animation. While these were all challenging in their own way, VFX supervisor Mike Lasker says the most challenging aspect of the film was the new villain, the Spot. “This was the culmination of every tool in our toolbox we had created over the course of production,” he says. “We had a lot of great reference paintings of him, and there were all these different, dark and evil sorts of purples and ink splattering off of him as he moved his limbs.” Using 2D tools integrated into the 3D animation software, Lasker’s team was able to add hand-drawn ink lines, paint strokes, distortion, and more to create the final look. “We ended up using the stroke system, ink splatter coming off the layers, heavy compositing, lighting, paint strokes—every area of the pipeline was involved.” Lasker says look supervisor Craig Feifarek was an essential part of creating the final look of the Spot. “Craig actually lit and composited all of these shots,” he says. “He did a great job, but also the animation department did an amazing job prototyping how the Spot acts in the last shots of the film. They were able to create all these crazy flash frames… I look at this now and I’m still in awe of what they’ve done.” Before creating the Spot, Lasker and their team dealt with the challenge of creating each universe, the most difficult being Gwen’s world. “It was the first one we developed,” he says, “and very early on they gave us the reference for watercolor.” Since they wanted an everchanging world with a watercolor aesthetic, some scenes in that universe would be more graphic, some would fall off into white space and others would become abstract as the camera moved further away. “Before we did any brushing, we set up all the colors,” Lasker says. “You have very graphic elements, very specific colors, so we blocked that out and went back in with our brushing tools.” Most of the tools used in Spider-Verse were new tools for the production, including the stroke system which was the main brushing tool for watercolors, as well as the atmospheric paint strokes used for the Spot. “We wanted the watercolor to feel natural, feel like it was hand painted, so we had a lot of different techniques that would all combine and add up to the final look.”

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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CRAFT SERVICES VFX

Rendering of the creature before lighting and other effects are applied.

Final image of the creature attacking the Kingdom.

In adapting N.D. Stephenson’s 2015 graphic novel, VFX supervisor Archie Donato says that a lot of time was spent on finding the right look for its high-tech medieval world. “The difficulty right from the start was this mixture of historical architecture with a super modern-day Tokyo style,” he says. “We spent an enormous amount of time to give the sense of a massive city, without losing the medieval part of it.” To that effect, medieval versions of skyscrapers and motion graphics were added in certain places. To keep a graphic style, the traditional depth of field used in animation, where objects further away from the camera get softer and give your eye the feeling that you can’t see detail, wouldn’t work. “Instead of depth of field, we coined the term ‘depth of detail’,” says Donato. “Because this film is based on a graphic novel, we wanted to maintain that field, so we started to drop off detail the farther we went from the camera.” In doing so, the geometry and details disappear, but the shapes on the screen maintain a sharper graphical quality. “At some point, the billboards, the buildings, the windows, et cetera, become smaller squares and boxes in the distance.” Towards the end of the film, a large creature made of smoke and dark matter attacks the city, which was a difficult challenge to create in CG. “The brief from

the creatives was that this creature is entirely made of a smoke-like dark matter, and it doesn’t have any kind of hard physical boundary,” says Donato. To start, the team built a simple geometric version of the creature and added the effects on top. “The difficulty is that if you’re doing a shot like this and you want the missile to hit the character, it’s a lot simpler when you’ve got hard boundaries on the character.” As the missile hits the creature, the explosion couldn’t lay on top of the body, since, narratively, the body is not made of a solid mass. The solution was compositing, bringing different digital elements together to create a single image. “We had to break it down into multiple elements, where we would take the smoke ribbons of the creature, and start mixing them into various missile trails or the hotspots of the explosion,” says Donato. Compositing the image in this way was a complex process, but it allowed the effects to keep a stylized look that seamlessly integrated into the creature. “Once we got the system working, it pretty much applied to every single shot.”

D N EG

Nimona

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12/13/23 11:05 AM

CRAFT SERVICES VFX

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem For Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the filmmakers wanted to focus on the teenage aspect of the characters, in both the story and artistic style. Mikros Animation was the main animation studio for the film, and VFX supervisor Matthieu Rouxel began working with director Jeff Rowe on creating a unique style. “From the beginning, Jeff had really great ambitions for the visuals of the movie,” says Rouxel. “One of the first references we had was a sheet of drawings made by actual teenagers. It was cool, not super artistic, master drawings, and that was the spirit they wanted to have.” In addition to those drawings, Rouxel says they had more sophisticated references as well, like the approach to light and color in Alex Webb’s photography of New York City. “For me, it was a mix of those two things that really make this movie unique.” Although 2D elements play a large part in the artistic style of the film, CG was still crucial to the animation. “I’ve been working in CG movies for years, and I was always trying to break that nice, clean 3D aspect, and try to get back the vibe of something more 2D-driven and more artistic.” Rouxel says that about 95 percent of the film is made in 3D, even the pencil lines that create shading and details were made in CG as part of molding each character, though they appear to be 2D. There was no easy solution to breaking the clean CG look, as Rowe didn’t want the stylization to be done through a final filter on the film. “From the very beginning, there are a few things you try to do,” says Rouxel. “First, you create asymmetry in the models—the eyes don’t have the same size, the shoulders are not the same, the cheeks are different.” In addition to the asymmetry, they created the models with a clay-like texture and created curving lines with the thickness of an actual pencil to give the feeling of 2D art. Another strategy used was forbidding the use of real textures, which meant that the team creating textures had to start from scratch for every asset. “Then, the lighting would be applied normally, but there were a lot of features in the shader.” The shader would be used separately on each light source, to give the appearance of painted lights and shadows. “The compositors would also craft their own materials to put a texture on top of the picture, mixing it with texture projected in 3D, so it is not just smooth and clean.” ★

M IK ROS AN IM ATI O N

Layered CG effects to create the 2D style of Superfly.

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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12/14/23 12:48 PM

Follow Deadline Insider for an exclusive inside look at the most acclaimed films and shows this awards season. INSIDER.DEADLINE .COM

Explore the masterfully crafted drama series The Crown as Deadline sits down with department leads in costume, hair and makeup and set design to pull back the curtain on the crafts that have transported viewers to behind the castle walls.

D E A D L I N E . C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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