Olivia Colman Yorgos Lanthimos

Olivia Colman

Yorgos Lanthimos

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The star of The Favourite piled on the pounds and dove into her director’s odd rehearsal process

BY NANCY TARTAGLIONE

AFTER COLLABORATING ON 2015'S THE LOBSTER, YORGOS LANTHIMOS AND OLIVIA COLMAN reteamed for this year’s twisted take on the court of Queen Anne, giving a jolt to the period cinema genre, and picking up accolades all along the awards season trail. Lanthimos has said he wouldn’t have made The Favourite without Colman, whose character is the linchpin of a trio of strong women at the center of the movie. Director and star recently hopped on the phone with us to riff on the road to The Favourite, their working process and the friendship they’ve established over the years.

Yorgos, you’ve said wouldn’t have made The Favourite without Olivia. Why is that?

Olivia Colman: This is awkward, isn’t it Yorgos? Yorgos Lanthimos: It’s weird that I have to say this in front of Olivia, but I told her at the time I just couldn’t think of anyone else for this role, it just didn’t work. For me, casting is very instinctive and if I don’t feel good about it, I just can’t go ahead and make the film. It’s not like we’re going to fix it, you have to feel confident about the actors.

Olivia, how do you feel about that? Did you need to be convinced?

Lanthimos: Yes, why don’t you tell us about that, Olivia [laughs]. Colman: Well, thrilled, because if he had thought about it any longer, maybe I wouldn’t have done the job and I’d have been really devastated to watch someone else doing it. I loved it when I saw the script and already loved Yorgos, so I was very happy. Thank you!

You guys previously worked together on The Lobster, so I imagine that builds up a lot of trust. How did that experience influence this one?

Colman: Sorry Yorgos, but Yorgos isn’t the biggest smiler in the world. But I knew from The Lobster he is actually the biggest-hearted, kindest, gentlest man you could meet. So it did mean that going into playing Queen Anne and putting on the weight felt great. He’s lovely, it’s a brilliant script, I already know I love working with him. I suppose it just made me run into it really excited about the whole process. I was a bit nervous hoping I would do it well, but I think you should feel that when you really like the script and the job. It helped me totally throw myself in because I knew that it was going to be fun.

Yorgos, have you developed a sort of shorthand with Olivia?

Lanthimos: I don’t know that I’ve changed anything in how I go about it. Yes, you get to know each other, you feel very confident and you just go and do it. I guess there’s a trust, but you don’t really have to think about it much or discuss it, you just feel more and more comfortable. I already don’t communicate a lot orally so you just feel like you can be more at ease even while you don’t have to say a lot. So of course it helps knowing the person better and better.

You had a sort of wacky rehearsal period, but Olivia, I understand you’re not a huge fan of rehearsing. How did that play out?

Colman: Well, it’s different. I love rehearsal for theater; that’s probably more fun than doing the play… even then there’s still a chunk of time when people have to talk about stuff in a really irritatingly intellectual way. Rehearsal for screen stuff I’ve never liked before because it’s sitting down and talking, which I don’t really like doing. This was really good fun because it was basically theater rehearsals. And it took us a while to realize, but then all six of us actors doing the rehearsals said, “Oh, right, this means there’s no embarrassment, there are no inhibitions.” We know each other so well by the time we start filming. It was joyous, and you end up knowing the whole film chronologically in the back of your head or psyche without having to really think about it.

Yorgos, is that your typical process?

Lanthimos: Whenever I have time for rehearsals, this is my general approach.As Olivia knows, I don’t think trying to recreate the scenes as you would do on film helps, or definitely not talking about it or analyzing and explaining. These are things that I think don’t work for the things that I want to do so I’d rather rehearse with the actors.

I work with them like Olivia described, ina physical way. I want them to play gamesand get to know each other, and especiallyon this film because it was a period film,and there’s a certain expectation of howpeople should carry themselves and speakand move. I just wanted to break thatpreconceived notion around it and showthat we were fooling around; it’s not goingto be serious.Colman: The one I always remember isthe six of us holding hands becoming asort of massive human pretzel and tyingourselves up, then trying to undo it whilesaying the lines. That was hilarious. It’sactually a really good Christmas party game to play. ★