Yeah. I’m also really excited to see justice for Amy March because I feel like Amy March is usually a brat, right, is how people think of her. Anyway, I wanted to talk about another thing that we talk a lot about when we talk about actresses, which is wardrobe. But you said something so interesting. For you personally, you told this magazine, Vanity Fair, that you have some clothes in common with Renata Klein from Big Little Lies; but, you dress for how you want to feel, not how you want other people to see you. But I’m very curious for people like Renata, who is a style icon, your character in Marriage Story, who also, like I think half my notes were like, “Oh, my God, that dress,” and “Oh, my God, that dress,” wears amazing things. And then, of course, the period ensemble of Marmee. I’m curious for you as a performer, what does putting on this wardrobe do for you in terms of expressing your character?
It is amazing that for actors, the relationship to the costumer is not spoken about enough. Not the case in Marriage Story because Noah generously allowed myself, Adam Driver, and Scarlett into his process as he was writing, and so we spent a lot of time beforehand. But on almost all movies, the actor’s first collaboration is with the costume designer. You have maybe had a meal with your director, but your first real breaking-open-the-character moment is sitting with the costume designer, talking about character, colors, fabrics, how they move through their life.
And so it’s a fascinating opportunity, which most of my career, which speaks to the kinds of characters I’ve been blessed to play, has been spent in dive thrift shops. So high fashion is new for my characters. And it’s really fascinating to watch how anyone uses clothing as identity.
Can you talk a bit more about that unique collaboration with Noah in terms of creating your character in Marriage Story and what you wanted to see in there for her?
What was beautiful and maybe funny…So I’ll be careful to speak about it before you’ve seen the film. But just to say, obviously, it addresses the subject of divorce. But what moves me the most is that we had dinner, and Noah and I had become friends, and he’d talked about us getting to work together and finding that thing we could start this work relationship on. And he said, “I want to write a love story. I want my next movie to be a love story.” And weeks later, we had dinner and he said, “Yeah, I’m going to make a love story about divorce.“ And wait to see it because he truly has done that in a magnificent way.
And so the process he invited us into was really building a narrative, and not necessarily who was playing what part of it or how we would fit into the story, but more sharing our own stories from childhood, from heartbreaks, from things as actors. We’ve always wanted to do things I’ve wanted to say as a woman, speaking of minding the gap, which are infused in there. There’s the use of a specific song from Company, and Adam had said he always loved that song, and he and Noah had sort of thought about that. I mean, it’s just really interesting how he collects these ideas and finds his story within them. So that was an amazing, amazing process.
Something I’m really interested in terms of Marriage Story is that it’s a film that we’re going to see at this festival. It’s going to be in theaters and then a lot of people are going to watch at home because it’s a Netflix film. You’ve got Little Women, which is going to be a wide release sort of Christmas theater film; and then you’ve got Big Little Lies, which is a TV show beamed into people’s living rooms. Do you think about that when you pick projects? Do you think about how people are going to watch what you’re doing?