Full Actress Roundtable: Margot Robbie, Emma Stone, Lily Gladstone, Greta Lee & More

I was like if you pair like when you pair Spielberg with Dinosaurs what do you get a billion dollars you pair Greta and barie I'm going to make a billion dollars you I was like God I hope this works out hey everyone welcome to off scri with The Hollywood Reporter I'm Ivon orgy and we are here at the georan a Historic Hotel in Santa Monica California now as you know The Hollywood Reporter brings the industry's biggest and brightest stars to together for legendary conversations and guess what today is no different we are about to hear from six actresses who were in some of this year's most talked about films from the billion dooll Blockbuster that caused a pink paint shortage you know what I'm talking about it's Barbie to Martin scors say three and a half hour intermission lless epic but guys it was worth every minute that's right killers of the flower Moon so strap in use the restroom now you have been warned and let's get ready for a beautiful conversation between Anette Benny ly Gladstone Greta Lee Carrie Mulligan Margot Robby and Emma Stone they are on the record but maybe just a bit off script with The Hollywood Reporter take it away Rebecca thanks ion hello and welcome to the Hollywood reporters actress Roundtable let's dive in how would you describe your job to a 5-year-old playing pretend yeah playing pretend I remember playing pretend I once heard an actress talk about this and I kind of was like oh God that sounds like a little kind of I don't know corny but you know what I remember playing pretend really well I remember the feeling of like how deep can I get in it I'm the frontier woman in the backyard grinding berries that was one of my faves and and playing Mommy I actually used to play with dolls but yeah playing pretend and it is a it is a grown-up version of that Greta how would you explain I lie to them and and I I have two children who are seven and four um but I mean all kidding is I mean I it's it's one of those things where I I I tell them it's the most important job in the world and I'm saving lives um there's doctor and there's me um no I think um and this is something that becomes more true I think just aging um and wanting to appreciate just the The Burning Desire the the love of something and to and for me specifically telling my kids I love this and um for them to get to see it I think has been really just wonderful and sometimes very difficult because they don't understand all of it um but it is it's that shared love of the thing you know and sometimes it is hard to put into words so sometimes then you lie Annette I had heard that when you were on niad you would tease jod Foster like right before the director's called action is that true I probably I hadn't thought about that but I mean I do goof around a lot I kind of helps me relax sometimes it sort of depends because some people don't really enjoy doing that and so you have to be careful there are some actors who are actually serious no but looking at me uh no I do do that sometimes to just to keep things loose and you know you go in with a lot of uncertainty and uh you want that right you want it's like planned uncertainty you want to try to find something that surprises you and maybe your partner Jodie is such a fine actress that I felt so lucky you know because uh acting is reacting and listening and just taking from the other person so yeah I probably did do that I like to have a good time I like to you know goof around Emma I know yorgos lanth Theos is sort of known for doing these um exercises and games and stuff with actors when they're in rehearsals did you do that on poor things was it helpful what what kinds of things we I was out there about a month before we started shooting and we did three about three weeks of rehearsal which was similar to the amount of time we had on the favorite and it's wonderful because you none of it is literal like you're not blocking out the scenes or or going through the lines and the way that you know it will happen on camera so you're doing like games where you're all kind of tied get I mean it's true theater games like you know or or like everyone has to shut their eyes and walk around and one person is assigned to put a chair under them as they sit like you you know it's just completely silly so you embarrass yourself in front of each other and then you kind of get really close really quickly so by the time you're on set you feel like you know each other really well and it's just like you can experiment and be free and make fun of each other and it's you know no um kind of eggshell experience with your other actors which is really really helpful other people have like something similar a way to just sort of quickly get intimate and get comfortable on a set anything that's worked for you just so validating like hearing that from both of you you know I'm I'm a goofball on set and I tend to play really serious roles and my Foundation is in theater so a lot of these games it's a fun job I mean obviously there's like I'm saying it's fun and then I saw Killers over the flower Moon I'm like it's it's fun obviously there's so like really really you know heavy emotional very important stories that are being told but if you can find the sort of like levity or at least that to to me it feels like you were saying like it feels so good to kind of have that levity in between because acting yeah is fun like it's a you're playing pretend forever and a lot of that stuff I mean in theater and in like film is just not feeling like a complete tit when you get you know like to feel like okay you're not going to think I'm first of all terrible at this or you know like and I feel that from like I need to feel that with the crew as well like I need I need the DP to think I'm not like I need you know so I need to I feel like the best case scenario is when you get there and it's your act your your director your co- actors but also the crew are all like MH you can't be bad and then you're in a good place but is that takes away the self-awareness a little bit when like you're Happ everyone feels like they're making the same thing yeah and that's one of the great things about film is I feel like when you're in theater it's such an actor's game yeah yeah it's so it's like Sumer Camp should should feel like completely but it also helps when you're shooting things like you know like you said it's and I've said it to everybody that was on set we have no business having this much fun making this film but it's also there were so many Native actors and so many Native crew and Extras and when we're together like I mean Indians just laugh you know which I think helped with sustaining some of the importance of it because you're surrounded by a this is the community that's being impacted and this is that makes the tragedy stronger I mean we've got that dual mask for a reason I feel like I kind of need the goofy to like springboard into the the drama sometimes completely otherwise you're just like the heaviness of it is excruciating yeah I don't know what you guys are talking I am dead serious High art that work it's not a joke am I ising to you guys didn't have any Barbie was not fun I bet it was not fun how did you like how did you how did you recover at the end of the day it was I know I lost myself was there an onet therapist for you did you have people call you Barbie I mean off camera I mean the funny thing is in our script everyone was because everyone's Barbie and everyone's Ken everyone's name was in the script so I'm Barbie Margo says to Ken Ryan and Barbie Issa says to you know like so all it's weird seeing your name in a script when you're reading it you're like isn't it kind of amazing how it's become like a sort of Sisterhood greeting now where you just people you see people go hey Barbie like that's just how we don't know I had a friend who's like running on the beach and wearing something pink just by chance and someone was like hi Bobby and they like they yelled back hi Bobby they like I'm in it now how did you how did you think about how Barbie would move like what her physicality would be that was really fun and obviously Guided by Greta but me yeah welcome she she knew it how serious Al set needed to be like I no um yeah it was I love physical comedy and I like my favorite era of film is like the 30s when it's like all head to toe acting like you know cuz the frame is so head to toe and it's all yeah it's I love scre bble comedies and I love that so I've always been excited to have the chance to do very physical comedy but it was also like the the line between I wanted there to be an evolution between how she moved and spoke from the beginning of the film to the end of the film and it shouldn't be obvious to the audience but the it should by the end of it you should be like oh yeah I'm looking at someone who's being a doll and then by the end of it you're like I think I'm watching Margot like I I wanted to kind of by the end have morphed into being human without people realizing and we did that in a number of ways um you know like the wig started off with like tons of volume and hair and then got smaller smaller shorter shorter until it looked more like normal natural hair and the costumes went you know I spoke to jacine I was like okay she's got to have very certain like shapes and a lot of structure and like definite colors definite patterns everything should be constructed and then as we go by the end the fabric should be soft the pattern should be messy but still feminine and like so we did you know things like that and then with the physicality and you know I would just kind of went from being very certain to kind of Uncertain by the end in a good way so I wanted you know my speech patent to be at the start like I'm having a dance party that's going to be a song that's going to be this you should come by and by the end you know the way like when we talk in real life you have like hesitation and you stumble on words or like you leave a gap before you say the next thing because you're trying to think of it so I wanted to have a speech by the end to have that quality to it and at the beginning to just be very certain no hesitation I can't even remember what your question was she was just asking like what are you doing we didn't need a sounds awesome like sit that transition was so fun to watch though like watching that gear shift and just the human emotions starting to sink in I mean I think a lot of us needed that after the last several years I I felt that on set too like people were so excited to be back on set again and like yeah it's like we all went for it even more because we were even more great like I think I'm always so grateful that I even get to make movies but you just felt that everyone was like oh my God we get to make movies again so everyone really wanted to go for it and barie kind of like that setting in the environment gr created was very lent itself to going for it and and really like being in and joyful and so silly I mean everyone was so silly in front of each other all the time and yeah it was amazing it was so fun it was like yeah a NeverEnding dance poy Greta hearing Margot talk about the language change in Barbie made me think of your working in both Korean and English in past lives how much Korean did you know when you got that part how much did you have to learn um I was I was terrified that I was going to mess up the Korean I grew up speaking Korean but it's not I think it's I don't know it's something it's hard to explain unless you you are bilingual um it's like I'd forgotten that I could speak Korean because of the life that I was living um in America you know so right away that was something that was going to be very vulnerable for me and exposing um but I guess I like to do this thing before I start a job where I kind of make this informal list of um I guess I can just call them like challenges that lie ahead I like to make it tangible because so much of what we do is so internal and this list for past lives was we're shooting on 35 millimeter I've never done that before it was my first time playing the lead role after 20 years of working and I didn't know how to do that I I I'd never done that before um and you know we were shooting in New York City it was a time span of 12 Years years of playing different ages um and the costumes there was nowhere to hide I I'd come from doing a lot of heightened characters where I could use the the makeup or the the clothing to yeah I I I had none of that and then at the very bottom of this list was the Lang was Korean speaking almost entirely in Korean um was almost like the jacket on top of all of these other concerns um which maybe was helpful in the end but it's it's a huge responsibility to accurately portray these certain nuances of what it's like to be to have that Duality that cultural Duality and I did a lot of funny things where I asked instead of a conventional dialect coach who could kind of give me the perfect South Korean accent I asked for this incredible woman uh Sharon Choy who you guys might know you remember from maybe the Oscars thing with her she could translate in the moment Jokes which to me was something that is required yeah actual genius no offense you're a genius too but she I know you're so but I really needed to find somebody who could understand it's it's similar to what you're talking about trying to show this whole spectrum of this Human Experience but this range that isn't sort of wiped clean um and made sort of flat and I needed to find specifically someone who could help me um even within one scene the way she starts out sound sounding after years of not speaking Korean that she would sound kind of like a white girl and maybe after hours of talking to her childhood sweetheart in Korean that she would sound more Korean and and what that means in showing that whole range so I was I felt really so relieved to find her and and to yeah to have her as as a tool hearing you talk about that you had played heightened characters reminded me I've heard you say growing up you were watching characters played by like M Kilmer and Nick Cage and that that's what you envisioned for yourself and it kind of makes me wonder what did everybody watch growing up and see you know a version of what they assumed they would play or what they hoped they would play did anybody have a particular performer or type of performance in their minds I watched a lot of horn films again that physical comedy I think I just really enjoy great comedian really does her whole body with it and yeah yeah I feel compelled to explain the vomer no I see it I see it thank you we're always up for the same stuff bow give me a shot I feel like like growing up I felt fiercely competitive but not with other women with men yeah and there was this quality growing up of seeing certain kinds of actors and performers like Val like Nicholas Cage these sort of like Jack Nicholson these very athletic um kinds of performances that as the little girl that I was I was jealous and I I wanted that and and then later of course that that evolved as I grew and you know I and then I was attracted to other kinds of performances like Charlotte rampling or Maggie Chong or but that's that's that was how I started off um because it felt like some sort of benign resistance like some sort of like I don't like as a little girl to be to say like no I want I wanted that I wanted to be Daniel de Lewis yes I like I Saw The Crucible and I was like I want to play I don't want to play the I play his part like that was the the best part and and he was the best yeah is the best pH hman and Kate Blanchett if I can diffuse the two of them into one those are my two perfect actors really um I mean childhood Inspirations it's pretty out there now I wanted to be an Ewok and that's what started all this madness really legit literally and I haven't let it go yeah maybe feel like we would y a lot of body compression work I think I can do it um no yeah but you said Margo you wanted to play the boys always yeah yeah that's what kind of spawned your production company right like the men always had the best parts in this every time I read it I was like the mail roll I was like nope we got to make it so you read the female role and you're like she's got the best scenes she's got all the the moment she's got it Annette what about you well I I didn't see a lot of movies as a kid um I did see Sound of Music so I love that movie and I love Julie Andrews when I got to be a little bit older like when I was in community college and I started doing because I started doing theater and I just when I was in high school and I just loved doing plays and then I was going to this dollar a unit Community College that just happened to have a great theater Department so I started doing plays I remember seeing at the little Art House theater in San Diego I remember seeing Persona um that was the first time I had seen something like that believe Olman BB Anderson so that she began to really intrigue me leave Olman of course great actress made all of those amazing films with igar Bergman um and I began to get interested in that I didn't really start thinking about doing movies till I was old a bit older but um I certainly admired Vanessa Redgrave she was one of my big heroes um there was something about her quality too um that I really admired um yeah and I just I just did plays for many years and so then I didn't really start until I was almost 30 to do movies so I didn't kind of grow up with that mentality of thinking about it um you know I just didn't I just couldn't imagine it kind of but I would see a great movie and then I would think oh wow that's so powerful to see a great movie like loving it and thinking well I guess somebody has to be in them I remember having that thought somebody has to try somebody has to be out there saying maybe could it be me Emma I was thinking about your character Bella in poor things usually when I ask an actor about a role I I'm thinking what did you have to learn what did you have to prepare and with Bella I thought what did you have to unar because you're basically playing a child in in your grown-up woman's body so how did you how did you even start with that um it was jorus and I talked about about Bell for a long time we he told me about the book and sort of the adaptation that he and Tony were working on Tony magnam who wrote who wrote the favorite and also cruel so it was my third time working with Tony by the time we by the time we made po things and um he he basically gave me the outline and then we talked about it for four years so I didn't read a draft for like two years so it's just sort of started to I guess I've never had a a project go on that long or sort of sit with me for that long so I think it started to just sort of like through osmosis I would think about um aspects of it but because she's in a a full grown healthy body you know it's not like even you could compare it to like someone who's been in an accident and lost their memory and is relearning how to walk or how to move that wasn't really comparable and then also looking at you know videos or ideas of like toddlers beginning to walk their bones are still growing and they're still forming so she doesn't have that so we tried to just sort of map her physicality as much as possible but in a way that it was really amazing because there was nothing to compare it to it was completely just kind of like we just experimented with things and he' be like no that's that's insane and I be like I know try this one Whatever but insane good but insane s what do you insane like okay um but so we I mean the two of us really just kind of talked about it for for years and then uh and same with her kind of evolution in language and how she develops and you know what words she does or doesn't say how she refers to herself or other people she's just my favorite character of all time because of that unlearning she's totally without shame she's pure joy and curiosity and experimentation and adventure and has no qualms about her body or her you know experience or food or drink or you know the way she relates to other people it's so it was so inspiring to me on a daily basis and it was really like I just I I miss her all the time because she was so she's so alive um and so open to to life that it was like a very it was a very inspiring person to get to try to be every day or to live up to um did you ever feel embarrassed or like would do something where you like a part of your brain were like oh my God I look like an idiot right now or do you just get there and you're like completely similarly to what you were just saying I love I love physical comedy too I love the sort of and it you know and neos's films are are you know dark comedies but they're definitely comedy so it feels like growing up for me My Heroes were Gilder Rader Molly Shannon like I was watching SNL growing up so like that was my that was my like Pinnacle I you know I loved that world so much so I think that that sort of goofiness or or what would be embarrassment is so sort of I don't know freeing I find that so so much fun and like I don't I don't do not take myself seriously in any way so people like laughing at something I'm attempting to do doesn't really bother me but I also it's a testament to working with a director that you truly truly trust admire believe in and know is the captain of the ship in a way that you can be you can really let go cuz cuz I think we've probably all worked in experiences where you feel like you also have to be the captain and you don't fully trust that you can do it all or throw it all out there because you don't know what exactly they're seeing or how they're going to bring it together which is a really difficult at least to me because I don't want to direct I it's really difficult to sort of like have to think in two minds of like well if this if I give you this option take you're going to use it I know you are and I don't want do that so I have to whatever to not feel that at all which I don't with Yos I feel like whatever we try I'm like I know he's going to go with whatever is best for the film is like the greatest totally thing you know um and did you work with like a movement coach or like how did you come up with the phys it was just him and I we just sort of like in rehearsals we would go and we would have like walking rehearsals you know for like a couple hours and then just like all right and we and we created stages so it was stage one to five so because at the beginning of the film we're in willam's character's house the my mad scientist kind of father God and that was only stage one and five and we hadn't shot the middle yet so it was like her beginning and her end um so all of that we just sort of mapped out so we knew like okay we're in stage three right now so for this you know these couple of things we're walking this way and we sort of were able to like curate it a little bit in that way but would you like film it and then have it on your phone so you could be like oh yeah this stage looks like no you just rely on to be just the sort of feeling of it because it's because you are going from a progression of like of like that sort of sides of the feet and you know to walking flat so whatever that would I don't know is this oh this is what we're here to talk [Applause] about every time I talk about acting for more than like five minutes I'm like sorry about that was Suzuki part of your training then you said walking on the sides of your feet did you do Suzuki method when you were doing your theater what isuki method I mean it was developed it's it's it's kind of like martial arts training but it's for actors because I mean the theory is that you have to be in such command of your instrument as an actor that you would could be able to I think as he said run toward the lip of a stage and then stop on a dime so wow I'm a very untrained actually Lily I remember you saying that on killers of the flower moon when you put the blanket on and some of the costume on it it changed the way you sat it changed the way you stood how did that sort of shape making Molly I mean I almost had the opposite with the language I knew that she would be in the language first and then it's always the last step you're in the shoes you're in the clothes you're in the character until the audience or if the crew is there um but yeah I I was most worried about getting the fluency and I guess like I guess it matched Marty talked about the rewrite of the the script initially from the FBI's investigation of these murders which had reduced Molly to I think three scenes in the original draft to inverting it that it was the inside out I mean that's kind of I think how I had to work with her because o Sage is it's a it's one of the more thriving uh Native languages in this country most most indigenous languages in North America are anthropologists would say dead languages and you know meaning that there aren't many first language speakers still alive and that's very true in a lot of cases so Osage have a language vitalization hugely like beautiful like um cohesive language Department that they bring into schools they have their own orthography so that was the first thing I did is I learned the Sonic system because you know all this physical training the you're learning the world view you're learning the pace of the character and I found actually at the end I asked for a lot of my scenes that were ended up being in English for ease of the audience to read there were a lot of scenes I had written in English that I asked to be translated into oage so almost all of my dialogue at some point I spoke in O sage and that's where I really found Molly was in the language first and it took months to get comfortable with it o Sage is a very difficult language um I speak a little bit of black feet language where I grew up and I grew up hearing that so that Sonic system and those phone and everything were familiar to me o ages I felt so clunky and so robotic and so like stage one with it um so when I had kind of a handle of the language and I guess with Alexander feeling loose with it then putting putting on oage dress and holding myself the way I was told oldage women especially at the time hold themselves I was in my first fitting with with Julie o'keef and I remember when my broad cloth skirt heavy wool in Oklahoma in the middle of the summer oh are tough people um and it's folded a certain way it it is a folded blanket and it's all folds and all ties and when Julie tied me into the skirt I and then my first thought was I absolutely understand how the oage nation gave birth to America's First Prima ballerina Maria tall Chief and holding the blanket as well it's like okay okay my Foundation was in ballet before acting I was like have to stand first position and hold that blanket and fold it so and then to okay have this that feels very stiff that is not very comfortable in a modern body but then to have ease with it and what funny aspect of that was I have a long torso and short legs Leo has a has long legs and a short torso so when I was sitting as Molly even in Repose as Molly I always look taller than him which I love like embracing that Vibe they had to fly in a little booster form every time Carrie one sort of resource you had as you were working on Maestro is the Burnstein children who were really involved what kinds of things did you learn from them how did it help you oh man so much um they were just so lovely to us um so I still I I st I kind of signed on to the project about four years before we shot it um and not long afterwards Bradley asked if I wanted to he said I want you to really go all in you know and I think like you know I thought in my head okay but you know not really but yes wink wink um you know because it's you know I again like not a trained actor but um and and you know so I was a little bit like nervous of that and then um you know we I don't think there was really a script then and we were talking and then at some point I was um I was at his house and he said um so yanii Seguin who's like this incredible conductor Philadelphia Orchestra he said he's he was sort of the musical guide and he said he wants us to come to Philadelphia and narate candid do you want to do it and I was like yes what the do that know what that means that doesn't what does that but how do you narrate an opera um so anyway we went and we narrated this Opera and they came and uh to we we rehearsed it for like three or four days and then we did three performances and narrating candid essentially there is a narrator and then we split it and we did this the three performances and they came to the I think maybe the final one and I met them for the first time and um it was like embracing family they were so unbelievably warm and still I mean every time I see them now they just grab me and like you know um and so we zoomed a bit over the years and you know I started with like a notebook you know to take down notes on and then after a minute I thought well this is pointless because they just the stories were just flying so um so many amazing anecdotes and a family that you just wanted to be in you know like they had everything was an inside joke everything was a secret language everything was you know they just had all these fun like traditions and um so a million things a million things about and and you know they gave me her lighter Felicia's lighter which is in the film so she she got it when she was married it's engraved with her name on um so from the from when they're married when the when the film turns to color I'm always using her lighter which was um amazing to have so yeah I mean everything everything lot of smoking all oh God how was that for you so much smoking is that mug wart or what are we talking those are the yeah do you get Crazy headaches from those awful they're so they give me the worst heada but they did they just smoked they like famously just smoked constantly and Jamie writes that she's written wrot this amazing book Jamie Bernstein called famous father girl and she talks about being brought down in her pajamas after bath time to see her parents to say good night and they were sitting in their finery with their cocktails and their friends and they would be smoking and they would you give them and it just I mean sounds so fabulous um but um yeah always well who did you use as references did you use act yeah so there's amazing recordings this guy John Gru and went and spent the summer with them in ansedonia and um and interviewed for it was called private world of lonard Bernstein was a kind of um coffee table book about him and the family a bit but largely about him and he interviewed them and um and he interviewed her so there's about two sort of 40 minute chunks of her talking um so we we and that was just that was such a treasure Trove because she talked about you know the the real the most exciting thing about it was this the first hook was you know the idea of two artists living concurrently together making a life together and one of them being literally touched by God and the other one being an arst artist she spoke about that in the recording well she she didn't in so many words but you know the sense of like you know um Steven Spielberg who's one of our producers said to Bradley um when they were talking about it uh originally you know she she was an amazing actress she was more successful than Lenny when they first met uh but she devoted her life to him and and Steven said of Felicia Lenny was her art you know but that she decided that that was what she was the bigger kind of um you know that was the bigger need in her life was be so yeah so the tapes in the family were just amazing did you feel like you were able to come to some understanding about how she felt about the marriage not only him becoming so enormous culturally but also his affairs with men how you know how that affected the family did you feel like you were able to understand what the impact was on her yeah I think so I mean I think you know it's always so tricky is it when you play a real person you feel like you know I met her her kids but I also went to Chile and I met her Chilean family and um and her brother-in-law who was 95 at the time he sadly passed away um but he was in ansedonia with them when those tapes were being made you know so he knew them so well and everyone has their their feelings about it and it's like any family it's so private how people feel about what's happened to their family members so I I never want to presume on their behalf but how I saw it yeah I did I felt you know there was a very clear sense that she never really committed to her art in the way that he did um and that therefore she was sort of able to kind of give her life over to him but that the the Betrayal for her was nothing to do with sex or infidelity it was to do with her being essentially his Muse Mentor best friend guide closest Confidant and the moment that he turned to somebody else for that and in the film he you see he goes to Tommy he goes to Gideon Glick and in this moment where he's very very nervous because he's you know previewing his F his his sort of new piece of work he reaches for Tommy's hand and that's the bit that it's not about anything except you know what's the point of her existence if she's not that person anymore right and the scene when you're having lunch afterwards and you're like say went on that date and thought he was asking you out and it's just getting closer and closer to your face oh my God yeah don't you love it when that happens yeah yeah feel the camera coming in like it's brilliant Margo one of the things I really want to know about on Barbie is the pitching of it you produced it um in a lot of ways it feels like kind of miracle that this movie got made in the way that it did and sort of as subversive as it is can you sort of take us inside the room when you were talking with Warner Brothers and Mattel particularly about those scenes where you're going to be making fun of Mattel in the movie what did that look like yeah the strategy was you know obviously it was a long process to to first get the property then get it um you know set up at Warners and Mattel and have everyone trust in us as a production company to make it and honor the brand but also do something relevant and interesting one of the biggest fights was convincing everyone that it could be a full quadrant movie because it had you know a budget that necessitated it being a four quadrant movie and that means getting men to go see it and everyone was just like there's just no way men are never ever young or old are never going to go see a Barbie movie and we're like but men will go see a great movie if it's great everyone will go see it people couldn't get past that but then there was also the stage of yes once had the script and it was like really going for it I think the strategy I said was let's just get all comfortable with being very uncomfortable so every time it was like tell me your concerns I totally hear you I see why that is making you uncomfortable but that's what we're going to do and we're just going to have to get comfortable with that feeling and it was always just like just get it to the next stage like get it to the next stage before you know it we be on set and then you know Greta said like you know the whole approach was like drive it like you stole it and that defin definely was the it definitely was the approach we were just like we just got to keep going going going don't let them stop us and um yeah it was it was it was an amazing process and everyone to their credit did get really comfortable with being uncomfortable I mean Mattel's literally a character in it and um was it always will thorough yeah there was a lot of like all the casting choices were very definite and everyone was so on board for like yeah doing it yeah it was so when you say okay it's going to be a boardroom full of men they're going to be having a tickle fight and this is how we're going to show your company they were down yeah and I also like you know when you're when you're trying to get a project up and running as those at the table who produce know it's like you're just like you're in selling mode I was like pitching it I was like I think my I was like if you pair like when you pair Spielberg with Dinosaurs what do you get a billion dollars you pair Greta and Bobby you're going to make a billion dollars you God cuz I was like God I hope this works out I've just promised everyone a billion dollars I really hope it does that but you know it's just you just have to like double down I I I think as a producer you got to like make your choices and then you back that choice like when you pick a director you don't hedge your bets and like believe in 90% of their ideas it's like no you I I will bleed myself out before I tell a director they can't have something they need I'm like if that's what you need for this then like let me go get like I'll make that happen that's that's like your job so there was a lot of just completely doubling down on some crazy big bold ideas does pitching feel like auditioning or does it feel like something different oh that's an interesting question no because it doesn't it feels like selling it feels like I'm a con man or something like I'm a a con artist like convincing everyone that something insane is actually going to work whereas audition feels like I don't know the funny thing I'm not I'm not good at lying and um people are like don't you lie for a living and I'm like oh I've never seen acting as that like I feel like acting is making something so incredibly truthful and like making it sound like the most honest thing that could ever come out of your mouth that's what acting is to me so actually I don't think it's lying whereas pitching I feel like it's not lying either but it's a lot of promising something you don't actually know well you've got a good track record of deling now so it makes it easy the next time you fit something you can point to it and be like see that worked out Annette I know that when you were training for niad you trained for a year there were days where you were swimming 5 hours a day wow why did you feel that level of commitment was necessary what what and how did it help um well I um I read the script and I just loved it I just was completely into her the whole story I didn't really think about the swimming which is so strange but CU I just loved it and I it was just like so I said yes and then I realized wait a minute bathing suit oh wait a minute I'm in a bathing suit I'm 60 something like what about that and then I have to do all the swimming you bathing soon well I I did cross my mind you know wasn't until later anyway so and I you know I I've always been a a person who worked out exercise for my brain as much as my bod um but I and I was a diver when I was a kid I was a scuba diver and I was in the ocean a lot I worked on a boat I'm very comfortable jumping in the ocean and all of that but I had never been a swim or swimmer you know so I had to learn and when I first got in I my impulse was because it was early on in the process I thought I'm just going to start swimming like I have a pool and I'm just going to jump in how you know would how hard can it be I was really naive I was completely you know it was it was overwhelming and I I really got scared and I thought what have I done wait a minute I've agreed to this wait can I do this um and I have to make it look right and does that work how's that going to work and you know I just went through all of that and I I talk about that because I I just I don't know I think a lot of us deal with those kinds of fears in a way and and we have to you know you have to face your fears in a way in the work in a good way like if you're lucky enough I hired a great coach she's an Olympian swimmer her name is Raa Owen and you know I took a deep breath and I she said okay show me okay you know and I did like my version of whatever I thought that was of freestyle and she's like oh yeah we can make this work and so she because of her disposition because of her nature she was a great swimmer she also still loves to swim many great athletes burn out on their sport whatever it is just because they've just done it so much but she's tall and she got in the pool with me and just immediately started showing me you know what what the technique was and that is an interesting process anytime physically you're learning a new uh skill because of course the experts know how to break it down well you know the breathing is here and it's only this much and then the arm goes here and the legs is very little and you know there's this whole thing and of course as a beginner you're thinking about 25 different things which you cannot do the only thing you can do really is think about one thing at a time actually so that takes then it's the practice and of course what happens with swimming is that you start to fall in love with it because it makes you feel so good it's so good for the central nervous system I'm pretty uh I have a very like active mind and a lot of exercise has always been for me to try to calm my mind so I I began to feel the benefits physically as well as emotionally and physically then we started talking about Diana what is her stroke like you know I had to learn to breathe on the left because she breathes on the left the boat has to be here Jody's there playing Bonnie my coach in the movie and so we started working on the more you know on that I have to breathe to left and I just worked really really hard and the more I got into it the more I enjoyed it then Diana came over to my house I got to know her spend time with yeah I got to know her very well she's a really interesting woman and uh if she was here she would be the most interesting person in the room she's just is she's just one of those people and she's extraordinary and she earned it you know she had to she had to earn that in life which is what I love about her um anyway so I did get to know her very well and then I did she did come over and I was nervous okay now I'm going to swim for Diana although they did put me on video you know because there's like people somewhere out there who are like how's she doing with the swimming and it's like they so they she did video me so they were like but she came to watch you she did she came to my house and I was like okay here it is did she give notes she you know what that's a good question I don't remember her giving nose I remember she had some ideas about training and stuff but no she just immediately was like oh Annette I'm so happy and I was wearing her swimsuit and she liked that and ni you know she's a very very dear person and she's she's a badass and she's smart and funny and just Unapologetic about who she is as a human being and she earned that you know now she's 74 and she she's you know but but she's a remarkable person yeah I love her I'm an ask a few just light and Breezy questions with the little time that we have left and one of them is what's it like when your parents see your performance oh God my parents came to see Maestro uh the London Film Festival um uh with my brother and my sister-in-law and we're all on a WhatsApp chain and um and I was in I came into London I didn't go to anything but I came in to see The Bernstein kids and have dinner with them whilst it was playing so I was at a restaurant and I was waiting for the finished you know film to finish so that I could you know see what they were going to say and I was at this restaurant and I said you know I've got the table from whatever just you know I'll order some food whatever and um I'm waiting waiting and then you know someone says I think the film must be over by now and I'm like okay um and then suddenly my phone lights up and it's the family WhatsApp group and I'm like oh okay and my sister-in-law just says Owen my brother wants the steak freed I was like oh okay cool um that was the I was like guys um but they came and they were lovely and whatever but it's you know it's I think it's just my you know I'm I'm 25 to 57 in Myro and for my mom to watch that mustard first of all I look like my mother in the later scenes when I have like the Prosthetics on and I'm playing Felicia older but I think for her it just must to be like you know and upsetting and weird and sad and I mean I'm for sure very proud and you were English so but um they sound Korean to me very similar and the WhatsApp too that whole infrastructure sounds very familiar my parents they obviously knew for months that I was doing this movie in Korean and that you know I was nervous about it and felt you know I had to step up to do it and then the trailer came out and I sent it to my parents and I got a text from my mom that was like oh my God it's in Korean and I was like yes I've been telling you for months and you didn't it's like you didn't believe me that it was actually going to be in Korean but then I realized for them to process like what that is was really jarring they could not accept that it was actually going to be in Korean um and they're you know normally very maybe stoic or just you know they've seen the things that I've done but it's never really been part of our relationship to be overly celebratory about certain things but I I have to say though after my mom went to see past lives and afterwards she she was sobbing and I've never I don't even know if I've seen her cry before and I was deeply uncomfortable with what was happening but she was she was a wreck and and I in that moment you know it was a Premiere I didn't feel like we could really get into it and of several days pass and she called me and she said I'm driving she said I'm still crying I'm like God what's wrong is everything okay and she said she said um I'm Nora oh oh my God yeah and I was like what and she said you know in her way she said you think this movie is about you but it's about me but behind that was a real sense of seeing herself that I really did not expect and that I mean yeah and that now I do I feel like I know her in a different way um it's a gift to take your mom on an emotional Journey like that through your work that's that's incredible yeah what did your parents say I I mean my dad has just always put it in my head that this is what I was going to do all my parents have always been I know it's I mean I owe them everything so I grew up rural Montana on a reservation it's like the world is telling you it's impossible for you and your access to the outside world when you're Liv remotely as film as TV is all of it I don't know I just kind of always had a certainty about it and yet I love it that a lot of the stuff that I do maybe it wouldn't be like the choices my dad would make for me and I don't think he always sees or appreciates what I do my mom does but um my dad in a way of like not giving me critique but also giving me praise he just he says that film was so profound yet very simple that film was he will pick the two contradicting phrases and say both and just like beautiful I mean it is but it's also him just being like he doesn't know what the the movie is about covering his b but he's uh even so like so your parents like know film enough like their film people enough that they could appreciate a sces film you know like I remember telling my I'm like it's scores and they're all like right well your family like doing a schoy film I mean yeah my dad's favorite movie is kundun that was my introduction to Marty I had no idea about like Good Fellas or anything um I hadn't I hadn't watched that Marty um yeah it's uh and my grandma even that was my grandma was born and raised in a like little Log Cabin she was born during the Depression on the on the NES purse reservation in lap way um premature you know like just survived All Odds but she loved movies she was around when we told her that I'd gotten cast in this my grandma like she went and saw a taxi driver in the theater when it came out in the 70s you know like loved film and she CED at me like Shirley Temple I think a lot of Grandma's from the 30s you know it's like like I said Res Kids a lot of times like our our out our view of the outside world is first shaped by like Cinema but we told her like yeah I'm going to be in Martin Scorsese film Oh Martin scorsi with Robert dairo oh Robert DeNiro and Leonardo Dicaprio and then I pulled Titanic out of her collection oh that's amazing wait can I ask something really quickly now that we're all best friends and I want to steal all of your secrets um in terms of Duality I'm I'm so curious to know what you guys I think about comedy and drama like and that the the difference is and if you approach it differently how you think about that I I just right it's it's the hardest I think really hard it's like super hard but I heard this thing I I just heard Matthew mccon and I don't I don't know if we're allowed to bring up men but here but I heard him say this thing about how he approaches drama like a comedy and comedy like drama which I thought was really interesting um and I I feel like I'm getting asked this a lot in terms of like how do I how do you like reconcile the two um genres and style and in terms of tone and pacing and I I just I'm curious if any if like what what do you think about that do you I do think comedy is harder definitely harder than than drama I feel less scared that I'm going to pull off like a big screaming crying scene than I am that I'm going to pull off a funny scene yeah like I'm like I know I can scream and shout and cry and do all that stuff but like can I make people laugh I don't know but I think it requires the same level of commitment that that like it's all in because if you take even an inch off the pedal there it's like going to fall flat on its face it's interesting that mccon quote though like that is kind of yeah I was thinking about like comedy being I mean comedy being tension and timing and and then thinking about the most dramatic scenes that that's also true that that inherent sense it's like a tickle that it's hard to explain but it feels for me the time it's time like comedic timing is so such a thing that I feel like you don't have to be quite so spot on with the timing when it comes to drama but I feel like you do and when I watch your work I feel that same sense of timing of tension timing of of it's almost like playing to a live audience where there's you because you are when you're in a when you're in a scene with someone you're in the same way as like a conversation with someone you're you're feeling out what is going to happen next what's coming from them like you were saying reacting you're yeah you're watching someone move and you're responding as such and in that sense I feel like comedy and drama are the same and life is constantly encapsulating both yeah like something that's just serious and never has levity does not make sense to me because when someone's dying you find a reason like everybody bursts into laughter because the tension's so high at a certain point or they like it it always lives in tandem yeah but I agree with you I think the timing is constant whether it's you know called comedy or drama it's always like Revelation I feel like in drama like the revelation of an emotion is where you get some of the catharsis and maybe the audience comes along for it and the same with a joke a revelation is almost like a punch line yeah speaking of timing we do have to wind down um is it something we said it is if this were up to me we would be here all day but I know that you can't do that um what is the most used emoji on your phone one good I think mine's the brain explosion one mine's the melting Smiley I love the melting Smiley it's really helpful and the smiley with the sunnies I do a lot too yeah mhm there's also one that's like that oh yeah I love that one what's this one mean the up circle like people go like this what does that mean I thought it's used in tandem with the X like it's an XO oh oh I feel adorable I don't know but there's also just an XO isn't there like X and an o i I never know what it means when you when you I like send a text to someone and they'll go just do it to them Ma like you're you made a goal I know or like I don't know or I have no idea I've become a fan of the sparkly the sparkly yeah the Stars like the three little stars that's that's a good frame coming around to head yeah it's like a good frer for the for the Jack it's a nice the Emoji is the art the Sparkles or the frame do it h let's do it h to you ladies thanks yall so so much Che cheers Che thank you very much for having us well that hour flew by but we learned so much guys I mean from P to a 5-year-old about what you really do for a living to the most used emojis on their phones wow oh that's right we also talked about acting too until next time I'm Ivan orgy and this has been off script with The Hollywood [Music] Reporter

Channel: The Hollywood Reporter

Views: 1,220,852

Keywords: thr, the hollywood reporter, hollywood reporter, entertainment, hollywood, Margot Robbie, Actress Roundtable, THR Actress Roundtable, Emma Stone, Lily Gladstone, Greta Lee, Carey Mulligan, Annette Bening, Close up with the hollywood reporter, the hollywood reporter roundtable, hollywood reporter roundtable, hollywood reporter roundtable 2024, the hollywood reporter roundtable 2024, 2024, off script with the hollywood reporter

Id: KA-r9NEI_Ts

Length: 56min 47sec (3407 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2024