I definitely managed to do different kinds of things. My focus is usually who the director is, because at the end of the day the director is the storyteller, what the movie is all about. I don't want to participate in something that I don't think is constructive storytelling.
The other thing I've been discussing with friends is: when you're born do you start at a zero, or five?
You do your best [ on auditions] and sometimes you win 'em over and sometimes you don't.
I have nothing nice to say about Chris Pratt, of course. He's probably the greatest hero of our time in real life, honestly.
My dad's more three-dimensional than Opie Taylor or Richie Cunningham. He even has a temper! He's a real person. But some people are disappointed by that.
I'm a huge fan of the animated film 'The Land Before Time' and that was one of my favourite animated films when I was growing up.
But, working with directors whose history is in performance, I feel like there's a different kind of focus, as opposed to directors who are more prone to being really technically proficient or visual. I feel like there are two schools of both, and a director needs to have both.
What it's done for me is highlight the fact that we need to lean into the cartoon universe of social media.
For me, whether or not a film has some kind of massive budget or is an independent film, or however it's getting made, it's always about the filmmaker and, hopefully, being a vessel for the filmmaker's vision. That's what really attracts me to projects.
Where I'm like,"no, I won't have that piece of bread, I'll have the veg." There's a different approach mentally that you have when you're in a safe space. Our body awareness in the West is ridiculous.
I'll run through things over and over and over again in my head and think, "How could I have done that better?" Silly things like that.
I had watched an episode of Black Mirror almost exactly a year prior to when I started shooting my episode. I was by myself in New Zealand, and my husband was like, "You have to see this show. It's so incredible."
Joe [Wright] reached out to me and sent me a treatment, and I said yes on the spot just from the treatment. Within six weeks, I was in Cape Town and there was a script [of Black Mirror episode 'Nosedive'], but I didn't realize until I received the full script that Rashida [Jones] and Michael [Schur] had worked on it. It's a particularly funny episode. Joe and I always looked at it as a satire; it has a lot of comedic elements to it.
I was in South Africa, and Joe [Wright] asked the same exact question that you just asked: "Have you ever seen an episode of Black Mirror?" I went back and played the video for Joe. The episode that I did is called "Nosedive," and it was a year to the week from when I first watched it. It was just very bizarre, this very weird coincidence.
I saw an episode - the second episode [of Black Mirror], "Fifteen Million Merits" - and I completely flipped out: "This is what my nightmares are made of. This is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen."
Joe Wright is incredible and I'm a huge admirer of his work in general, but specifically his aesthetics and poeticism.
The ability to play pretend is something that everyone has access to; you see little kids doing it.
I didn't know how to check other people's feeds. When I started Instagram, it was just me posting! But then at some point, like eight months ago, I realized I could see what other people were sharing. It was so exciting and so fun, but it was like I'd already gotten into the rhythm of sharing and not worrying about what it was like compared to other accounts. I think that was kind of protective, in a way.
Sometimes acting, particularly in film, can feel so contained. You need to be small and not overplay things, so it's such a relief to be able to go as far as you can go with an emotion or a feeling or a speech.
The clearer that division [of social media] is between it not being a reflection of reality, and being a complete make-believe world, the more we're helping ourselves.
In the beginning [of my social media life], I started posting and someone I'm close to said, "you're only posting pictures of yourself in your grungy pajamas. You're an actress be aspirational." Then I was like, "I'm not living an aspirational life on a day-to-day basis." For a while after that I was only taking pictures of, like, objects.
I have an association that director means total authority. Director means they will never let you down. Director means just trust them and fulfill their vision, and know that the story will be told in its best incarnation.
It's just that the characters are speaking their mind. As opposed to it just being an expression, they're actually saying what's on their mind, and that's something that Tennessee Williams is really famous for. Shakespeare does that and Tennessee Williams does that. You crave that, when you're an actor, for sure.
You need to not be able to do anything else, to be in this business. If you have other options, in those unemployed moments, those other options will take precedent. From a directorial standpoint, I think it's really Freudian, the amount of trust I have in filmmakers because I have such a trusting relationship with my dad.
On the spectrum of imagination, there are people who are more imaginative than others - I guess some kids are hardcore pretenders and have imaginary friends for years and other kids play and they have fun, but it's not quite as specific like that.
