“There’s this question and danger about whether art can be amoral,” she reflects.
Warning: This story contains spoilers forMay December.
“She is not the most ethically sound researcher,” Portman admits.
Natalie Portman in ‘May December’.courtesy netflix
“There’s this question and danger about whether art can be amoral.
“How does it affect you?
How does it affect your morality and your ethics?
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in ‘May December’.Everett Collection
Can art actually be immoral?
Can you depict a crime without somehow endorsing it or exploiting it?”
“It’s a very questionable thing.
It’s a debatable thing of how much we should go there.”
What was it about both him and this script that you felt made them the ideal match?
It had such a unique tone, and he’s a master of tone.
I had wanted to work with him for so long.
I had sent him a few things over the years that he had said no to.
So, this was very exciting and lucky that he was interested.
Were you constantly watching footage?
What was your process?
Julie is such a magnificent actress, but she’s also a very generous actress.
Things like the lisp served both functions.
And despite having no rehearsal time, we shot in semi-chronological order.
I was really studying Julie when I was playing Elizabeth studying Gracie.
Well, the hair and makeup and the wardrobe team were very helpful.
We went through that together to make decisions about when things would start showing up.
Or is it all very conscious?
There’s many points.
Sometimes you are trying to take mental notes and then you’re actually doing it in real life.
Did you have to swap wigs to go from Elizabeth with bangs to Gracie with no bangs?
It was the same wig just styled differently.
How did you relate to that?
Were there particular boxes you felt you’ve had to outrun?
To keep it something that feels like you’re learning and growing and changing.
Hopefully that is more interesting to an audience when you’re also trying to challenge yourself.
The role is also self-referential in some ways.
Was that your idea to put that in?
Was it screenwriter Samy Burch’s?
How scary is that for you to put those little meta things in there?
The script is a hundred percent Samy.
There was no improv or anything like that.
The way you try and act stereotypically feminine and the way you dress or the way you behave.
There’s so many levels of performance that add up to identity.
For an actress who’s also performing, it’s another layer.
There’s so many different layers.
Constructing your identity so that it can hold all of those within it as something true.
And then also the question of artifice.
I’m so curious about accepting the artifice in what we do and leaning into it and exploring it.
I think about when painting had to deal with photography and started becoming abstract.
I can have a lot of emotional expressiveness through embracing artifice and performance.
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