I think we can all agree that Carey Mulligan should have more than one Oscar nomination to her name. Yes, her nod for a decade ago for “An Education” was well deserved, but in the years following she’s been overlooked far too often for incredible performances in “Shame,” “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Wildlife,” among others. That may change after her LA Film Critics’ Best Actress win for “Promising Young Woman.”
READ MORE: Gregory Ellwood’s top 10 films of 2020: “Nomadland,” “Minari,” “Promising Young Woman”
The directorial debut of Emerald Ferrell, who also took LAFCA’s Best Screenplay honor, “Promising” finds Mulligan portraying Cassie, an almost 30-year-old medical school dropout who is admittedly wasting her talents away working at a coffee shop. On the weekends, she flips the switch as she hits the town to shock “nice guys” by forcing them to come face to face with their predatory habits. After a chance reunion with a former classmate, Ryan (“Eighth Grade” helmer Bo Burnham), she begins to exact a plan of revenge against the former classmates who destroyed her best friend. Unless, of course, Ryan’s charms turn her own life around.
Mulligan jumped on the phone last week to chat about the “don’t want it to end” three-week shoot, finding the tone of Ferrell’s decidedly “dark comedy,” the joys of dancing to Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind,” the gag reel we’ll never see and much more.
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The Playlist: When you first met Emerald, was there anything that she said about the character or the tone of the film, that you hadn’t necessarily gotten from the script?
Carey Mulligan: Yeah, I mean, it was a couple of things. She, first of all, sent me a playlist, which was a Spotify playlist that had Paris Hilton‘s “Stars Are Blind,” “Toxic,” by Britney Spears, but in two different forms, an instrumental version as well. It had “Boys,” by Charli XCX. It also had “Take My Breath Away” from “Top Gun,” which was amazing. I was very excited by that. One of the first things she said to me when we sat down was, “I don’t want to make a film about a woman in a gray cardigan, sort of looking depressed. This is not what that film is.” She had this amazing mood board with all of these incredible visual references, all very sort of tactile, candy-colored neon pink signage, everything that ultimately, obviously, you see in the film. I knew from that point that this was going to be a very unique world that she was going to build.
The film speaks to a number of important subjects that I feel like we shouldn’t still be talking about, but we still are. Did she talk about the balance between the drama and, I don’t want to say comedy, but the comedic moments?
It was a really funny script. It read really like a dark, dark comedy, with an emphasis on the darkness. That’s what sort of fascinated me about the script, was this felt like a tight rope walk, in terms of its tone. These shifts from the kind of, sort of thriller, almost horror aspect, to romantic comedy, to serious drama. I thought that was such a kind of exciting blend. Also, having spent just a bit of time with Emerald and getting to know her a little bit and sort of understanding her, I just knew that she was going to be able to pull it off, and only her, in a way. She’s so, so smart and has such a kind of totally unique way of thinking about things, and hilarious. Just one of the funniest people that I’ve ever met. So that stuff was very much in the script. But of course, when you get this amazing cast and you get these brilliant comedians, it adds another element. I think Emerald’s casting was just so brilliant.
The cast is amazing, but you also shot this film in 23 days.
Yeah.
That’s quick. Was there even time for rehearsal, or was it once you got on set, you just figured the scene out, and boom?
Pretty much. I mean, we had two days, where I think Alison [Brie], Bo, Adam [Brody], and Laverne [Cox] managed to come in for about two hours each, and we just sort of read through the scenes that we had together. Maybe Alfred [Molina] did, too. Then Connie Britton just came on the day, Molly Shannon came on the day, Sam Richardson, lots of people just came in, did their bit and went. Yeah, we had to move quickly. One day, we shot Molly Shannon in the morning and Alfred Molina in the afternoon. We were moving fast, and it was tight.
That scene sequence with you and Connie is so well done. I’m sort of shocked that it was shot in one day. Did you even get to read through it beforehand?
I think we ran the lines because obviously, the writing is so specific. So we wanted to be completely uncomfortable, but we had gotten the lines perfect between the two of us. Then yeah, we just started shooting it. Basically, it took a day, I think, to shoot the whole thing of Cassie in the wasting room before she goes in, Cassie leaving. We also shot the scene with her daughter on the same day. I think we shot that in the morning.
This sounds faster than a college student film. Now I’m even more impressed than I was before. When was the last time you made a film this quickly?
This was one of the quickest. I was trying to think, actually. “Mudbound” was 28 days, but that had a World War II sequence in it, so that was pretty impressive. I think “Shame” was short. I think Shame was something like 23 or 25. But yeah, this was quick. That was kind of what was so sad is that we got to the end, and I felt bereft because we’d just been having such a nice time and suddenly it was over. I wasn’t ready to stop playing the part. It felt kind of too short. But Emerald just handled it like such a pro you know. She behaved like we had a six-month shoot ahead of us. She was just so relaxed, but obviously was keeping things ticking along. We have a gag reel, which I love because I’ve never been in a film with a gag reel, and I don’t know if I ever will be again, so it was very exciting for me. In the gag reel, there’s this bit where, I think it was our second day of filming, me and Bo. He had been f**king with me a lot, trying to make me laugh. The camera was then on him. I can’t remember what I was doing, but anyway, he kept on breaking, which was so fun. At one point Emerald just comes in, and I immediately say, “It’s not my fault, Emerald. It’s Bo’s fault!” She goes, “It’s your fault, your fault,” and points at both of us. She’s like, “Right, come on. We’ve got like five minutes left.” That was one of the few times that she cracked the whip because we really needed to make our day. But yeah, she was extraordinary. She was nine months pregnant by the time we finished filming, as well, you would have thought this was like her 10th feature. She was just completely in command of the whole thing.
Oh, that’s actually really exciting. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
Oh my god, me too.
Speaking of Bo, and I know you’ve been asked about this many times, but I think for anyone who is over the age of 25 when “Stars Are Blind” comes on in the film, it’s sort of this shock because it’s never gotten it’s proper cinematic due. And you and Bo sing to it in a pharmacy of all places.
I’m so excited for a whole generation of people to discover this song. It is so great. Emerald has created such a brilliant love montage. Yeah, it was hilarious. We were both dreading it. We’d only known each other for like two days when we shot it, but we had gotten on so well. We were like, “Right, let’s just get this down.” We went into the pharmacy, and they start playing Stars Are Blind. Emerald is like, “You stand here, you stand here, and just go for it.” That was it. That was the setup. They were like, “You can pick up whatever you like. You can touch whatever you like. Just sort of have fun.” I thought it would be like they’d shoot us singing like three lines, and then it would cut. She was like, “Oh no, no, you’re doing the whole song.” Oh wow! For the first two takes, they’re playing the song, and Bo, bless him, is just so hilarious off the bat, picking up [a can of] Spam and popping the chips and sort of being sexy with all these canned food products. I just glared, as Cassie, and [was] like, “Oh my gosh, you’re so embarrassing.” Em would come over after a take, and I’d go, “Em, I just don’t think Cassie would do it. I think she’s just not that girl. I just don’t think she would do it.” Anyway, she let me do that for two takes. After the second take, she was like, “Carey, Cassie is falling in love. When people fall in love, they go crazy and they do things that they wouldn’t do in normal life. People behave like lunatics. You’ve got to just let go.” I was like, “Ugh, fine.” So we did a third take, and from then on, kind of all bets were off. But my favorite thing about that day is we finished up, and there had been that amazing moment where Bo picks up a can of Spam and sort of holds it, in this sort of weird, hilarious way. We thought it was so funny. Then there was this real panic that we wouldn’t be able to get the rights to show Spam.
Right, yeah.
Then there was this whole thing where the producers had to contact Spam, and then there was this amazing announcement where someone was like, “Guess what guys? We got Spam!” And everyone was like, “Yay!” The worst part of it was, there were a couple of takes where they needed the sound of our movement around the room, and so they killed the sound and they just gave us a tiny bud in one ear, to listen to it. Often they do it for sort of dance scenes when they can’t pay for the music. The sound is always really tinny and terrible. So you cannot really hear the song. For a couple of takes, we were singing at the top of our lungs, but no one else could have music, apart from us. It was so excruciating. Yeah, it was very bonding for Bo and I. We’ll never forget it. We’ll always have the pharmacy.
One unique aspect of your performance is that you’re often playing a character that is pretending to be inebriated but really isn’t. I recently spoke with Mads Mikkelsen. He’s in this movie called “Another Round” where he’s playing a character who’s always intoxicated. He said, “The secret to playing drunk is that you’re not trying to be drunk.”
Yeah.
How do you approach that sort of challenge?
Yeah, I think he’s bang on. I mean, it’s interesting because I had to sort of do this in “Wildlife,” a film I did a couple of years ago with Paul Dano, where she really is getting drunk. I was much more concerned about it, then. The great thing about Cassie is that she isn’t actually drunk, and so I didn’t have to worry about doing accurate drunk acting, in my mind. Because I think it is something that can really get in your own way with. I felt really nervous about that scene with Bill Camp in “Wildlife,” because acting drunk, I think you can really do it badly. So, I came into “Promising Young Woman” with the same thing, saying to Emerald, “Oh man, I don’t know if this feels truthful.” She said, after like two takes of shooting the scene in the nightclub, “You don’t need to be accurate. You’re pretending, so just relax.” I was like, “Oh, brilliant.” So whatever I do, I get a free pass.
Without giving too much away, were you surprised by the end of the film?
I was shocked. I wasn’t anticipating that. I think, similar to everyone who sees it, you don’t anticipate that. I mean, it’s spoiler territory, if there’s a way of doing it with a big old spoiler alert on it. I think it’s just what felt truthful to Emerald, and what feels truthful to me. [Redacted] If you’re going to tackle stuff like this, which is pretty serious stuff, you’ve got to be honest about it. That felt like the truth to us. There was no other way of doing it, and it was probably the trickiest stuff to shoot. Emerald was steadfast about that from the beginning like she was about actually everything in the film.
Before I let you go, I got a chance to catch another one of your upcoming films, “The Dig.”
Oh, good.
I hope you’ve seen it.
I haven’t, actually.
First of all, the movie is stunning.
Oh, good.
What made you want to play a real historical character like Edith Pretty?
It was kind of funny because I came to the project quite late. I replaced somebody who had to sort of exit the project because of scheduling things. So, I came in with only about three or four weeks to go before we started shooting. It was kind of an interesting way to jump into something and quite fun. To be honest, my first instinct, on sort of talking to my agent was, “Oh, I really want to make a film with Ralph Fiennes.” I just think he’s one of our greatest living actors. I just wanted to be in a film with him. Then I read the script, and I just was so moved by this story that’s based on true events, about this amazing discovery. If you go to school in England, you know about Sutton Hoo, you know about the Viking burial ship. It’s taught all of us. But I had no idea about Edith, and I had no idea about Basil Brown. There was something really resonant about that period of time. The year before last, I did a documentary and with Channel 4 about my grandfather, who fought in the Second World War and was from a tiny village in Wales and ended up on the other side of the planet. There was something about that period of time, just before the second world war, that I found really fascinating and also really moving. This was a generation of people, most of whom had lived through a war already, and then could see it coming again and sort of didn’t know what was going to happen, what would happen to society. At that moment, this group of people chose to pour all of their efforts into uncovering a historical artifact that taught us about who we used to be. I thought that was just really powerful. It was so interesting, and obviously, it’s the polar opposite of “Promising Young Woman,” which is always fun, to do things that are totally different.
I was going to say, it would be a unique double feature.
Exactly.
“Promising Young Woman” opens December 25
