Carey Mulligan Talks ‘Wildlife,’ Not F*cking Up, Playing A Frightening Character & More [Interview]

Jeanette is a bit of a mystery—a lot of the anxieties and dilemmas that come through unfulfillment, perhaps?
Jeanette had a lot of ideas about her life would go and who she might be. Those aspirations have crumbled away. She feels hollow now, insubstantial and that scares her. She’s trying to reclaim her identity and you could even see it through her costume and makeup. She’s trying to make herself look like how she was when she was 18 or 19 and show she was a beauty.

When she wore that green dress on she was madly in love and going dancing every night and her life just wasn’t like that after she married. And so, she’s going through her wardrobe in a desperate attempt to reclaim the past. Her true identity doesn’t live in those clothes though, she’s someone new now. I think it’s frightening to think that things have changed in your life and you can’t get a portion of it back. She’s trying to be someone of substance instead of someone with an apron on.

The ambiguity and mystery of that final shot: you and Jake just exchange a glance as your son takes a picture of his parents. The answer to what happens next to the family is all inside their heads.
We’ve all been asked too many times what we all think happens after that ending. But we just don’t know in the end. All of us [Paul, Jake, Zoe] we all have different ideas, we’re not on the same page [laughs].

The film takes place just as major social movements are about to change the face of America. This feeling of change on the horizon must also be brooding in Jeanette’s deepest subconscious.
Absolutely, and with every other woman across the country. There is a real sense of injustice in what’s happening to her and that outrages her. It is unjust that he can just go off to fight a wildfire and I think that she feels like she should be allowed to, metaphorically, of course, fight it as well. That is foreshadowing everything that happened in feminism in the years to come. So, yes, she’s ahead of the trend but not by a whole lot.

Lots of parallels to today’s world.
Yes. There was a time when they were going to set this story in 2016 because, obviously, it would have been cheaper to shoot it as a contemporary film but obviously, they thought to keep it in the era it was written it brought some extra dimension.

I know Jeanette is not responsible for the family breakdown, but how do you explain her cringe-worthy actions in the scenes with Warren [the man she has an affair with]. Where she dances provocatively in front of her child?
I think there’s a great deal of logic to what she’s doing. If you put yourself in that moment; it’s 1960, she has no higher education, no real skill set and she can’t really get a job that’s better than being a swim teacher for a couple of hours a week. Her husband has left and may never come back. There’s no mobile phones, no communication beyond landlines. He might die in the fire or he might meet someone and never return. He never calls. So, she’s in total destitute and she feels like she has to do something drastic to ensure her survival.

Warren Miller represents affluence, integrity, stability, and I think she attaches herself to him and that he would be the savior and has to take the whole package, her son included.

She’s presenting her son to him. Of course, she’s drinking because she’s very sad and quite anxious and then the alcohol takes over, a domino effect consequentially happens. There’s a logic she has, but nothing goes the way she thinks it would go. Everything she’s doing makes sense if you’re looking at it through her eyes in that exact moment, as flawed as the behavior is.

The whole thing seems to be a search for identity, but she’s doesn’t bring that out in a good way and I feel like that’s something very human and something that [doesn’t happen in traditional films] which I really loved.

You’ve been in the industry now for more than a decade, how have you seen it change? Especially in the current era of #MeToo.
I think it takes a concrete measure. Recently I was in a play and the director wrote up a code of conduct. You read it and you sign it. If you just sat down a crew one day and you said everyone read the document and had them sign it, and just the mere presence of each other, it would be very hard for a vulnerable person to be taken advantage of on set because it would be witnessed by your fellow crew and your community.

Now HBO is implementing someone on-set during sex scenes to sort of monitor and discuss them. How that has never been in place before—you’re so exposed and their intimidating scenes to shoot. I’ve worked with very sensitive directors luckily who’ve handled it all so well, but that’s not the case for others that have shot sex scenes and not felt safe. These are logical measures that should happen, and they don’t cost anything. The budget is basically printing out hundreds of sheets of paper. The difference is huge in making people feel safer on-set.

“Wildlife” is in theaters now.