CANNES – It was a long night for Chloë Sevigny and the cast of Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die.“ A late night premiere led to a late night afterparty and an official press conference that was perhaps a bit too early for everyone involved. Despite her claims of barely making it through the last 24 hours, you would have never known how tired Sevigny was. A fashion and indie film icon, Sevigny looks like she’s ready to sit down and take in a runway show at Paris Fashion Week.
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“I feel like he sent me a letter. Like snail mail. Yes, he penned me a letter,” Sevigny recalls of being offered the role. “It was a charming note. I saved it. I save everything. And then he asked what address to send the script to. He sent the script and I read it and then that was it.”
She continues, “I mean, I was very flattered. I know Jim, we’re friendly in New York and I’ve worked with him twice before, but he could’ve offered that part to anyone. And I’m sure any younger-ish actress would’ve been thrilled at the chance. So yeah, I was really touched. I might have even cried.”
“The Dead Don’t Die” finds a small non-descript American town dealing with a zombie infestation that is quickly out of control. Sevigny plays Mindy, a local police offer who works alongside Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and another officer, Ronnie (Adam Driver) in a station that mostly deals with drunk drivers and dust-ups at the local diner. The rest of the cast is rounded out by Tilda Swinton as a mysterious mortician with a samurai sword, Steve Buscemi as a MAGA-loving farmer, Caleb Landry Jones as a timid gas station clerk and Danny Glover as local resident who is gonna fight to the death – literally – against this horror show. The film includes a number of obvious political messages in this era of Trump, but Jarmusch insists it was not intentional (“No, he always denies this,” Sevigny sighs). From a narrative perspective, however, Mindy actually turns out to be a conduit for the audience’s reaction to what’s going on to everyone else. While Cliff and Ronnie seem laissez-faire about the entire situation Mindy increasingly becomes more and more freaked out. Considering that was baked into the script, it’s hard to believe she was initially afraid she’d disappear into the background.
“I mean, between Bill and Adam whose characters I felt like were so realized because they were so in their voice. And not to mention their stature. And I’m not short, I’m 5’8, but they’re humongous,” Sevigny says. “I was so paranoid actually when we were shooting that I was going to like disappear. That nobody was going to care. I’ve never paid the woman in distress, how do I feel about that? I know that Tilda has the part of the badass woman, she has all the strength and that’s great, but like how do I feel about that? So there was a lot of inner struggle going on around the shooting. And then watching the movie I’m like, ‘Oh, Wow. Like Mindy, you really feel for her. It’s really nice. You pulled it together well.’ Or I did. Or the two of us.”
Sevigny says Jarmusch is very precise during production and gravitates towards casting actors he likes as people. It doesn’t hurt if they naturally acclimate to his trademark low key rhythms, either.
“The most fun part about working with Jim is just, just being around him, hearing him talk,” Sevigny says. “He has so many interests outside of film and he’s very esoteric. So, just like any little tidbits that he drops, just dropping knowledge and telling you about new things. I don’t know, he’s just an amazing man to be around.”
An Oscar nominee for “Boys Don’t Cry” and Golden Globe winner for “Big Love,” Sevigny was also in Cannes for the third short film she’s directed, “White Echo,” which was one of eleven shorts in competition. He first short, “Kitty,” played at Cannes in Critics Week and her second, “Carmen,” premiered at Venice. She describes the film as, “It’s about a woman and her relationship to her power and how she convinces other people that she has it or herself and when she’s confronted with it, what she does with it.”
Upcoming films on Sevigny’s acting slate include “The True Adventures of Wolfboy” and Melina Matsoukas’s highly anticipated “Queen & Slim,” but make no mistake, she’s absolutely got the directing bug.
“I love making shorts. I don’t want to make TV. I feel like once you get in there you can’t get out,” Sevigny says. “I don’t want to do commercials, but so many people trying to convince me to get in that game and I was like, I have my fashion side hustle, and that’s enough, I don’t need another side hustle. Like, I want to act in movies and I want to make movies.”
“The Dead Don’t Die” opens in limited release on June 14.