I know you’ve there is a ton of rehearsal and there’s improvisation, but how does Mike let a scene play out? So let’s take an example. The scene in her sister’s kitchen with everyone there, and Pansy sort of has this laughing, then crying breakdown.
Yeah.
Is it a one-take, do a wide shot and try and capture it all, and then try to do it again? How does Mike approach that for actors, especially something so intense?
Right. Well, what we would’ve done is we would’ve probably done an improvisation, which would be about an hour or so long with everybody arriving, everybody arriving in character in costume, just to get a sense of what happens. We are discovering what happens while we’re doing that improvisation. And then he would sort of say, “O.K, we’re going to start at this point of the improvisation, so let’s start from there.” And we’d start again. And then he’d start locking things down. He’d be saying to the girls, “Well, what did you say at that point?” And they’d say it, and he’d say, “Well, say that. But then you come in there, and you respond, and then you speak.” And so he starts to sort of orchestrate all of the dialogue that takes place. We rehearse that till it’s solid unlocked, and then the crew would come in, we’d do it again so that they see exactly what happens and what takes place. They’d decide where the camera was going to be, and then we’d just shoot it. And I think I did it about eight times because we did all the coverage. And then he moved on myself, and Michelle Austin. I mean, he’s done this a few times. He knew what he wanted. He knew what he wanted, what he needed. And so that’s how it was.
Did you have the next day off? I would’ve been emotionally exhausted for at least 48 hours after that. That’s so much emotion to convey.
It was a lot. I mean, I was exhausted but exhilarated at the same time. Because you are doing the work, you know? And you so very rarely get to do the work. So, it was great. And we had this, it was one of the hottest days in London, and we had two apartments. There was an apartment we were filming in, and the other one was kind of like a green room. Well, we would be roaring with laughter in between the setups. And I think that was our relief, our way of just letting go of all of the heavy stuff that was going on.
Did you guys shoot in the summer of 2023 with that insane heat?
Yes!Oh my God, yes.
And you can’t have the AC on because…
There is no AC! We were having popsicles, and I had frozen bottles of water, and Pansy had decided to wear about four layers, which she would refuse to take off. And they kept saying, do you want to take it off? And I was like, “No, I have to put it back on.” That’s the problem. Having to put it back on.
When the cast is doing these months of improvisations before you shoot, are you in a rented studio space or are you going to locations from the beginning?
Well, what happens is for the first three months or so, we are in that sort of space, but it’s made up. It’s got beds, it’s got kitchen area, it’s got all that sort of stuff in it.
Like a stage play.
So, you can kind of fashion like rooms, screen stuff off, et cetera, et cetera. But for the last two weeks, and that period of time, we have been improvising and talking into existence the conditions of this family, the visits or not, we move into the locations so we really get a sense of Pansy’s house, what’s in the cupboards, the closets. And we do a bit of work in there, just sort of living in it. And then the last set of rehearsals is when we actually discover scene by scene, what’s going to be filmed.
One of the things I love about the film is the ending because in many ways it’s a Rorschach test where the audience decides what sort of happens next. And I’m curious, now that you’ve seen it six times, do people ask you about it? Have you gotten different reactions to it?
Oh, totally. I mean, this is one of the great things about what’s been happening with the film, the arguments that have taken place between couples that have come to see it. People are emphatically like, “Oh no, she’s going to go downstairs and it’s going to go back to normal, and they’re just going to be the same.” And other people are like, “No, there’s a shift. There’s a shift. She can’t help herself, much less help him, and she realizes that she needs help.” So, I love hearing all the versions of what happens.
You’ve been down this award season road before. How are you approaching it when people say you deserve to be nominated for best actress? Do you sort of filter it out or do you get excited?
It’s a bit of both. Do you know what I mean? Some of it I kind of filter out and go, “O.K.” But it’s lovely. It’s so nice for the acknowledgment for myself and the film because it’s like the fact that this man still can make films like this, and it’s becoming increasingly more difficult, is just amazing. And I just hope that other actors get to experience working in this way and looking at the result and going, “We should be doing more stuff like this.” We should be having rehearsals factored into all productions. We saved so much time. We went home early every day. We didn’t go over budget. We didn’t go over shooting. I mean, it is such an effective way to work because everybody knows what they’re doing. You’re not trying to find your character or motivation on set. You’ve already figured all that shit out. So all you have to do is get there and shoot it.
“Hard Truths” will have an exclusive qualifying run beginning on Dec. 6. It will return to theaters nationwide on Jan 10.
