Did you do any research? Or did you feel like it was just sort of in the script and you didn’t need to?
There’s the opportunity where you can shadow a police officer, but that didn’t make much sense since that’s not the world she came from. But there’s a lot of gun training and weapons training. The thing that, as an actor, that takes me out of a movie is if someone looks like they’re doing a job and they don’t actually know what they’re doing. I didn’t want people to walk away and be like, “What great gun work that Elizabeth Olsen had.” I wanted them to just not think about how I walked or shot a gun or moved. Now when I see movies when people are supposed to be gunslingers and their eyes are blinking while they’re shooting I’m just like, “You’re not a gunslinger. I know better.” There’s three months of gun training, then physical training with self defense and martial arts, because that’s the kind of training that people go through so they can feel tough in their body and so you can understand how if someone aggressively comes at you you know how to handle that on the street. I worked with a guy in LA who was a law enforcement officer for 17 years. Then when we were in Utah I worked with a former Green Beret who did my live weapons training, cause I was training just with Airsoft in LA. You can’t really do weapons training in LA properly cause you’re only allowed to point and shoot, you can’t reload. There’s one range called Angeles where you can go and have open air shooting, but other than that you can’t really do what I do in the movie. I was able to do that in Utah and just being around someone who was a Green Beret, and was on multiple tours, and someone who has been a law enforcement officer during the LA riots and has transported federal weapons and been a security guard for the weapons. You just hear all these people, and how they talk, their demeanors, how they think of the government, how they think of politics. That, somehow, just from the physical training informed character aspects of how to walk, how to talk, how to approach people, how to talk to people. Maybe like a mindset of what’s right and wrong is a little different than Democrat or Republican or whatever …
What did you think when you saw the final cut?
I do have a hard time watching myself, but I’m able to watch myself in a screening room situation cause it’s more of constructive criticism, as opposed to the overwhelming everyone’s judging you at the same time you’re judging yourself [in a theater]. The stuff with Jeremy, I really loved it. I became really attached to the scenes with him and his son. I think I understood the tone that they were going to be going for, I think the thing that surprised me the most about the film for the [scenes] I wasn’t a part of was the storyline with Kelsey Chow and Jon Bernthal [as a couple with a significant age difference who get caught in the middle of some drunken security guards]. I thought it was so lighthearted, and so sweet, and so genuine, and so rooted. I think if you don’t show that then the audience can assume that it was some weird fling, and you can kind of create this image of a stereotype or a cliché. Then when you see it you’re like, “Oh, wow, that seems like it really works.” I’m getting chills just thinking, literally, about it, cause I just think they did such a beautiful job building that moment in the movie and so that was a thing when I saw, I was just totally ripped apart from.
You’re not expecting that moment at that time. You’re not expecting the movie to even go there.
Yeah, the changing of the perspective is a bold move.
I want to ask you about “Ingrid Goes West” cause it is literally one of my favorite movies of the year. I did a podcast with Aubrey Plaza and I was telling her because of the movie every time I’m on Instagram I feel like I’m on it too long and that it’s a bad thing.
I joined Instagram because of the movie.
She was telling me that she’ll get stuck on it for 2 hours…
Dark holes.
Exactly. Now that you’re on it, do you feel like you experience that too where you’re just like going around and around like it’s a YouTube binge?
Well, I think I did that more when we were making the movie, cause it was like a new toy. I had never downloaded the app on my phone. I might have put [a handle] into Google for my friends, their names, their user names, their accounts, just so I could like know what their pictures were from their wedding so they didn’t have to email them to me or that I could see pictures of a vacation, but other than that I didn’t understand the going from one world to the next. Because then you have an interest in, “How are actors doing this? How do they navigate it?” Everyone has their thing, their personality. Their number one cause or whatever. That movie was so fun. I had never done that much improv. Aubrey and I kind of got good things or it was also Matt [Spicer] throwing out new ideas. He loved the idea of keeping it fresh and changing things and he’d always want to do more takes. Not because he didn’t have it but just because he wanted to see what else could come out of it. I’ve never had that experience before. It was so fun and ridiculous. You just try and make the other person laugh the whole time.
I can’t remember do you live in New York or LA now?
Here, I used to live in New York. I also grew up here.
I feel like I met your character Taylor 50 times, I know who that person is. She’s very much this type of LA very Westside/Venice character. Did you feel that when your read the script?
Yeah. I was like, “Oh, I get this. I want to do this.” But the funny thing is now I have more compassion for people like Taylor. Before I would probably do what I don’t like doing, which is go to some sort of judgment in the back of your brain, of memories. “That person’s fake, and only wants to have people think A, B, and C of them, that they’re important.” Or whatever. Now, I look at them, you just think, people just want to be seen and noticed and feel important and feel like they belong somewhere and I get it. And you still have that judgment somewhere, but that’s like the thing that you try and interrupt that judgment with.
My last question: I know you have to go back and do more “Avengers” filming and a press tour next spring but do you know what you’re doing after that, do you have anything set?
There are things that I am developing that are in motion but aren’t ready to be chatted about. But I am obsessed with them.
Are you producing?
I am producing. One is…we’ll see if it happens, but we have a contract for a pilot for an animation. It will be a dark comedy, female driven animation for adults. Adult animation but for women, cause there aren’t any yet.
Awesome. Yeah, there isn’t really.
No, and there are a lot of women who watch those shows. Then the other one is more like drama that just found a different home. They’re things that our big focus is on for 2018.
What’s the name of your company? Is it announced?
No, I don’t have one, I need to think of one.
Good luck.
“Wind River” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles. “Ingrid Goes West” opens in limited release on Friday.