The daughter of actor Sam Waterston, Katherine Waterston has accumulated a prestigious filmography over the past decade in her own right, working with industry heavyweights such as Martin Scorsese (“Boardwalk Empire“), Paul Thomas Anderson (“Inherent Vice“), Danny Boyle (“Steve Jobs“), Ridley Scott (“Alien: Covenant“), and Steven Soderbergh (“Logan Lucky“). Waterston’s latest film, “State Like Sleep” (our review), pairs her with relative newcomer Meredith Danluck, who made her narrative feature debut in 2013 with “North of South, West of East.” “State Like Sleep” reunites Waterston with her “The Current War” costar Michael Shannon.
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In this muted noir, Waterston plays Katherine, who embarks upon a surreal quest of self-discovery as she investigates her actor husband’s double life after his suicide. Featuring absorbing characters, opulent settings, and contemplative themes of grieving loss, infidelity, identity crisis, and the dark, dangerous, and shady sides of celebrity, “State Like Sleep” is a promising continuation of Danluck’s filmmaking career and another showcase for its stars Waterston and Shannon.
Following “State Like Sleep‘s” theatrical release on January 4, I had an opportunity to speak with Waterston about her new film, working with a familiar face in Shannon, her willingness to return as Daniels in the “Alien” franchise, her excitement to begin principal photography on ‘Fantastic Beasts 3‘ this summer, her experience acting for Jonah Hill in “Mid90s,” and more.
What stood out to you about “State Like Sleep” that made you want to be a part of it?
It’s a total mystery what happens when you first read a script. Why is it that one grabs you and another doesn’t? I suppose it’s not that different from the music we love or the films that we love when we go to the cinema. One singer sounds like they’re full of shit, and you don’t believe their pain or their emotion [laughter]. And another cuts you to the quick. I was sent this script by a friend who’s not in the business, so I clicked on it thinking it probably wasn’t going to be that interesting. I went in highly suspicious. I had never heard of Meredith and I didn’t know anything about the project. And then suddenly, I was on the last page. It totally gripped me. That gets your attention when you’re reading lots of scripts. Something that reads differently from the things you normally see.
I didn’t get all the answers about the character right away. Meredith seemed to be very interested in the inner life of the character, not just the events that drive the plot forward. And all of that is quite unusual. I suppose there was something about the way that [this character] had shut off such an essential part of her being in order to carry on functioning [that] I felt I understood, in some way, and I was eager to explore.
As you mentioned, Danluck is interested in the inner life of her characters. In your opinion, what do you think Katherine is primarily motivated by?
You really only see, briefly at the beginning, a little glimpse into her life before she’s forced to return and face what happened. But in that brief scene, you see someone who is functioning. She’s maintaining a career. And I thought that that was a very interesting bit to reveal before we go into the real meat of the story because, for me, it was a key into how she was managing and coping with the death of her husband. As we get to know her better and as the story unfolds, you see that she is sort of stalling her own life to maintain a connection with Stefan [Huisman]. If his life can’t move forward, she won’t allow hers to either. It’s survivor’s guilt.
I remember thinking a lot as we were shooting it that recovering is a kind of betrayal. [Katherine] is someone who has gone to great lengths to stall that recovery or deny herself that process. And as a result, she’s been left in a sort of lobotomized, coma-like state. I think that the title comes from a description of being in a coma. I was very interested in what happens to someone when, however miserable they may be, however lost they may be, they’re forced to confront the grief process that they had no intention of going anywhere near. In that sense, it is a kind of heightened exploration of what people go through when they lose someone dear to them. It’s just amplified by the circumstances because she’s shot it down for so long and then she’s forced to face it, relive it, explore it, [and] attempt to process the various stages of grief out of the blue and all at once.
This is the second time you’ve worked with Michael Shannon. Does having somebody familiar on set make the giant task of making a film seem a little bit less daunting?
Yeah. I’ve known Mike for 10 years before we did that film. We did another film [“The Current War”] that hasn’t come out yet after this one. But we’ve done some workshop of a play before. I’ve only had positive experiences working with people I know. It’s essential to feel comfortable with who you’re working with, whether it’s someone new or not. When it’s someone new, you sort of scramble to develop a kind of trust or intimacy. Sometimes you only have a few days to do it, and it is an advantage when you have years under your belt with someone.
The best directors create a very familial and secure environment. I don’t know how they do it, but the best ones I’ve worked with seem to all have an innate ability to create that kind of safe environment. And Meredith does that as well. So, even though I barely knew her when I got to set, I felt, after 24 hours there working, that I had known her for a very long time. She’s just very easy to access and engage with. There are just certain gifts like that that I don’t think you can be taught in school that are very important for a director to possess. It’s interesting, I knew Mike for a long time and her for a very short time, but I felt like we were all quite close in this project and in the process.