Katherine Waterston has quietly developed one of the most diverse resumes of any actress in her generation. She is equally at home in an intimate feature such as the upcoming “The World to Come,” which premiered at Venice, as she is in a blockbuster like “Alien: Covenant” or “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.” And she’s currently co-starring in the acclaimed HBO series “The Third Day,” in which she plays the mysterious Jess, a visitor to the ominous Osea Island. There, Jess meets Sam (Jude Law), another outsider, and the pair grow closer in a place they can’t seem to leave even when they probably should. The project is a unique piece of television in that it’s broken up into three installments—“Summer” and “Winter,” at three episodes apiece, will air on HBO; “Fall” will be a live event that, well, she can tell you about that.
Waterston called us from her home in England to chat about “The Third Day,” “Inherent Vice,” and even if she’d do another “Alien” movie.
What’s it like to go to a major film festival, like Venice, in 2020?
Up until about a week before I went, I was just waiting for it to be canceled. Now that I’ve come and gone from it, I still can’t quite believe it happened. It’s just such a change of pace for this year. Like surreal. It was the first time that I was in a cinema since March. To be sharing that space with people just felt so incredible. Obviously, we were all spaced out and everything, so it reminded me of some off-Broadway theater days, playing to half-empty, tragic matinee audiences. But, of course, the reception was really great. It was intimate. I think the audience was generous and could communicate their enthusiasm a bit more because there were so few of them. They wanted their applause to count, which was quite moving actually. It was a delight. And because it was so pared down too, the whole festival sort of felt like the after-party. There weren’t that many people there. So often you end up in your own little circle of friends and supporters at those events. Sometimes it can be quite difficult to access your colleagues, the people you made the film with. You end up seeing them only when you’re scheduled to be together. This felt a lot more like what it feels like to make a film. You’re all eating dinner together. And it was so wonderful to reconnect with those people.
What attracted you to ‘The Third Day?’ How did you get involved and why were you interested?
Everybody involved. Everybody involved. At the time that I came in, it was Jude and, obviously, Felix [Barrett] and Marc [Munden] and Dennis [Kelly]. And Plan B. And HBO. It felt like a really great community to be a part of. And it was. So that was the first thing. And I was really drawn to the live event. It gave me a sense of what these people were about before I started working with them. That they were punks. They were interested in doing something genuinely brave. No one has done it before, and we don’t know if it’s gonna work. Their attitude is let’s do it anyway. Let’s explore what’s possible. Those are always the most exciting people to work with. That was a big part of it for me.
Let’s jump ahead to that. What exactly is “Autumn” going to be? What can you tell us about it?
The Punchdrunk company are the main players in this live event. It won’t be unfamiliar to “The Third Day” audience because they are the islanders in the show. All of the people in the pub scene—those are the Punchdrunk performers. Side note on that: those will go down in history as the best scenes I’ve ever shot with a group of extras. It’s a group of extraordinary actors and brilliant improvisers who also have this long history with each other. So they walk into a bar where everybody is meant to know each other well, and you can play with anyone in the room and they’ll play along with you. It was just the most fun. So they‘ve been rehearsing for a long time and devising this show and they’re folding Jude and I into it. Quite intentionally late in the game. We’re gonna start rehearsing with them next week. I shouldn’t say we exactly. More Jude than me. We both want to be a little bit the audience to this experience because we can’t have an audience now. The original idea was that we were going to have 2,000 people on the island and it was going to be a Punchdrunk show, this incredible theater project that Jude and I intended to be a part of. But now that we can’t be an audience, Marc Munden is going to film the whole thing, we’re going to be a part of it, and the thing that Punchdrunk does is convince you of the terms and rules of a situation and then pull the rug out from under you. We want that to be possible. We hope to catch that on film. The moments where the rug is pulled out from under one of us.
You play outsiders.
Exactly. Sam more than Jess because Jess has been to the island and has more understanding of what’s going on there. There will certainly be elements in this 12-hour story that will be new to her. So that’s the idea. And it will play out a day: 9:30AM to 9:30PM – a day on this island. It’s gonna be really crazy. We’re gonna have to eat at some point! It’s going to wear us down. It will all be caught and captured.
How are people going to see this?
It’s going to be streaming. And then I think eventually it will also be released, or maybe quite quickly, an episode-length version of the 12-hour event for those who don’t really want to watch 12 hours of something. (Laughs.) They can get the essential narrative bits from the 45-minute version. Dennis is obviously working on this and weaving in essential bits for the show, so it is connected to the other more traditionally filmed sections of the show.
I read in an interview that you talked about feeling a connection to certain places, which Jess feels to Osea for sure. And so does Sam. Connection to settings or places—how do you fake that? We’ve all kind of felt that, but it’s not like a traditional sense memory you can call on. So how do you fake something that indefinable?
That’s such a cool question. It’s a great question. I think that the first task always as an actor is to figure out how to make it feel like you‘re not faking it. If you’re doing an accent, you want to work on it for so long that you’re not thinking about it. And so, yes, obviously, everything we do for a living is faking it, but most actors feel that their job is to make it so we can’t see the strings. I find the best way to try to avoid showing the strings is to have something so in my bones that I’m not thinking about it. Obviously, I don’t mean to say that I put myself in a crazy place where I believe this reality is my reality, but just so that I’m not forcing it, right? And that’s true for that kind of thing of connection someone has to a place or in fact to another person if you’re doing a love story or falling in love and you have to fake this love. It’s better if you can get it into your bones. Good writing really helps with that kind of task because the more that you can get into the character and the things going on with the character that have gotten them to this place in your life when you meet them helps you do the internal work to find and articulate what they need. With Jess and the island, she has a complicated life that she’s running from. Maybe I don’t feel this overwhelming connection to the island but I can certainly relate to needing some refuge, a place that feels safe or a place where you to go to forget about the troubles in your life. You find those things that anchor you in something that is truly known to you and very familiar. Hopefully, if it works, it doesn’t look fake.
What did you learn from this experience? If we can answer that before “Autumn.” What did we learn so far?
I think to fear to our responses to fear. That’s one for me. It’s tragic but natural human reaction to contract when we’re afraid, to shut our doors and close our curtains. We read something really disturbing about climate change and go turn on the TV or call a friend or look to Instagram to forget about the thing that’s so uncomfortable. When actually with an example like climate change, that’s the opposite of what we need to do. We need to see the scary thing and then take action. Open up. In terms of countries, we need to be galvanized and working together instead of shutting our borders. In a macro and a micro sense, this is what we do when we’re afraid, and I think the show shows how dangerous that can be.
I’m sure you’ve seen comparisons to other projects like “The Wicker Man,” and I’m wondering if you watched anything in preparation for this project or if those influences were discussed on set?
I had recently seen “Wild Wild Country.” And I rewatched it when we started the show. We didn’t really talk influences on set because Marc had such a unique vision and marched to the beat of his own drummer. Obviously, we’re not ignorant of the fact there have been shows about cults. We’re aware of it but we don’t talk about it. Not like “We’ve got to make this different or copy something.” Not direct manner. But I was really interested in “Wild Wild Country” because I was interested in how people respond in a group that’s all convinced something is the right way or they’ve all found their home. And the euphoria was really interesting to me. And, also, I suppose how it works on you over time. It usually all starts with some pretty reasonable ideas. (Laughs.) And then over time it gets more extreme. And people don’t necessarily see it happening to them. That was very interesting to me for Jess and this show.
There aren’t many movies talked about more lovingly and consistently in the corner of Twitter known as Film Twitter as “Inherent Vice.” What’s the staying power of the movie? Why are people still talking about it?
That’s amazing. That makes me so happy. I do have a theory. I think that the screenplay and the film honor the book better than I think any other adaptation I’ve ever seen. And the reason why I say that is that people keep talking about and talking about because [Thomas] Pynchon is so goddamn rich. The more you read—we were all reading the book incessantly, every free moment—the things that were right in front of your face, you would miss 3, 10 times reading through it. I’ve always felt since the first time I saw it that it was beautifully faithful, and people are still finding things in it. What do you think?
Would you make another ‘Alien’ movie?
In a heartbeat. I loved working with Ridley and I loved playing that part. I hope we can! I would love it! I hope she’s still alive!
“The Third Day” is currently in the middle of its run on HBO.
