Kathryn Hahn is on something of a roll. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Maybe it isn’t. But considering her impressive resume so far (“Transparent,” “Captain Fantastic,” “Private Lives”) it’s probably not that big a surprise either. The Chicago native is currently filming a spin-off of her Emmy-nominated turn in “WandaVision,” the highly anticipated “Agatha: Coven of Chaos,” and was an integral part of one of Netflix’s biggest movies of the past year, Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out” mystery. This week, she returns with an already-celebrated performance in the Hulu limited series “Tiny Beautiful Things,” an unexpected adaption of Cheryl Strayed‘s bestseller that’s more than worth your attention.
Strayed’s follow-up to her immensely successful literary debut, “Wild,” “Tiny Beautiful Things” was a collection of essays compiled from “Dear Sugar,” an online advice column she wrote anonymously before the former novel became a hit. Showrunner Liz Tigelaar (“Little Fires Everywhere”) and her writing staff adapted it into a narrative centered on Clare (Hahn), a woman in her late 40s struggling with a marriage on the rocks, a teenage daughter who wants nothing to do with her, and a job at a living facility that is miles away from her original profession, writing. When a friend suggests she take over his online advice column, her creative juices begin to percolate, and memories of her younger self (Sarah Pidgeon) and her difficult relationship with her own mother (Merritt Wever), rise to the surface.
What differentiates “Tiny Beautiful” from other limited series of this “genre” is how the filmmakers integrate both Hahn and Pidgeon’s version of the character into the same contemporary scenes as the narrative unfolds. It was just one of the topics we discussed on Hahn’s day off from “Agatha” late last month. Oh, and don’t you worry, she chimes in on that too.
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The Playlist: The most obvious question, the project comes this way. What made you say yes?
The pilot. The beautiful character at the center of it. The idea that age doesn’t mean that a woman can’t find her voice and her purpose and that one is constantly evolving. I just loved all of it. I loved how painfully funny it was, and then I read this source material and that turned me on even more. And I love the fact that we’re in constant conversation with our younger selves.
So, I have not read the book.
You have to.
But from what I’ve read about the book, it doesn’t sound like it has the same narrative as this project. Am I wrong in that respect?
No, you are absolutely right. The book is completely different. “Tiny Beautiful Things” is a composition of an advice column that Cheryl had anonymously written under the name Dear Sugar for a literary website called The Rumpus. And she didn’t come out as Cheryl Strayed as writing it until after “Wild” was wildly successful. But the reason it hit a nerve with so many people and was so successful anonymously is that the responses were so radically honest and empathic because it wasn’t advice. It was more of a circular conversation that she had with these very deep questions, painfully honest questions. And her answers were so radically honest and drew from her own experience and life. You have to read, it Gregory.
I will take your advice and read it. I’m a bad reader. I barely read anything.
Gregory, you could pick it up and read one letter and a response and it would take you 10 minutes. Please.
I will do that! So, you read the pilot, you read the book. Do you get on the phone with Liz to get the rundown of Clare’s arc? Did you need to know that before you fully committed?
I didn’t know exactly where the story was going. I read the pilot, I didn’t read the next few episodes until right before my deal had closed. And so I didn’t know exactly, exactly, exactly, but I knew the rough outline of it. And so it mostly was based on gut and on Liz’s writing in the pilot and then on meeting Cheryl. And I was just so turned on and moved by Cheryl and by that pilot, it was a real turn-on.
So for people who were fans of Cheryl’s, should they assume that this is an exploration of Cheryl’s life more than what was in the book?
Cheryl’s life was so beautifully already portrayed and excavated and beautifully put on celluloid in “Wild,” starring the incredible Reese Witherspoon and also Laura Dern as her mother. And so it was very important to Cheryl that this not be another version of her life. So it is definitely inspired, there are moments of it that of course echo what is in “Tiny Beautiful Things,” which is her life. But who I am playing is not a fictionalized version of Cheryl Strayed. This Clare Pierce, who I am playing, and the amazing Sarah Pigeon is playing as the younger version of Clare, was birthed in an amazing writer’s room led by Liz Tigelaar during the pandemic with Cheryl there as a guide and support, but did not prescribe anything. She was there to guide and support and be there with just honestly to learn about the writing room process, she keeps saying.
She was like, “I’ve just never done this before. I’m so excited to be there.” And then everybody would turn to her and just ask her for advice about their own things. She was so excited to be there and then added some things because people were so excited but she was never there to be like, “This has to be my life again.” That had already happened with “Wild.”
When you finally were shooting it or had read through the whole eight episodes, without giving major spoilers, was there anything that pleasantly surprised you?
The scenes with my family. Quintin Plair, who plays my husband, and Tanzyen Crawford who plays my daughter. We didn’t have a s**t ton of time to establish chemistry and it just fell into place in such a natural way. Those kinds of things are just a delight when chemistry just happens like that. So naturally, that was a real gift and a real delight. Our chemistry was just fabulous. And so every time we got to play together either individually or together as a family was fabulous.
As the show progresses, there are more and more scenes where both your version and the younger version of Claire played by Sarah are in the same space and having the same conversations.
Yeah.
And this is not a 1000% groundbreaking device, it’s been done before in different iterations.
Yes.
But I don’t remember it being this impactful in quite a while. And I’m wondering if you can just describe how you guys worked through the process of it. Did you both do all of the lines in a scene? Was it clearly differentiated that you would say this and she would say that?
Well, it was a very interesting and complicated and difficult process if I’m going to be really honest because there were really highly emotional scenes and we had to be at a pretty high level. And the shit we were exploring was pretty deep. And it was probably later in the season, and Sarah and I had not really spent that much time together. She’s so extraordinary, my God. And when you think about it, the young version of Clare doesn’t know the older version of Clare. She had never met her before. You know what I mean? In reality, she had no idea who I was. She doesn’t know who she’s going to be. She has no idea who this person is. And my memories of my younger version are foggy and through a certain lens.
And so what we did was we shot my version first and then I went home and then she shot her version so that we didn’t have to feel like we were doing any sort of act off so that we were able to have our own space. You know what I mean? That I could have my space and then I left so that Sarah could have her space. And so it was kind of a beautiful handoff. It was important for me that Sarah had her own space and that I had my own space so we didn’t have to swap out line by line.
That’s really interesting because most viewers will think “Oh, clearly they worked together or she was on set watching you because it flows so well.” Were you surprised how it turned out?
It flows so easily, I know. Well, in the first episode or two, there was not a lot of young Clare.
Right.
And Sarah was there behind the monitor watching me. And so she was able to absorb a lot of me there. And then it was able to filter through the rest of the series. So by the time we got to the end, I think it was in her bones. And it’s important to me too. It doesn’t have to be mimicry, she doesn’t have to imitate. “Don’t put the pressure on yourself to mimic me at all because 20 years have gone by.” I’ve also never been that graceful. And I’m never that tall, memory is memory.
Yes.
It is what it is. So I just wanted to make sure the pressure was nowhere near it for her to have to mimic anything. Our hair color is different. I’ve dyed my hair a thousand times. Everything is different. So I think hopefully people’s sense of humor change. 20 years is a long time I feel. And especially she had just lost, we, I should say, had just lost our mother.
Right.
Her pain is just really on the surface raw. I have had years of being able to cover it up with defenses and comedy and defense and all that armor. I’ve had so many years of armor, of experience of being able to protect myself. She’s just a raw nerve. And it was almost like the less we spent together after our little rehearsal period, the better. Because she shouldn’t have known who she became.
Absolutely.
So, it worked out great. And if we had been in the same space going through those last scenes together, like a swap out, then there would’ve been more mimicry. And then all of that was in the edit with our directors, with Desiree Akhavan, who directed that finale, and with Liz Tigelaar. I think that’s why it worked so seamlessly is because there was really no need to be mimicking. It was like she had her own space and she was in her completely, the world that she was in, which was fresh grief. And I was in the world that I was in, which was armored, hardened, and older, I was in the crisis of 20 years later, my marriage falling apart. Who am I?
I have time for one last question. I know you’ve been in Atlanta shooting “Agatha: Coven of Chaos.” You’re probably on an NDA, with “don’t say a word, don’t tell them anything” orders.
I’ll tell you everything, Gregory.
I guess my question is, I feel like a lot of fans have a presumption of what they think the series is going to be.
Sure.
And I guess my question is: should they think that? Or is it potentially going in a different direction than they might not expect?
I think all bets are off. I think all bets are off and all bets are on the table. How’s that for an answer?
That’s a good answer.
O.K. good.
I think that will make everyone at Marvel very happy.
I hope it makes you happy too.
The entire season of “Tiny Beautiful Things” drops on Friday, April 7.
