One of the disappointing aspects of a pandemic-affected awards season is the lack of in-person events. Clearly, it’s absolutely necessary, but let us selfishly reflect on the joy we’ve all missed out on this particular season for just one fleeting moment. Because if “Pieces of a Woman” star and Best Actress contender Vanessa Kirby was on the Oscar circuit she’d be winning over audiences from London to LA and everywhere in between.
Directed by “White God’s” Kornél Mundruczó from a script by his wife, Kata Wéber, “Pieces” centers on Martha (Kirby), a Bostonian who is anxiously anticipating giving birth to her first child with her husband, Sean (Shia LaBeouf), via home birth. When tragedy strikes, she finds herself at odds with her mother (Ellen Burstyn), who insists on pushing for a legal recourse Martha isn’t emotionally ready to handle. Martha’s grief is captured in a jaw-dropping performance from Kirby that already saw her win Best Actress at the 2020 Venice Film Festival.
READ MORE: The 25 Best Films Of 2020
With “Pieces” debuting on Netflix this week, the always charming Brit jumped on the phone to discuss everything from her shock at winning Venice, a “Euphoria” connection to the project, her relief at shooting the birth scene in one massively long take, her quick chemistry with Burstyn and more.
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The Playlist: Well, first of all, happy new year.
Vanessa Kirby: I know. Happy new year. Here we are. 2021. What does it hold for us?
Hopefully, it’s gotten off to a good start for you, although I don’t know if you’re in the UK or in the US, so hopefully, you’re not back under lockdown.
No, I am. I’m in London, so I’m locked down.
Ah, bummer.
Locked down like everyone else.
Well, the good news is “Pieces of a Woman” is coming out on Netflix globally, so people are finally going to be able to see it. Are you looking forward to that?
Yeah, I am. Oh God, I feel a whole mixture of things, really. I feel so grateful that it’s coming out on something where lots of people can see it, especially at this time. Having worked with Netflix before, they have always felt like family, so it’s so nice to be back there with a film and with my first lead and stuff. I’m immensely grateful to them. I’m nervous, too. Yeah, I’m a bit nervous.
What was your reaction to winning Best Actress at Venice?
That was one of the most surreal moments of my whole life because you go into that festival not knowing how on Earth a film will be received. It was so special anyway because it happened as a physical version. That was already a miracle. We were sitting on the plane on the way there just literally in disbelief. And then every moment of it, I felt just so present. Just to be there, to be sat in a cinema, watching films with a group of people, was already magical. Honestly, for me, though, I’ll never forget the moment of standing up there and Cate [Blanchett] giving me the Volpi Cup, and all I could think about was all the women that had stood there before me that have been my heroes. I don’t know. It was a moment that I’ll never forget. I couldn’t believe it because it is such an unexpected thing because a week [before] no one had seen the film, even. I remember Peter Morgan saying to me afterward, he rang me up, and he was like, “Nothing feels as innocent as Venice does,” because you’ll always remember that [award will] be the most innocent.
There’s no campaigning.
Exactly. Yeah, no campaigning. Nothing. It’s just the films, and everyone there loves the movies. So it was one of the most special moments of my whole life.
How did this film coming your way?
I was in LA, doing press for something, and I had a meeting with Sam Levinson. He was in the middle of the edit of “Euphoria” and he was in the edit room. I came in and he sort of broke away from his edit to sit with me for a couple of hours. We ended up talking about everything, and we got on so well and I really loved him. I said, “Gena Rowlands is my hero and I’ve been looking for something like ‘A Woman Under the Influence’ for something really demanding. I feel so ready to do my first lead, but I’ve been waiting for the right thing and I haven’t found anything.” Then I left the meeting, and then an hour later I happened to meet the BRON Studios guys. I met Ashley Levinson, and suddenly, when I sat down with her, I was like, “Of course, you’re Sam’s wife.” Obviously, she’s just as amazing as he is, and I said the same thing to her and Aaron Gilbert as well. I said, “I’m looking for…” Apparently, Ashley and Sam had been texting, saying, “What about ‘Pieces of a Woman’ for her?” Then, that evening, they sent me the script, I read it in an hour, I knew that I had to do it, and I got on a plane, flew straight back home to London and then to Budapest, just so I could sit in front of Kornél and tell him how much I loved it. I just wanted to sit with him in person, I felt like it was really important, and say that I understand why he and his wife, Kata, have written the film, and why it needs to be told, and how much it hit me. So it was kind of quite a serendipitous thing, really. The same happened with “The Crown.” Sometimes when things are really meant for you, they just sort of land and it becomes just so clear that it’s something that you have to do.
I haven’t spoken to Kornél and Kata yet. Is the film based on something that happened in their personal lives?
Yes, it is. It’s a very personal film for them. It’s not the exact same circumstances, but they did lose a baby and she started writing from [the experience]. She just felt like she needed to write about it, and then he encouraged her. I’m sure they’ll tell you about it. This is obviously one character’s experience and journey through the worst time in her life and when your reality is totally shattered, how do you fit yourself back together? But to me, I just felt, listening to Kata and then all the women I spoke to that have been through what Martha’s been through, or any stage of losing a baby, I just was so aware of how much silence there is around it and how hard it is to speak about it, even when someone like Chrissy Teigen speaks about it. There’s an unbelievable array of different reactions, some people being really, I don’t even know what the word is, just negative about that. I think we should be able to speak about our pain and share it and feel less alone, so I hope this movie adds just even a little bit, a tiny bit, to that conversation.
About 10 minutes or 15 minutes into the film there is this 22-minute-long one-take shot of the most intense portion of the film. I believe I read that you said that that was not how it was written. It was meant to just be shot traditionally. Is that correct?
I can’t remember how it came to be, in a way. It was written, as like 30 pages, but then we ended up improvising a lot of the lines. We kind of knew where we were going to be. We were like, “O.K. We’ll start in the kitchen, go to the sofa, at some point get in the bath, and in the bedroom,” but we didn’t quite know what would be the exact dialogue that would get us there. So I think we did six takes and every time the dialogue was really, really different. But Kornél, I think, wanted to [shoot it that way]. I know that they’d done a play in Poland where it was just the birth and that big dinner scene. So, I think Kornél always had a feeling and a vision that he would like to. I was so excited by it because just the thought of being able to do it all in one go and not be interrupted…I managed to watch a woman give birth for real, which just changed everything for me, and I thought how the animal in her body took over. So the idea of just doing one take was really exhilarating, and I was actually quite relieved at the thought of it.
Really? So, while other actors might have been freaked out by it, you were like, “Yes, let’s do this. This is the best way to go.”
I was so happy, Greg, because I just thought, “God, I won’t have to pretend so much. I won’t have to go off for lunch, everyone on break, the crew fiddling around with lights, and then go straight into being supposedly six hours into an extremely painful birth.” My biggest thing was I can’t be phony. None of this can ring false for a second because then any woman that’s ever done it or any man that’s ever watched it would just know straight away and the whole film would fall apart. So, I was actually really relieved.
Was there time for rehearsal, or did you guys just block it out and hope for the best?
We had a day. We had a day of rehearsal and we managed to fly this incredible birth consultant, we actually call her our samurai. Her name’s Elan McAllister, and I’d been speaking to her for a long, long time. She’s the head of lots of midwifery councils and home-birth foundations and stuff. I’d been speaking to her for a long time, and I was like, “Actually, we’re going to need her here because we should be guided by her.” So she came over and we had a day where we just worked [it] out. I’d spent a long time in a labor ward and watched someone give birth, and spent a lot of time with midwives, so in my mind I felt, at that point, ready to be able to even begin to try and pretend to birth; this thing that I’d never done personally myself. But other than that, like Kornél will tell you, it was almost like a bit of, I don’t know, like a dance, really. We just knew where we had to be, and all the lines and stuff are mostly totally improvised.
Your scenes with Ellen Burstyn are just so real and raw. Was there time for rehearsal there, or was that just a connection between the two of you on set?
No, we had no rehearsal of that at all. In fact, we didn’t even know what that second half of the scene might look like. It had been shifting quite a lot, and we were trying to work out what the moment should truly be. I found it really challenging to play someone who internalized everything. I’m a really expressive person, so I found playing Margaret in “The Crown” much easier because she kind of shows everything, but Martha’s someone that tries to let no one in at all because she’s almost in so much pain she actually can’t. I think she’s so scared about even beginning to express her feelings because they feel just so immense. But I thought, “God, we all know what it’s like.” The people closest to you are often the people that can allow you to let it out or provoke you to somehow, and I just knew that Martha’s shame and her sense of failure at this moment should come out. I didn’t know how it would, and I did not expect to scream at Ellen Burstyn the way that I did, but luckily she just was an amazing scene partner and she just really went for it back. It was quite an amazing, sort of electric moment, really, that I think neither of us expected. It was a special morning.
Because I know people will want to know, are you still shooting “Mission Impossible 7” or are you done? What is that situation?
That situation is we’ve gone on a break for Christmas and we’re starting back up, I think, in 10 days. They’ve been going ages. They were Norway and Italy, and I’ve just been here for the London bit so far. My sister, in fact, is an AD and she was on “Jurassic World.” They were the very first ones up. It’s quite a miracle, really, that we’re able to film, and I think everyone starting back up, like my sister did, gave us a lot of hope for our industry.
“Pieces of a Woman” debuts on Netflix worldwide on Jan. 7.