Who are Candy and Betty? Two women who were frustrated; neither was particularly happy. The circumstances of the time meant that they both had to be housewives and stay in marriages that weren’t especially fulfilling. So they acted out in different ways. You’ve said you care deeply about Betty. How so? She’s a woman living this complicated existence, and then it’s cut short. She didn’t get to see her babies grow up. There’s so much of her life that she missed out on. I wanted to treat her with love and respect. What did you learn researching Betty? I talked to people who knew Betty that thought she maybe had undiagnosed postpartum. She loved being a mother, she loved her husband, but she just wasn’t getting the help that she needed. And evidentially neither was Candy, because to act out with that form of aggression is a really, really intense thing to do. What connection did you feel to Betty? This is going to sound a little bit crazy. Before every take I would ask myself, “Is she here?” And I could kind of feel her. When I read the story, I felt very, very protective over her because her life was taken from her in the most horrific way imaginable and she has not had a chance to tell her story. Jessica Biel is Candy to your Betty, but she’s also a producer on this. What was it like working with her? She’s so good. I’ve been a fan of hers for a very long time. But just working with her, she’s one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with without question. She’s just so great. Do you think things would be different today for these two women? I think now women are allowed to say that they’re unhappy. Before it was like, “Well, you’ve got the husband, you’ve got the kids, isn’t that what you wanted? What are you complaining about?” I think there’s more room these days for women to say, “Actually, there’s more that I want.” It seems crazy because it wasn’t that long ago, it was just 1980. I was born in 1977 and my mother felt very frustrated in a lot of ways. She felt like she was given this one path to go on, which was being a wife and a mother. I think she had a lot of unrealized dreams and it’s something I really understand. Don’t Look Up, Yellowjackets, Candy. Are you attracted to roles that have dark sides? The short answer is yes. But I also really like things that are light and fun, they just don’t come to me as often. It’s an exciting thing as an actor to get to play a story where the stakes are very high and you’re going through things that are very dramatic and emotional. Then at the same time, sometimes I’ll be on set and doing all the work before the moment you have to cry or do something violent, and I just feel so tired. I feel like, “Oh, my goodness.” It’s interesting that you say that that you don’t get the light roles, because you were on Two and a Half Men for several years, and that’s a comedy. That almost feels like another life, and it did at the time too, because I was recurring on the show so I could come and go. When I wasn’t on the show, I was doing independent movies or supporting parts in other movies; the people I was working with half the time didn’t know that I was on a sitcom. It was like living two different lives. And still now I get recognized from Two and a Half Men and people say, “Do you ever think about acting?” “Do you ever think about going back to it?” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” My husband said that would happen to his dad [Three’s Company star JohnRitter] sometimes as well. What’s it like on Yellowjackets to play Shauna, who can chop up her boyfriend in a bathroom? It’s hard to play Shauna sometimes because her PTSD and her trauma are so great that she doesn’t allow herself to feel a lot. If I was thinking about chopping up my lover, I would be weeping, I would be losing my mind. She can put things into a different part of her brain so that she can get through it. But it’s not very much like me. It wasn’t a surprise that people enjoyed Yellowjackets. But was it surprising when it became a big runaway hit? Oh, my goodness. First of all, it was such a surprise. It was really wonderful; it was nice to be part of something people were watching. It felt like it grew every week, so it was really exciting for all of us. We were all texting, “This is crazy.” Shauna chopped up her lover. Are you squeamish with blood in real life? I’m not squeamish at all. My dad’s an orthopedic surgeon and he said when I was a child I used to like to play with his skeleton. He had an actual human skeleton in the house, and I would always look at his medical books. It’s not something that ever bothered me. What about survival skills? Do you like to camp, or go the hotel route? I went camping as a child a very, very tiny bit. But no, I’m such a princess. I have to know that the hotel is going to be really, really nice. I read every single review that I can find of the hotel. Yeah, I would not cope. I would be absolutely terrible. I went to a camp when I was a child for a week, and at the end of the camp everyone in the camp had to write a letter to the person they were most impressed with. And I got all the letters because everyone was like, “You cried the whole time, but you got through it.” “You were scared of everything, but you did it.” That’s how useless I am. What can you tease about season two of Yellowjackets? I actually don’t have any information. I asked them to tell me a very vague outline of the entire scope of the story. Just because I wanted to know: Do they know how to end it? Do they know what they want to do in season three vaguely? But plot points and what everyone is doing, I have no information and I’m nervous. In Don’t Look Up, you played Leonardo DiCaprio’s wife. Do you still get nervous when you work with somebody with his credentials? Yes, I was so nervous. The only thing that made me feel like I was going to be OK was the fact that my first day was with CateBlanchett, who I’d done a whole TV show with. Right! Mrs. America. And every single scene I had in Mrs. America pretty much was with Cate. So, I knew that she was an angel. She was a lovely, kind, warm person and she was going to be looking out for me, which she totally did. So, I felt OK about that. If it wasn’t that scene, I was so nervous. And I had to throw pill bottles at Leo. I was like, “I don’t want to be responsible for hurting Leonardo DiCaprio.” He was like, “Throw them as hard as you can.” I was very nervous, but he really put me at ease very quickly. He’s a very, very down-to-earth person. It ended up being a lot of fun, but the first day I was terrified. Your career began on a high note in 1994 working with Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures. Did you learn something from her that has guided your career? Oh, everything. They gave me a day to learn how to work in front of the camera because I had never done anything before, and Kate was such a professional. It was her first movie, but she’d been working in TV for so many years and really knew what she was doing. It just taught me so much about how to just actually do it. But also, because there was so much emotion in that movie, they were very careful with us about letting it go at the end of the day, doing little rituals to not take it home with us. And that’s been something that’s been really helpful. It’s nice now that I’m a mom and I have my own daughter, to always have been able to let it go, to not come home and still be sitting in misery or anger. To just be able to come home and be her mom. How does it feel at this point in your career to be getting these substantial and challenging roles? It’s absolutely amazing. First of all, it gives me hope for the state of the industry that things are changing, and people are more interested in seeing stories about women who aren’t 25 years old, which I think is important. And also, for me, I thought that if I was going to have a “moment,” it would have happened a lot earlier. I’ve been so grateful to be working for so long and making a living. I’ve been like, “OK, this is great.” But to be getting opportunities that are greater than I ever imagined and winning awards at this stage when it hasn’t happened before, people say it feels like a dream come true, but this really, really does. You have a two-career marriage. Is that hard to juggle? Is it more difficult that both you and Jason are actors? I don’t know, because my first husband [JimmiSimpson] was also an actor. I haven’t ever been in a partnership where one person has been in one place, and we’ve had to work around that. So it’s always been a challenge, but my husband has been so incredible about supporting this moment for me, he’s so excited. He’s more excited than anybody that I have these opportunities, and more than anything we want the family to be together, so he’s just been coming with me. I go with him when he’s working. We try to not work at the same time. He’s just so supportive. You’ve had some negative comments recently on social media. How have you learned to deal with that? I remember when Heavenly Creatures came out and Miramax asked, “Do you want to read any reviews?” And I said, “I want to read all the reviews.” And they said, “Oh, well what if they’re not all good, or what if somebody says something mean?” I’m a sensitive person but I’ve always had kind of a thick skin. There have been a few things I’ve seen recently that have hurt my feelings, but also people can say whatever they want. I’m very happy and the positive comments so far outweigh the negative ones. What’s on your to-do list now? In my life, I would love to have another baby [she has a 3-year-old daughter with husband Ritter], but I don’t know how possible that is at this stage, I’m a bit older. In my career, I would love to do a rom-com; that’s my next dream. It just seems so fun to do something so silly and light and just have fun all day. Next, Mrs. America’s Cate Blanchett on Playing the Woman Known as the ‘Sweetheart of the Silent Majority’
