Jessica Chastain: "Some actors use menthol to cry. I don't use anything because interpreting is taking off the armor»
Chatting with Jessica Chastain is well worth a PCR. There were times when talking to this unstoppable and clear-headed redhead didn't require much of a preamble. But those were other times. Times when it was possible to go to the set of The Eyes of Tammy Faye and sit down to chat quietly for this interview with the two-time Oscar nominee. Then came a pandemic, although not even that stopped this Californian, mother of two children from her marriage to fashion promoter and Italian count Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo. As she explains, for all the festivals she goes to, from Toronto to Rome passing through San Sebastián and, now, in the middle of the Oscar campaign, hers is non-stop. Just before Los ojos de Tammy Faye, which will hit Spanish cinemas on February 25, he shot 355, “an action film, all women”, which premieres on January 5, and kept it in London working with Penélope Cruz , Lupita Nyong'o and Diane Kruger. When he finished shooting, at night, Chastain was preparing the character of Tammy Faye by Skype, based on the true story of a popular American televangelist from the seventies and eighties who died in 2007. “And right after Tammy, I went to the Moroccan desert to shoot The Forgiven with Ralph Fiennes”, he lists as a wheelbarrow. But not only has he made movies lately, there is also Scenes from a Marriage, an HBO limited series to which he threw himself headlong to work again with his old partner from the Juilliard School (and whom many take for his love), Oscar Isaac . With all the qualms about playing a role that Liv Ullmann immortalized on film, she was convinced of it because it was a modernized version, with gender roles reversed. As she assures her, “that is the most interesting thing about this industry, that it gives you the opportunity to explore different facets of humanity”.
Jessica Chastain in the role of Tammy Faye. Photo: EVERETT COLLECTION
What was the facet of Tammy Faye that hooked you to make this film?
I got the rights a year after making Maids and Ladies [which premiered in 2011] and I loved the idea of showing my crazy side again. I saw The Eyes of Tammy Faye documentary on TV while I was promoting Darkest Night and couldn't believe no one had played such a good role. It was a great opportunity to show the woman behind the myth, someone who was among the 10 most famous in the world, but who only knew how to laugh. A woman punished for her husband's mistakes.
How would you explain her figure to someone who doesn't know her?
Those who knew Tammy agree that she was a genuine woman, that she reached out, that she believed in the sermons she preached and was convinced that everyone deserves to be loved without being judged. But the film goes beyond her figure and says a lot about the United States, about the birth of reality television, about the prosperity doctrine that dominated this country, the idea that the more money you make, the more God will love you. That it is God who is giving you these riches.
Does she consider herself a spiritual person?
During this film both Andrew Garfield and I attended mass and made friends with many parishioners. Another movie that taught me a lot about religion and spirituality was The Tree of Life. Tammy Faye's Eyes is perhaps less spiritual, but she taught me to be less cynical.
And when it comes to reality shows, do you have anything to confess?
Of course sometimes I watch reality shows. The Real Housewives of New York. Or better yet, the ones in New Jersey. It's not that I see everything, but I like his eccentricities and I can manage to incorporate them into the characters, like in The Most Violent Year.
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What was her transformation process like to become Tammy Faye?
Lasted. Hours and hours and hours of makeup. Especially the scenes from the nineties, I spent up to six hours in the makeup chair. I put on compression stockings to prevent blood clots from forming from sitting for so long! I took the opportunity to put on my playlist a continuous cycle with her sermons, her songs and her interviews. That helped me sound like her. It always happens to me. As soon as I spend a lot of time with my husband, I sound like an Italian. Unlike in Scenes from a Marriage, where I worked the character from the inside out, Tammy Faye is bigger than herself in every way. She is not only the voice, like Betty Boop. She is the accent, the tone, the mannerisms.
And the tears on camera?
Some people use menthol, but I don't use anything. I try to put myself in the situation in which my character finds himself. To interpret is to take off the armor. In daily life we lock ourselves in our armor so as not to cry, so as not to spend the day screaming. We put our impulses away so we don't do things we're ashamed of. Acting is just the opposite. It's getting out of that armor and letting the feelings come out.
And as a producer? What are the weapons you use now that you are also dedicated to production and creating your own projects?
When I acquired the rights to make this film, I had already produced The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, in 2013, and had also worked on a short film. It was hard. But I have good friends who helped me. They also supported me when as a producer I made the decision that I did not want to shoot in states where women are denied their rights in maternity issues, where they want to impose laws on her bodies.
Her militancy and defense of women is ahead of her work. However, many have their doubts about the figure of this televangelist.
I know that for many it is a fraud, a laughing matter. But not for me Tammy was the most popular of the televangelists of her time and she studied to be part of the Church, but since she was a woman and married to Jim Bakker [also a televangelist and convicted of fraud] they never took her seriously. She recorded 24 albums, wrote numerous books, and never received anything in return. It all went to the church. That's why I defend it. She would never call herself a feminist. She was born into an era where a woman's job was to support her husband. But her words, especially in the midst of an epidemic like AIDS, her desire to reach the whole world to make it known that all beings deserve to be loved, seems to me to be a great message that I share in this film. I am more militant than her, but Tammy always defended fairness and justice within society.
Jessica Chastain, at the San Sebastian Festival, last September. Photo: GETTY
Tags: Actresses|Jessica Chastain|Movies
