“Do you know what aspic is?
“Anne Hathawayasks, her eyes going saucer-cup wide.
“They put everything in there strawberries, meat.
Anne Hathaway, director James Gray, and Jeremy Strong at the Cannes Film Festival in May.LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images
Salad-flavored jello with romaine lettuce.
(Also, the Trumps.
But more on that later.)
Focus Features
But playing your director’s own parents must bring a very specific kind of pressure.
So it was a push and pull, harmonious and wonderful and loving.
So that was the challenge, in a way to get enough of that.
James also just recently lost his father.
Did you get a chance to meet the man behind your Irving Graff before he passed away?
ANNEHATHAWAY:Not in a linear way, like “This happened, and then this happened.”
And James was crucial in guiding me through all of that.
I’m just aware, having been… How do I say this?
I’ve been doing this for a long time.
There’s going to be a lot of things that could be taken for granted.
So a lot of my questions to James were about the atmosphere of his home.
What was the oxygen?
I know that sounds maybe a little poetic, but I think it matters.
What was playing on the television?
What sort of music did your mother dance to?
How many outfits did she have?
The disrespect of the dumplings!
Your character, Esther, works so hard in that early scene to make dinner for her family.
HATHAWAY:Can you imagine?
And then you’re free to’t even eat the food she put on the table?
And the person who is her easy relationship, her home, is her father.
So that brings it back to the concept of a nervous breakdown.
STRONG:And the concept ofArmageddon Time.
Or maybe just the fact that the film exists in such an analog, organic world?
It’s pretty much the opposite of green screen.
HATHAWAY:We had brilliant production designer, a brilliant art department.
A brilliant costume designer.
[But] I think what you also don’t want to feel is that you’re cosplaying.
For me, it was very important to say, “What was her wardrobe budget?”
And James was like, “What wardrobe budget?”
I’m like, “Exactly!”
[Laughs]That matters to me.
It all felt very familiar, and that was transportive.
It’s quite laborious and sometimes torturous to get there to where you’re free to begin.
But having that all there was so incredibly transportive and additive.
Having that photograph album there, it was really incredible.
It wasn’t a prop.
And this was very much that environment [feeding] into what we were doing.
I think for me, that’s what you aspire to.
STRONG:Yeah, where you don’t see the stitching.
HATHAWAY:Not at all.
STRONG:There were mothballs!
HATHAWAY:Oh, my God.
There was a dank odor at times.
And I sort of visited that world, myself, working on this.
My grandfather was a plumber and he lived in Flushing.
And he’s such a magnificent soul, such an illuminated being.
I didn’t pull up my chair and ask every question that I had, and I regret that.
So I knew I didn’t want to do that this time.
And he’s a great pal now, which is just amazing.
Is there a group text?
HATHAWAY:[smiling] Kind of.
I think otherwise yeah, it would be hard because of how much I revere him.
So it allows through a trick of the mind in a way, to relate with intimacy and immediacy.
And we found something from Emma
HATHAWAY:Yeah,Emma Lazarus.
STRONG:Emma Lazarus.
I lift my lamp beside the open door and you kept reciting that poem.
And then Tony started singing"Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.
“And it was just like a moment where time stood still for me.
Obviously I’ll never forget it.
HATHAWAY:It’s funny.
And Lazarus and that poem, I had just been studying it, minutes before that scene.
That’s so crazy.”
And then of course Tony stepped in and just…
STRONG:…and just started singing.
HATHAWAY:Suddenly we were levitating.
STRONG:AndRomaandThe FabelmansandBardo…
But for the most part, they’re not making films likeArmageddon Timeanymore.
Sort of like the middle class.
HATHAWAY:Yes, absolutely.
STRONG:Or it’s migrated to television, in a way.
HATHAWAY:Streamers will still take a risk on a mid-range budget.
For me, it’s not about the making of them.
It’s about the culture that receives them.
And I’m an eternal optimist.
But I do think that there are people out there who are still cinephiles in America.
I made this movie calledColossal
Which isso good!I still tell people to watch that.
HATHAWAY:Thank you very much.
People come up to me and maybe they found it five years after it came out.
We have to keep making these movies because people have more time to find them on streaming.
It’s a shame not to get to watch them on the big screen.
It’s a shame not to have a collective conversation about them.
But people still find movies.
It still happens and you could still be in conversation about them, just on a smaller level.
I’m not worried about that.
I had such a great time at the movie theater when I saw that.
And obviously the success ofTop Gun:Maverick.
I went with my family, and we had such an incredible time.
HATHAWAY:That’s true.
And you’re like, “But have weinvested?
Have we ever invested in people in a unilateral way?”
Anyway, that’s my soapbox, I’m off it.
[Laughs]
That seems where stars like Brad Pitt have stepped in.
And I thinkArmageddon Timeis really a film about complicity.
How do you mean?
Like,“When good people do nothing…,“that sort of thing?
STRONG:Yeah, that’s that really what this film is about.
And yet it doesn’t give any easy [answers].
No one is exonerated, I think, by the film.
STRONG:Well, it’s in the script, so we were aware.
HATHAWAY:I needed to walk away from Esther because of the nervousness.
She’s a very undernourished woman in terms of, she does not have tactile love in her life.
She’s not supported.
And that feeling of grief and loss…
I’ve lost a number of people in the last few years and I’ve had to rebuild myself.
But I loved being in this family so much.
We went through a sheet of Entenmann’s cake.
And then Jeremy was calling out for the Chinese food.
They’re like, “Shit, we got rid of the Chinese food earlier.”
So I walk on to camera with a bowl of pickles.
And Jeremy’s like, “What’s that?”
I go, “You don’t need any Chinese food.
Eat the pickles.”
And then Jeremy just starts housing pickles.
James is losing his mind behind the monitor.
And then eventually, 20 minutes into the improv, he yells “Cut.”
He’s like, “We can’t do this anymore.”
I’m like, “Oh, wait.
We have to shoot another angle on the pickles so it matches.”
And James goes, “Forget the pickles!
“[Laughs]
STRONG:Those pickles werehispickles, and we had them go buy them.
HATHAWAY:Of course!
I didn’t know that, but somehow I knew that.
STRONG:I can’t remember what the name of the pickles were.Ba-Tampte, I think.
They were the right pickles, is what you’re saying?
HATHAWAY:They were the real-deal pickles.
