Before the cameras rolled on Kenneth Lonergan’s eagerly awaited Manchester by the Sea Michelle Williams spent time in the small town where the film is set, soaking up the atmosphere and meeting local women who live there.
Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea
It was, she says, a vital part of the process; a way of building her character, Randi, a working class mother who is in a happy relationship with Lee (Casey Affleck) before tragedy shatters their marriage.
“I stalked them,” she laughs. “If I had been a man, I would have been arrested, because I hung outside of schools, and I watched moms walk their kids in, and I observed their details – how many piercings they had in their ears, if they wore silver or gold, how high their boots were, what their hair looked like, how many kids they had, what their kids looked like, what they sounded like, what their accents were.”
“I went to coffee shops, I went shopping for my clothes in local stores. I met a waiter at a restaurant and asked if I could tape his voice, and he was like, ‘why?’”
“So I told him about the movie and he said, ‘oh, I have a friend who sounds a lot like your character. She lives in Gloucester, she’s got four kids… come over in the morning and we’ll have coffee and you can meet her. You can listen to her and tape her voice.’”
“So I went over to their house in the morning and I met her kids and I listened to her voice. I really stalked them!”
It clearly paid off. Michelle, along with Affleck and the rest of a stellar cast, received glowing reviews for their utterly convincing performances when Manchester by the Sea premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and, later, played at the Toronto Film Festival.
Clearly thorough preparation is key to playing any role for Michelle, but in this case, portraying a woman who lives in a tight knit, small community only a few hours drive from her home in New York, provided an opportunity to immerse herself in that world.
“With this I had a very specific opportunity to be in the place. It’s a modern story, so I could. I was trying to pin down a very specific location and style and dialect and so I had the advantage,” she explains.
“I wish I could time travel and have eavesdropped and asked questions of other people that I have played, or seen the environments they had been in. So with this I had the opportunity – the great opportunity, because it was like four hours away from New York, so I could just daytrip up there and glean whatever I could.”
Written and directed by Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea is a deeply moving story of loss and the consequences of a tragic mistake, which destroys a once happy family.
The film opens with Lee working as a janitor in Boston, some one hundred miles away from the community where he grew up. When Lee’s older brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies from a heart condition, Lee is forced to return to his home town where he learns that he has been appointed sole guardian of his 16 year old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges).
As the story unfolds, the audience will discover the reason why Lee left and see his once close relationship with his brother and his former wife Randi (Ms Williams) told in flashbacks.
“The marriage didn’t end because she didn’t love him. I think when I read it and when I thought about it, and hopefully when I played it, those earlier scenes – they’re two people who have a dynamic, active, sexy, combative, alive marriage.”
“They have a very real thing, which is kind of in your face. They’ve got the three kids, she’s sick, he wants to get on top of her, neither of them are repressed – she’s not shut down in any way – they’re both fully expressive.”
“Sometimes I think that’s the ultimate sign of love, is when two people are fully expressed as individuals in a relationship, and accepting of each other’s quirks. I think that hopefully, that is what it feels like here.”
“So their marriage ends because they can’t live with each other after what he has done, after what has happened, and not because they don’t love each other. What do you do when you still love somebody you can no longer be with?”
Michelle had just finished playing nightclub singer Sally Bowles in the Broadway production of Cabaret when she signed up for Manchester by the Sea.
“I had just done Cabaret for ten months and this seemed like a kind of curative to it. It was going to be with Kenny, so I knew that I was going to be safe and that I had somebody I could trust, the material was gorgeous, and what I really learned doing a play is that when you have great writing, your job becomes a joy.”
“No matter how difficult it is, there is access to joy at every moment if you can find it, because you’re not trying to figure out, ‘how am I going to make this thing work?’”
“Often, you get to work and you look at a scene and you think, ‘ugh, well, I’m going to cut that and I’m going to put that in my own voice, and that’s a ridiculous thing to say, so instead I’m going to try it like this…’”
“You’re kind of trying to figure out how you can make this thing work, how you can fix it. When you’re working with beautiful writing, like this, you’re just trying to rise up to its level, and so the challenge is completely within, which is exciting.”
Michelle was born in Montana and began her acting career as a teenager. She starred as Jen Linley in the hugely popular TV series, Dawson’s Creek. She has been nominated for an Academy Award three times: Brokeback Mountain (20060, Blue Valentine (2010) and My Week With Marilyn (2011). Her other films include Perfume, The United States of Leland, Land of Plenty, The Hottest State, I’m Not There, Synecdoche, New York, Shutter Island, Oz The Great and Powerful and Certain Women, which just won Best Film out of the 2016 London Film Festival.
Q&A
Q: We see your character in two different time frames, and she has changed radically in the time lapsed in between. Is it difficult shooting something like that out of sequence?
A: At a certain point you just really get used to it. All movies are out of order, and you only get the pleasure of continuity with a play. You get pretty adept at dropping in and out – even within a day. I’ve done movies before where you’re playing different ages inside of one day, so that just comes with the territory. But the before and the after, I’ve always loved that phrase and I’ve always loved that idea, of that moment where your life changes and you don’t think that’s going to be the last time that you are the way that you were. You never know when that moment is going to come, but I’ve always been kind of transfixed by the idea of it, the idea that something happens and then you are no longer the same, but that you never know when that’s going to be.
Q: Were you daunted by a film this dark?
A: I had just done Cabaret for ten months and this seemed like a kind of curative to it. It was going to be with Kenny [Lonergan], so I knew that I was going to be safe and that I had somebody I could trust, the material was gorgeous, and what I really learned doing a play is that when you have great writing, your job becomes a joy. No matter how difficult it is, there is access to joy at every moment if you can find it, because you’re not trying to figure out, ‘how am I going to make this thing work?’ Often, you get to work and you look at a scene and you think, ‘ugh, well, I’m going to cut that and I’m going to put that in my own voice, and that’s a ridiculous thing to say, so instead I’m going to try it like this…’ You’re kind of trying to figure out how you can make this thing work, how you can fix it. When you’re working with beautiful writing, like this, you’re just trying to rise up to its level, and so the challenge is completely within, which is exciting.
Q: You filmed during winter, which kind of reflects the mood, does it change how you act?
A: Sometimes I swear I think that acting is just pretending to be warm when you’re cold and cold when you’re hot. You’re just like, ‘did I get through that scene without my teeth chattering? Great!’ So much of it is about the elements and either not letting them get the best of you, or remembering that they exist.
Q: Do you think men and women deal with traumatic experiences in an intrinsically different way?
A: I hate to typify it, because there’s a lot of people. Probably men and women have different ways of dealing with lots of different things, but I hate to make blanket statements about men and women, because I barely understand women, and I don’t really want to get into men. (Laughs). I don’t know! You tell me!
Q: It seems like they have very different ways of coping in this film.
A: But everybody is dealing in their different ways. You have Lucas’s mom, who’s dealing with it. She’s repressed and shut down.
Q: How did you interpret the collapse of Randi’s marriage? What was to blame?
A: The marriage didn’t end because she didn’t love him. I think when I read it and when I thought about it, and hopefully when I played it, those earlier scenes – they’re two people who have a dynamic, active, sexy, combative, alive marriage. They have a very real thing, which is kind of in your face. They’ve got the three kids, she’s sick, he wants to get on top of her, neither of them are repressed – she’s not shut down in any way – they’re both fully expressive. Sometimes I think that’s the ultimate sign of love, is when two people are fully expressed as individuals in a relationship, and accepting of each other’s quirks. I think that hopefully, that is what it feels like here. So their marriage ends because they can’t live with each other after what he has done, after what has happened, and not because they don’t love each other. What do you do when you still love somebody you can no longer be with?
Q: Did you spend time with women in Manchester?
A: I did. I stalked them. (Laughs). If I had been a man, I would have been arrested, because I hung outside of schools, and I watched moms walk their kids in, and I observed their details – how many piercings they had in their ears, if they worse silver or gold, how high their boots were, what their hair looked like, how many kids they had, what their kids looked like, what they sounded like, what their accents were. I went to coffee shops; I went shopping for my clothes in local stores. I met a waiter at a restaurant and asked if I could tape his voice, and he was like, ‘why?’ So I told him about the movie and he said, ‘oh, I have a friend who sounds a lot like your character. She lives in Gloucester, she’s got four kids… come over in the morning and we’ll have coffee and you can meet her. You can listen to her and tape her voice.’ So I went over to their house in the morning and I met her kids and I listened to her voice. I really stalked them!
Q: Do you normally do that?
A: I mean, with this I had a very specific opportunity to be in the place. It’s a modern story, so I could. I was trying to pin down a very specific location and style and dialect and so I had the advantage. I wish I could time travel and have eavesdropped and asked questions of other people that I have played, or seen the environments they had been in. So with this I had the opportunity – the great opportunity, because it was like four hours away from New York, so I could just daytrip up there and glean whatever I could.
Q: Do you enjoy that research?
A: I love it. I absolutely love it, because I feel like those details, those internal and external details, are really helpful to me. They really give me something to hang onto and they make me feel like somebody who’s not me.
Q: Is preparing for a role a purely intellectual process? Or is it something more?
A: I feel like I try and carry it through everywhere. It’s not just in my head. I try and move it through my fingers and my toes. I want to believe it too, so that I can do it. I don’t want to feel like a fake, I want to be thoroughly inside and outside of the thing.
Q: Does that mean you have to take it home with you?
A: No, not really. Casey [Affleck] and I talked about this a little bit. I would never do anything to threaten my sanity because it’s just not worth it.
Q: You haven’t taken a recurring role in TV since Dawson’s Creek. Now that we’ve entered a golden age for television, would you consider returning to it?
A: Something that’s really important to me is that I’ve managed to find a way to work from home for the past four and a half years, and if TV were ever to become a part of a way to work at home, that would be fine by me.
Q: How was Broadway for you?
A: I’m hooked. I’m done for. I guess it’s about as healthy an addiction as you can have, but I’ve got it bad. There’s nothing I don’t love about it, or love and hate at the same time. It’s the specific kind of learning, I suppose. It’s really addictive to feel yourself change, and at this point, at 36 years old, a form feels sort of solid, so to work hard enough that you break your form just a little bit, and you find more expansion and freedom, I just want more and more and more of that. I want more freedom, and that’s really what theatre provides, because it’s uninterrupted. There’s really no satisfaction at the end of a day when you’re making a movie. You don’t really know exactly what you did, and you know that whatever you did is either going to be made better or worse by the lighting and the sound cues and how they edit it, but whatever I do at the end of a day in a play, for better or for worse, is my responsibility. It’s on my shoulders, and I like the adulthood that that implies.
Q: Have you ever been ill while doing a play?
A: Bronchitis, vertigo, a slipped disk, and a bad review! (Laughs). I’ll tell you what, there is no greater accomplishment, in your personal life and in your professional life, than forging on in spite of things, and proving to yourself you can do that.
Q: Do you read your reviews?
A: Unfortunately you’re made highly aware of them. I hardly even know how to use the Internet, thank God. I don’t even know what a f****** hashtag is. I don’t understand what the hashtag is before everything. ‘Hashtag this, hashtag that.’ Don’t explain it to me, because I don’t want to know, but I really live in some sort of weird Stone Age.
Q: After Cabaret would you consider doing more musicals?
A: The movie I’m going to do this fall is a musical. I actually feel like a certain type of training began for me when I was doing Marilyn. A lot of times when you’re doing film you’re stuck in this close-up box, and when I made Marilyn I had to contend with the fact that I had a whole body that was very different from hers, and that body had to be broken down and remade in her form. That opened up this physical aspect to the work that I have since found fascinating. I have so much to learn, and I’ve discovered these incredible teachers along the way, and again, I’m hooked on learning. I am. So this physical aspect to the work then carried over to Cabaret, because you are at all times performing in space and an audience is witness to your entire body, and it’s not really like that in film so much. I feel like I spent a lot of time figuring out a certain kind of skill, and it was fun to jump forms and pick out another skill. I’ve kept learning it through Marilyn, Cabaret, Blackbird, and then onto this next musical, and I find a lot of joy in it.
Q: Does theatre influence your work in film, too?
A: Curiously, I felt like a big difference inside of myself when I went to make this movie. You work a little bit too hard and then what was once hard now seems easy. It’s like when a runner trains with weights on, and it slows them down and they feel sort of heavy and laboured and then they take the weights off and they fly. I had an experience akin to that in coming from Cabaret and making this movie. Suddenly, making a movie felt a lot easier, because I’d just done ten months on Broadway.
Q: Who do you play in The Greatest Showman on Earth?
A: I play Hugh Jackman’s wife, P.T. Barnum’s wife. They were childhood sweethearts, and she’s the wife of a dreamer, so she is somebody who then also has to be a little bit of a dreamer herself.
Manchester by the Sea is out tomorrow (13th January 2017).
Tagged in Michelle Williams