Reese Witherspoon covers the new issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK. I’m including the newsstand cover and the subscriber’s cover, which is the Reese-in-blue one. I think the subscriber’s is much better, but overall, this is a lovely shoot. The interview is pretty good too, mostly because it’s a very intensive piece about how Reese made Wild, with lots of quotes from producers and friends, etc. My takeaway after reading it: Reese is going to get an Oscar nomination just for effort, basically. I mean, maybe people will be blown away by her performance, but I think the way Reese talks about the role is also very important. Now, she’s still going to lose to Julianne Moore, of course. You can read the full Bazaar piece here.
Again, she’s not an America’s Sweetheart: “Don’t put me in that box. Or any box, for that matter. People are complex, on-screen and off. Can’t we do justice to that?”
She wasn’t sure if she was right to play Cheryl in ‘Wild’: “To be honest, if this was an open-casting project, I don’t know if anyone would have cast me. I could be wrong. It’s nothing like any movie I’ve ever done – it was a way of challenging myself.’ Did she always see herself in the role? ‘Well,’ she says, thinking. ‘I definitely could. I just wanted to make sure [Cheryl] understood, no matter how the movie was going to get to the screen, it wasn’t about me having to be in it. If I’m not the right person to play the part, I need to know that. Ego is the death of all creativity.’
We have to save ourselves: ‘This idea that we are our own saviours, our own heroes, that’s hard, but also incredibly uplifting. I think I realised, probably in my twenties, that there’s no going home, do you know what I’m saying? Well, maybe when I was 18. I was like, “My parents can’t pay for me to have a life or go to college.” Whatever I was going to do in my life, I had to do it myself. Then when I had a little girl at 22, I was even more determined to, I don’t know… I went from just surviving to, “Who do I want to be for this other person?”’ That’s what happens when you have a child… ‘You kind of look inward.’
She swears she was still able to work, just not on projects she wanted: ‘It wasn’t as if there was a lack of roles being offered to me. It was the dynamic aspect of playing a really interesting, complicated person that was not readily available. Honestly, I don’t know a woman who isn’t complicated. It’s strange that you don’t see many complicated women on film; complicated meaning complex, I should say.’
Filming the drug scenes: ‘I’ve never done drugs, so I was really confused. I didn’t know what I was doing. It just required being in a really raw emotional place that didn’t feel good.’
Filming the sex scenes: ‘That’s, like, three per cent of the movie, but it took up a tremendous amount of fear in my mind because it’s daunting.’ How did she cope? ‘I never looked ahead at the schedule. I would wake up in the morning and say, “What are we doing today?” And I’d prepare on the way to work. Sometimes I was just terrified. Like a cat on a raft… “You can’t make me do it.”’
If she ever considered backing out: ‘I think about backing out of everything. I get to the beginning and I’m like, “I do not want to make this movie.” I’ve never had an experience where I was like, “I can’t wait to start.” I don’t know why. It’s always going to require something that doesn’t feel good, some sort of challenge or emotional gutting. It’s not a fun space to live in a lot of the time. It’s why I enjoy doing comedies. It’s much easier, thinking of what rhymes with truck.’
I don’t believe her when she says she didn’t prepare until the day of for her sex scenes. I just don’t believe her. Whenever an actor is doing any kind of nudity, there are lots of preparations and discussions and negotiations. She can’t just pop in and take off her bra, you know?
And I’ll admit it, I read the full interview and I choked up at one point when Reese started talking about her mother, and what she (Reese) learned about mother-daughter relationships from doing Wild and all of that. I’m not saying Reese is pouring out the profundities or anything, but she still moved me. Damn it, Reese! I’m starting to be okay with her Oscar campaign. She really feels passionately about this role.
Photos courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar UK.
Thanks to Cele Bitchy
