We Talked with Jessica Chastain About CRIMSON PEAK and More in NY

A few days ago I had the pleasure of being part of an intimate press conference in New York with the cast and the filmmaker behind the new Universal Pictures film CRIMSON PEAK.

Read below what Jessica Chastain had to say about this Gothic romance and her character Lady Lucille Sharpe, including some details that may be considered spoilers.

CRIMSON PEAK opens in theaters nationwide this Friday, Oct. 16.

Desde Hollywood: Which scene did you enjoy working the most in “Crimson Peak”, and would you consider coming back and playing villainous roles?

Jessica Chastain: Not playing the piano, that was a very stressful thing. I probably enjoyed the scenes where Lucille was in her nightgown because there’s something from that moment where she loses the constrictive clothing, like the straight jacket, where she’s free to be who she is and even though emotionally they’re very difficult, there is some easiness in being able to just let your feelings out. I would come back as a villain, but when I was on the set for this I said to Tom that I don’t understand…everyone tells me that playing the villain is the most fun. I said, “I’m not having fun, what is going on?” Tom said: “It’s fun to play the villain when they’re having fun doing what they’re doing”; and Lucille doesn’t really have a good day. Maybe if I was playing a character that had gotten enjoyment from the suffering from other people, I would go back. But I think at least for a little bit; I’ll try to look at some more positive characters to play.

Question: How much fun was it for you to act in Crimson Peak?

Chastain: It wasn’t fun. It was fun for Tom, Guillermo, everyone, but I really underestimated the toll that this character was going to take on me. I wanted to play Lucille, I was really excited to play her and I’ll be excited when I see the film. When I finished, I was suppose to go off and do another film but I left that film. I had to take time off, I was depleted from having to learn the piano, learning Chopin. There was nothing easy; there was never a day when I thought it was going to be a fun day at the studio; every day was intense.

Question: Is Lucille the most evil character you had portrayed and is there anything redeeming about her?

Chastain: It’s hard to say that about a character you play because your job is to defend your character; she’s definitely the darkest character I have portrayed. The reason why I wanted to play her is because I wanted to understand why she does the things she does. It actually broke my heart because I found that every act she commits in this movie is to try to give and to receive love; I think the true monsters are the parents of Thomas and Lucille Sharpe. When Lucille was a child she saw her mom get beaten by her father and she became a nursemaid to the mother; taking care of the mother was an act of love and that was associated with suffering. With Thomas, when he would do something wrong, Lucille would take the punishment and she’d get caned which is why she has scars all over herself. Her way of showing love to her brother is to be beaten; Lucille has always connected love to some kind of pain or suffering and she can’t quite move through that.

Question: What was it like shooting those violent scenes, like the film finale?

Chastain: Those scenes were really tough to film. Guillermo had written the characters as a ten-page biography; it started from the moment the character was born to when the movie started, it was really helpful. He included everything in there, including graveyard poetry or tight restrictive clothing, and from those little things I could understand the reason why that would work for her. Then I created this backstory for her that went along with what Guillermo wrote. Also, I took inspiration by reading graveyard poetry and I read a psychology book. I don’t want to tell you the title because it is a spoiler, and I’d rather you guys don’t write it; about women being similar to Lucille who did the same things she does to try to understand why women get to that place. And then there were three movies that felt very inspiring, so I watched “Misery” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”. “Misery’s Kathy Bates wanted to be desperately loved and take care of someone and of course with “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”, what happened between the two women was very complex.

Question: What are the Ghost stories you are familiar with that scared and stuck with you?

Chastain: Is “The Exorcist” a ghost story?” I saw it when I was really young, it really terrified me. I saw it way before I should’ve seen it and I remember being a little kid, downstairs with my mom and she didn’t realize how scared I was getting and then at one point I said: can we turn it off? Then she goes: “well no, we are watching it but you can go upstairs if you’d like”; I am like no that’s how that little girl got possessed. I remembered crawling into the couch in a fetal position, with the blanket over me. That one and “Jaws” Then my mom realized maybe I can’t handle these movies. I loved those movies, and they were the ones that took hold.

Question: After working in the “Tree of life” and “Zero Dark Thirty”, did you enjoy working on a movie that is toned and a fairy tale, or do you enjoy playing realistic roles?

Chastain: I try to take every character and make it as realistic as possible. Looking at these films and the genre of it you see incredible female performances. In those three films I mentioned, Nicole Kidman and “The Others”, Sissy Spacek in “Carrie”, Naomi Watts in “The Ring” and you see that for some reason they’re phenomenal female characters in the genre. I think because the situations are heightened, they go through a huge emotional journey. What I try to do is to create a human being from nothing, just words on a page and make her as real as possible, which is why I think it was so difficult for me to have lived in her skin and then put myself in those larger-than-life situations.

Question: How did you bond with your co-stars Mia, Tom and Charlie offset? Are there any specific anecdotes you can share?

Chastain: What’s incredible is that we were all friends before we arrived to the set. Mia worked with me in “Lawless”. I had known Tom, Mia worked with him in “Only Lovers Left Alive”; we didn’t know Charlie and his character is really a bit of an outsider from the three of us. We showed up on set with each other, to be honest it was really exhausting and difficult what we were doing. I’m someone who doesn’t have birthday parties, usually I’m working but on this one I was calling and skyping with my friends. I was just sad from playing this woman. My favorite memory is that birthday, where 12 people all over he United States flew to Toronto for the weekend; it was amazing and it was really special and they completely brought some shine with them. Tom went out with us and we all went to eat dinner and had dance parties, had karaoke and ping pong, it was probably the favorite birthday I have ever had.

Question: You also have “The Martian” coming this fall, how did you transition from one character to the other?

Chastain: It’s crazy because I will never do this again by choice. I filmed “Crimson Peak” at the same time as “The Most Violent Year”. It’s crazy and I was flying back and forth from New York to Toronto. I’m in New York playing Anna, who is open, sensual and earthy; even the way she talks it’s all vowels, she’s just fun to be. Then I go to Toronto to play this uptight woman, who doesn’t allow any vulnerability or love into her life, and that was really tough because I’d show up on set and would want to play Anna in the corset. That was the first time my dialect coach said “You’re sounding a bit New York”, when we were doing rehearsals. I was wondering how I am going to get back and forth because one character I just feel comfortable with and the other one is really difficult to get a hold of, so I decorated my trailer with the most disturbing images I could find. There was a mood board hat our costume designer had, and the production designer had all of these inspirational pictures, I pasted them everywhere. Every morning I would go to the trailer and go “oh yeah” this is what I am doing. That helped me decipher between the characters.

Question: You made “Mama,” another movie made by Latinos. Why do you think that there are so many Hispanic filmmakers skilled in horror?

Chastain: There are so many incredible Latino filmmakers across the board in the industry. I was very happy to get to announce Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuaron’s Oscar this year, and they all went to the same school with Guillermo and I think they’re really some of my favorite filmmakers working today. I don’t know, maybe there is a sense of drama. I’ve spent time in Mexico but I have never been there on the Day of the Dead, which is so gorgeous from what Guillermo talks about it; the puppets and the costumes, it really is a beautiful theatrical thing in celebration. In the United States it’s something I guess we would be afraid of, perhaps that is why these people are really well suited for.

Question: How did you feel about portraying both sides of Lucille struggle, as a motherly figure to her brother and being intimidated by her mother?

Chastain: I remember the first day we saw that portrait, it is pretty intense and Guillermo kept telling me about it before we saw it, and it’s all fun in his imagination, this archetype, this woman that he has there and I think the true monster is her, I don’t really think she was ever a mother to them. Lucille is more than a mother to Thomas; I can’t say more because of spoilers. Lucille is also a slave to Thomas; he’s going to get really upset when he hears me say this but I actually think he’s kind of selfish because everything she has done in her entire life was to protect him and to get him what he wants even so much that when he would do something she would take the blame and take the punishment, it’s all over her face; the scars you see them on the back. The movie is really an emancipation of two women from the picture article society. Lucille kind of gets freed even if she doesn’t want to be from Thomas; and Edith from her father, her husband and she finds who she is, her own woman.

Question: as a human being how do you shake off your role emotionally and how challenging is it to find complex roles as a female in Hollywood?

Chastain: I think it was a month after we wrapped that Guillermo emailed me and goes “I’m in the editing room and it looks amazing”. I emailed back and said: “I really had a hard time leaving the film and I had to leave another movie and I am barely starting to feel like myself again”. The only thing you can do is to remind yourself that the goodness in your life is to be around your loved ones; and I think that’s why it was so important for my friends to fly for my birthday, there’s a connection. I feel lucky because I have incredible scripts that are sent to me and I will say as an audience member sometimes I am disappointed when I go to the movies. I don’t see many stories about women, I am excited this year and there’s a lot more. I am not saying we are done here because we will see how next year goes. I just hope that I can produce more and hopefully have some stories with more diversity; not just for women but also across the board.

Question: We see you as a “Moth” and Mia as a “Butterfly”. Can you talk about that?

Chastain: From the very beginning Guillermo talked about the butterfly and the moth; then we see Lucille in the beginning of the movie talking about that. She said “Black Moths thrive on the dark and the cold and butterflies are beautiful and fragile and don’t know how to survive in the world”. But then, when we also see Lucille’s room and also the way she touches Edith, she sees Edith as a butterfly and Lucille loved butterflies; even though she sees her as fragile and not able to survive in this world and sees herself capable of surviving throughout the dark and cold; there is this love for this person and for a butterfly. Even in the beginning of the film she says to Thomas “she’s not the right choice, she is too young”, she starts by protecting this fragile beautiful thing.

Question: Can you talk about “The Martian”? Was Ridley Scott more fun than Guillermo?

Chastain: In “The Martian” film, I play commander Melissa Lewis who’s heading the first manned mission to Mars, accidentally leaving Matt Damon on Mars and then the world comes together to try to bring him home. She is very good, but for reasons beyond her control, everyone thinks he is dead and turns out not to be. I got to go to NASA and JPL and worked with an astronaut named Tracy Caldwell Dyson and the most exciting thing for me about the film is to think that young girls are going to see it and will go: “ok not only do I want to be an astronaut, I want to be the commander”. It’s not a strange thing to think to be a female commander because it’s right there; hopefully the movie does well and hopefully it’ll be part of the conversation and girls will be excited about science, and Ridley is awesome, he is so great. No one has given me a ten-page back-story for my character like Guillermo; he is one of a kind when it comes to that, he is a director that gets excited by questions like “What is my motivation?” Most directors go “Oh the actor asking about motivation”, but Guillermo’s like “ooh let’s talk about it.” And Ridley is the General, we were doing these really scary scenes with these wind turbines during a storm sequence on Mars where we are all in these suits where the air would stop and you can’t hear anyone. It was a big production and very intense, but you always heard Ridley in your ear and you knew everything was going to be ok because he is the absolute master of that. He was on my bucket list to work with and to do a space film with him; it doesn’t get better than that.

CRIMSON PEAK will be released in theaters on Oct. 16.

When her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak.