Elizabeth Olsen and Carrie Coon interview | Woman's Hour

uh that will be hitting our Cinema screens looking at Three Strange sisters in very different stages of Their Lives who move back in together during their dying father's final days as I mentioned it's his three daughters it stars K as Katie Elizabeth Olsen as Christina and Natasha Leon as Rachel and it covers several themes that may resonate with you preemptive grief family Dynamics in a time of loss and with yes some of those emotions that I mentioned love anger and possibly resentment well two of the three leads are with me now in the studio em Emmy nominated congratulations Carrie a star of many films such as Gone Girl and the new Ghostbusters reboot as well as the TV hit the Gilded Age you'll also see her in the upcoming season of White Lotus star power continues beside her Elizabeth Olsen Emmy nominated Marvel Universe star who plays Wanda maximoff at the Scarlet Witch in several films and a TV series one division she also starred as Candy Montgomery in the miniseries Love and Death among many other roles Carrie who is ky Elizabeth who is Christina welcome to women's hour thank you for having us yeah thank you well let us speak about this beautiful film three daughters who come together in their father's dying days and I want to start with the line that really stood out to me and it spoke about the fact that depic depictions of death and of dying in film and TV is not instructive yet that is exactly what both of you set out to do with this film Ki let me begin with you you how did you approach that oh that's interesting I mean certainly death is one thing we all have in common we're all going one way we all have to deal with it in one way or another and I feel that it's particularly in western civilization death has become very far from us we don't deal with the bodies anymore we don't stand them up in the Parlor and keep vigil for three days we pay somebody to take care of all of the details the mess detail exactly and I feel like um for that reason we we're we're woefully underprepared maybe in a way we never have been in an earlier time and so art a lot of art forces us to reckon with it it's interesting actually that word vigil I was thinking when I was coming into you what is it that these three women are doing with each other but they're kind of standing vigil Elizabeth for their father well certainly some better than others um I my character Christina I think uh has a bit more com is more comfortable sitting in that role um and I think that's part of the dnamic that unfolds in the film is how everyone's handling it differently but also how how do we cohabitate again after not doing so for so many years and because those relationships they're basically forced into often I I think people will this will resonate with them as well H into a couple of rooms uh there's that kind of claustrophobic atmosphere as well how was that um to try and act through it felt like confines was it like that when you on S yeah we had lots of restrictions on this job which was what made it so special was one of the reasons why it made it so special we had limitations from a budget we had limitations from a crew um and then the actual space itself is a is a is a real rent control Department in New York so there's no flying walls no um you know great lights on cranes coming through Windows um we're really working with what with what we had and those I think those restraints are what is what was most freeing potentially for all of us um to shoot within that space and hide in Corners when we weren't needed and um I think it added to the film experience in the film itself because I think it's I think you can tangibly feel it when watching it it's very strong emotions but what was it like to work together and I'll start with you Elizabeth and then come to you Carrie H to work so closely physically and emotionally because it's almost like a play when you're watching it I I don't know if that was something you felt while doing it well I certainly prepared it as if we were doing a play because there's it's it's a language forward script it starts with um two characters speaking in in monologue form which um I don't think most films uh try to do ever because it's um I think it's kind of jarring for an audience to retrain their ear in a way at least for American audiences I feel like there might be a cultural difference here versus there um and so I I I did prepare it as a a play and I think we all we all came together as a company in that way mhm yes I mean certainly the the language prep preparing the language but then also the idea that we were going to shoot it in order which you never do in TV and film now and so in that way it also unfolded like a play because we lived through the story as we were telling it which allowed us to arrive at a surprising place by the time we came to the end which I know Lizzie speaks of very um eloquently just how we didn't know for example the shape we would end up in on the couch that that came very organically from the way the and that isold the three sisters as um the story evolves but of course the main character in a way um is the Father the father to these three women um but there's also that line about coming back to how it's depicted on TV death um that really death is absence and the rest is fantasy and you're trying to represent what people are going to feel that absence um I thought it was clever not to meet Vinnie their father for a while yes and oza was very clear about he wasn't sure if the Father the director oza Jacobs wasn't sure if the father would ever appear in the film and yet I won't give away exactly how that unfolds but it was important to him that in order to communicate what absence feels like you had to see him to know what they were missing and so though he is looming sort of over the the metronome of his heart monitor is what's driving the rhythm of the the movie it was important for oza so that you would finally get a chance to experience him the way the daughters had so that you would know what they were losing and I think that's I think that's a a smart way to do it um and they also talked uh this gave me pause that you can't really know a person until they've died you don't see the full person oh yes I mean I I haven't lost my parents thankfully but I have four siblings and I can imagine the you know the sort of um cobbling together of a life but it's all from are different perspectives or you often think of your parent at the time that they're dying and it's only until I lost my father probably about a year and a half ago and it's only until H they have died that you go back to their earlier Incarnation yes and you start to think of all the things you never asked and that you never knew and that you will now never ever know and your perception of them if you have siblings is so Prismatic there's no sort of one solid entity it's all from these these revolving points of view and it's hard to make a make a person out of it yeah and I think the other element to that is that's how how we're viewing our father but it's also how we view each other we've we've decided the roles that either of us play Within this family unit and at the beginning of the film we're all sort of Performing to those ideas and then that starts to comp become more complicated as the film goes on but it's a role that um I think we all can relate to in different ways within our own family structure you know I just mentioned to our listeners a couple of moments ago that we were speaking about this lots of messages isting already shall I read a couple of them yes so good to hear this being spoken about my mom passed away recently and while I felt the worst sides of members of my family came out I felt I handled it in my mom H needing the peace and suppressing my reactions to the madness around me because there is kind of a Madness because it's as serious as life gets right life and death she goes on to say hard but needed for the health of my mom now of course the suppression is unraveling a bit but the whole experience of loss has taught me patience with myself and others here's another I'm a triplet and me and my sisters cared for our dad at home until he passed we learned about the individual capacity for forgiveness of each other as our own thresholds were challenged daily we saw the fragility of life watching our dad's e away we were lost and found daily we are now forever bonded by our trauma oh that's that I mean that articulates so beautifully what's happening in the film and you know one of the things I love about it is it never feels like a a big a big swing for a movie about what this was like it felt very realistic to me and that those those moments she talks about of Grace and apology and forgiveness they are sort of inadequate in the film in a way and for me for Katie who is the she's the controlling older sister who's trying to control the external details so as not to have to reckon with what's happening inside of her she's um you know her she has these moments of trying to make Headway and I think her sisters accept that they are unfold holding within Katie's limitations and they sort of give her that Grace in the film and that to me feels speaks very much to that comment and felt so real to me when I read it yes I I think with Katie she's she's hard right she's hard and she wants to control the situation as you can see and concentrates on on one aspect that she wants to get done and as I think people often do in times of Crisis you try to control the bits that you can and also you make a lot of food that's right yes feeding every becomes sort of the the thrust of her her existence and and whereas I think Lizzy's character Christina is the one who's able to really sit with our father and and doing so becomes the surprising center of the trio yeah and it starts off so differently and that's kind of something that showed itself like Carrie had had mentioned because we filmed in order wasn't very clear necessarily in the writing how how we were supposed to feel or or um act or what what what is actionable by the end of it and our reactions to I mean it's always hard to speak to an end of a movie but how we where we go by the end of the film and and it was only because of the existing through it and the sitting with and the surprises of the humor that we are able to find that sort of levity and and I think the fragility by the end I think sitting with is also such a good term because my goodness there's a lot of sitting there's a lot of waiting you know and there's even that humor about I even remember myself when a hospice person comes in and everybody's trying to put a a time limit on something which can't really be discerned yeah exactly and the same lecture happens every day well it's coming any minute now yeah the absurdity of that and you know it was really important to O capture the feeling of what that time is you're you're existing sort of outside of the rhythms of your life and it was very important to OA to feel how time sort of stretches and compresses and how something that normally would be fast and your life is somehow unfolding much more slowly and and that that there's always this metronome of the machines in the back room and that that's sort of the Rhythm that everyone is either pushing against or living with or and and I just feel that he's he's done a good job capturing with that Lial spaces definitely lots more coming in h it was the most moving experience I didn't expect the grief of losing dad to be exacerbated by the loss of spending time with my sisters who are also my best friends so probably getting into that also another my stepdad died very Suddenly Last year from cancer it was always hard for me to accept him because it meant accepting the death of my dad but last year faced with the prospect of my stepdad's death I suddenly realized at the age of 35 how much he meant to me and how painful his loss was on his death store he my sister and I finally signed adoption papers and I could finally see him for the father he has been we were all together with him when he passed I miss him terribly but take comfort that we had a meaningful goodbye and I could say to him he was my dad and he said to me I was his daughter oh wow that's really interesting beautiful there's also the relationship we have with Natasha is that she is a she's a stepsister um and and that comes up in different ways within within the film and what and you don't you wouldn't know because we're all just siblings as as you do you treat one another the same until Katie has some um has some I don't know some Hang-Ups on what that means to her and she to her well it's childish you know some of the the little the little girl in you sometimes comes out in these moments of grief I think like every everything every aspect of your relationship you've ever lived is sort of present in the room when you're about to lose it I think and you're also very very tired yes very very tired and we all know what can happen in that but you know coming back to you liiz bit you talked about you know how would it play out I did read um that you felt you flourished in that environment that to me felt raw tight um deep do you mean flourished as in the the in my personal life or the doing in in working in that way yeah I mean I love it I I think you talked about tapping into a softness yes there is there is a softness to to this character that I got to play that was something that I haven't I I certainly didn't get a do with Candy Montgomery and Love and Death and I go I love that but that there's there's certainly really no no sof there no um and so there is there is something about this woman who has who's performing the um the tools that we have learned to create a sense of mindfulness or growth in ourselves like breath work like uh you know yoga mindfulness trying to spend time with her father well singing and reading and um although those are performative I do believe that those are also tools that have been useful to her and so she's been able to kind of just be as much as she can with the um with the obstacles that her sisters have presented but she also is she's also resisting being herself fully around them so she keeps trying to create these personal spaces because that's the that's that's the the path of least resistance for her and um and so so there's that but I I think specifically the constraints of of how we filmed it it's it's it's some of the most freeing ways of working and um to to strip away all the things that are unnecessary it really just focuses on the work and it really just felt like such a a close-nit family getting to make this for such a short period of time more messages coming in set up a sibling WhatsApp group in the last months before my father's death it was invaluable we finally all four of us came together to be with Dad the WhatsApp group has seen us through grief practical Arrangements division of task masks and still dealing with proa that can take a while um hi I'm Diana I have five siblings in the days leading up to my dad's death we all stayed in the house together to support our mom we had rootes to be in their bedroom as we didn't want our parents to be on their be on their own at the end we're a very close family and being together made us even closer knowing we were all under the same roof gave us strength and courage to cope with the end that depth of love and support is continued and also carried us through the loss of our mom we all played to our strength some took on more personal roles some cooked meals some laughed and joked I'm so proud to be part of such a fantastic family um so obviously that's something that has very much worked out but I do want to underline as well because we're talking about these you know preemptive grief and grief and loss but it's also very funny yes because life is absurd right black humor I see something that's that's humorless it doesn't feel real to me because I know how my family deals with things you know when my grandma was in hospice they we all hid alcohol in the bushes cuz you weren't supposed to have it in there and we would always be laughing and the nurse was did she did she go we're like no no we're fine and I mean it was just all like we laughed so much when she was dying my brother used to bring her a Martini in a pickle jar and we dump out her water glass and we' pour her Martini there we're like when they come to give you a sedative what do you say no was like a whole thing we had going on but it was so much in keeping with the character of our family and the way we dealt with everything and so of course that stuff comes out in death as well that was definitely something that we were conscious we were very mindful of while shooting is we wanted to make sure that not that we were playing into jokes but that we were allowing for humor always because yes because things that are humorless I I don't understand either true no and oa's work always has a sense of humor I mean this is very much an oza Jacob's film and all of his other films have that as well as well as the sort of step outside of complete realism he's always kind of dealing in the Fantastical as well thank you so much for coming in you obviously touch the nerve with our listeners the stories continue to come in h such a wonderful wonderful uh film I I absolutely loved it if it hasn't come across as I speak about it his three daughters Carrie as Katie and Elizabeth Olsen my guests as Christina thank you both so much for coming in I wish you the best thanks for having us I hope it's cathartic for your viewers when they see it yes thank you some more coming in here's Jane she says when my mom was dying my brother and I did not agree with the way she should be cared for causing horrible arguments and much heartache she died in a care home I was very sad and felt we could have done more to make her death better when my dad was dying one year later we did everything we could to help him die peacefully at home which he did with my brother and I by his side we both felt we had given him the best death possible and had healed our broken relationship thank you keep them coming 84 844