Kate Winslet Breaks Down Her Role In 'Ammonite' | The Awardist | Entertainment Weekly

I hope that we live or starting more to live in a world that is so inclusive that we are not even noticing the gender of key characters when we're talking about a love story. Hello and welcome to the "Awardist." I'm David Canfield, "Entertainment Weekly's" movies editor, and I'm joined today by Kate Winslet, Academy Award winner and star of the new film "Ammonite." Thanks so much for joining us, Kate. You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me. MARY ANNING (VOICEOVER): It was a sea lizard, six

feet long. Days it took to dig it out, clean it. I was only 11 years old. The nature of taking on the role of Mary Anning, I've heard you say that you really had to lose yourself in this part. And I'm wondering what exactly you mean by that and what that process was like for you? Well, when I first read the script, I had this overwhelming feeling of this sort of surging excitement of, yes, I'd very much want to be a part of this, but at the same time, I also felt really extremely nervous becaus

e I just didn't know where to begin. I mean, playing a woman who existed in 1840 who had a very private, isolated life, who was socially incredibly awkward, who had never truly been loved or knew how to love, and lived in this very patriarchal repressed society that was so dominated by men-- that the geological world was so dominated by men that it had made Mary, I think, retreat further and further into her own world-- and there was a stillness and a sort of held emotional and physical quality

to Mary that is just nothing like me, and, you know, those aren't things that I felt I could just turn up and do on the day. I had to kind of, layer upon layer, try and construct who I believe Mary needed to be, who I wanted for her to be. I've often heard your reputation discussed in the Geographical Society in London. Is there something you wanted, sir? RODERICK MURCHISON: My wife, she hasn't been at all well of late. She suffers from melancholia. [MUSIC PLAYING] I want her to walk the shoreli

ne with you, learn from you. I tried to live my sort of daily rhythms as close to Mary's as I possibly could while we were filming. I lived separately to my family, which was a really big deal. We've not done that before. Oh, wow. But I just knew that I wasn't gonna be able to, you know, come home and cook a meal for everybody at night or think about what groceries you'd want-- run out of in the cupboard or, you know, doing the laundry. I just knew I wasn't gonna be able to combine the two world

s at all, and physically, I just needed to slow myself down a little bit because Mary's movements are so precise and determined in a way that my own are not. You know, I'm flailing around all over the place. You know, I'm an animated actress, who, you know, moves her hands and uses her fingers like vocabulary. And Mary is the same, but her vocabulary is very sparse and much more limited than my own. And so, I sort of started really from a place of wanting to understand who she had been as a chil

d really and what her upbringing had been like. It was filled with struggle. She was very working class, self-taught. She'd had a really close relationship with her father. And her mother had lost eight children to a variety of sort of lower-class-- working-class illnesses-- smallpox, house fires, floods, terrible things really, and so, Mary had been raised by a mother who was permanently in some degree of grief. And so, for me, you know, that Mary's sort of isolation as a person from the world

had begun when she was quite young. So layer upon layer building these things, learning how to sort of fossil find, working with the paleontologists quite closely for three weeks and scouring the beaches of Lyme Regis where the film is set-- I actually learned on the beaches that Mary would have worked on, and that was pretty thrilling. As would you say that this was a new kind of experience, that kind of immersion and, as you say, like, bunkerization almost? It's always the dream for me as an a

ctress, is to be able to be completely immersed in a role. Sometimes, that's not always required. Sometimes, it's also just not possible because of my own life and my domestic responsibilities and family, which always obviously comes first. And there are a lot of things that I have had to turn down over the years because I knew it would require a certain amount of immersion that I just wasn't able to give because of my home life. The "Ammonite" felt like a real kind of indulgence in that regard

in terms of the level of intensity and what had to go into it. It's definitely up there for me, like, you know-- and I think about all the different characters I've had the great fortune to play over the years. You know, if I was to kind of, like, pluck a handful, like, it's up there with, like, you know, Hannah Schmitz and Mildred Pierce and "Revolutionary Road." Like, it's in that world of, you know, ones that I know when I'm 80 years old-- God-willing, I live to be that old. You know, I'd loo

k back and go, oh, that one and that one and, you know, I will always kind of clutch myself a bit because-- yeah, these characters are for sure probably the more rewarding but draining at the time. DAVID CANFIELD: I was fascinated by the function of Mary's costumes in this film, and particularly, there's a kind of contrast between how almost stiff they look and how comfortable you know she is. What was that like for you finding her-- set her in those looks? I really appreciate you asking the que

stion because actually, you're right. Like, there's something about the fabric of Mary's clothes that looks quite harsh. You almost imagine if you brushed it, it would make a sound, and actually, it did make a sound. It did make a sort of, like, almost, sometimes, a scraping noise. Because her clothes-- she only had three dresses, and that was a decision that was made between myself, the director, and the costume designer. This was a woman of poverty. She just would not have had lots of costumes

. And it was very important to me to make those period clothes look like clothes. I didn't want them to-- 'cause so often with a period film, you know, costumes do look a bit like costumes-- and the way that things are lit, because it's a period story, gives it a sort of an otherworldly quality or soft focus or impossibly beautiful lighting in a way that perhaps sometimes isn't always necessarily real or touchable. And for me, what was really wonderful about Mary's costumes is that I really felt

that they were the fabric of her world, and she had to clean them, care for them, hang them out to dry the second she was in and off of those beaches, and take care of the few things that she had. The trousers-- the fact that she wears a pair of old men's-- fisherman's trousers was something that came out of some images we found that we were really inspired by-- of women-- working-class women in that period in history, who-- these were pictures that came from later-- by 1860, the first photogra

ph started to emerge. And there were groups of women who would help pull the fish in and pick them out of the nets and repairing the nets, and they would sit, clearly, with no corsets, almost looking like men, wearing these trousers. We didn't want Mary to look masculine. That wasn't the idea. But I just knew, having worked out on those beaches for weeks on end, that she would have been freezing cold and also would have hurt herself if she had not had something covering her legs, and we were ins

pired by these images of the fisherwomen that we found. You come in with this fully-formed vision of this character, and I'm curious, working with a director like Francis, who-- his style is quite exacting-- and I'm a huge fan of his previous film, "Gods Own Country," as well-- how did you work with him and how did you get into sync in that way? Francis, for me, almost felt like he was quite similar in many ways to Mary-- DAVID CANFIELD: Hmm. --and he gets really attached to his character's beca

use he writes them, creates them, and really lives and breathes and thinks about them all the time. And so, his own fascination with Mary Anning and who she was and where she had come from and how she might have lived her life and how she might have loved, it really became a part of Francis. And he is very detailed, and he is very exacting. But I was so grateful for that because of "God's Own Country" and because I had absolutely loved its rawness and its truthfulness and its unblemished-- I don

't know-- rhythms. Yeah. I just appreciate-- I loved that film. I loved it. So to be in "Ammonite," for me, I felt like, oh, I'm working with kind of my-- my kind of director, you know? That's a very real, [INAUDIBLE] sort of spirit. Did you talk at all about, I suppose, the nature of the queerness of this film? One thing I love about both of Francis' films that I've seen is there's this coding and this understanding of the way queer people can share a look or communicate to one another in silen

ces, and obviously, silence is so important to this film and really to Mary's very being, in a lot of ways. I'm just curious if there were conversations in that regard? Well, there are lots of conversations about sexuality, but for me, I just appreciated so much how Francis' interpretation of this love story between these two people was precisely that. It was the telling of a tale of two people who fall in love. So the fact that they were women over time when lesbian-- the word lesbian hadn't ev

en been coined and people might consider a relationship like that to be forbidden or even, quote, unquote, "wrong," and Francis just did not include those themes as a part of our narrative. And for me, that's actually quite moving because I hope that we live or starting more to live in a world that is so inclusive that we are not even noticing the gender of key characters when we're talking about a love story. That, to me, hopefully, helps to normalize same sex connection on film. And if we cont

inue to do that, more LGBTQ films will just slip into the mainstream, and we won't feel the need to compare the few that do exist. And we will use the same vocabulary, hopefully, to describe same sex films as we will heterosexual love stories. Because actually, at the moment-- it's really interesting-- we use different words to describe those kinds of intimate scenes even. Particularly with women, there are words used that are just so dated. It's almost shocking to me. DAVID CANFIELD: Yeah. And

so, I don't know. I just felt really privileged to be part of something that I hope is a contribution to the progression and evolution of how LGBTQ people and their relationships are portrayed and viewed on film. CHARLOTTE MURCHISON: What is it? MARY ANNING: Cheap tourist fodder. Beautiful. One thing that was really cool that we were able to access were real letters-- real love letters that were written between about 1790 and 1830 between women-- women who were in marriages to men but who had th

ese very deeply connected friendships that were founded on sisterhood and a need for affection and communication and just sharing, whether it was poetry or just stories and experiences. And these letters that we read became love letters, that over the years, these women were falling in love, really needing one another, really, truly craving physical connection and intimacy. And in some of those letters, there was really specific, wonderful, sexual details that we felt we wanted to kind of honor

a little bit in our portrayal of Charlotte and Mary's intimate moments. And so, yeah. I mean, of course, those relationships existed however forbidden people may have considered them to be at the time. How did you work with Saoirse-- I sort of associate you with great cinematic pairings, obviously-- with Leo DiCaprio but also Jim Carrey in "Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind," which we we're talking about a little bit before we started. With Saoirse, how did you find your way in together? Well, w

e were very lucky that we got along really well right away, which definitely does help, you know? Because that's not necessarily always the case, you know? Sometimes, people can be a bit odd, different, you know, just have their own way about doing things, and we just-- we were just in it together completely from the word go. We just listen to one another, and we did map out the start to finish arc of Mary and Charlotte's relationship. So every look, every moment when Charlotte puts her hand on

Mary's shoulder, and you see Mary thinking, yep, her hand was just on my shoulder, you know? All of those things were, first of all, I'd say 80% of them were scripted, and the other 20% were absolutely our joint contributions through conversations that we'd had. In terms of the physical intimate scenes, we did really map those out as a piece of sort of choreography. You sort of always have to do that a little bit with intimate scenes because first of all, the crew kind of need to know where to b

e physically-- you know, where the camera is gonna go, where the focus pull is gonna hide herself, where the boom operator can be, so there's no shadows. Because the thing is no one wants to keep doing those kinds of scenes over and over again. Because normally, if there's any magic to be had, it will typically happen in, like, the first one or two takes actually. And then, you finesse it afterwards, making sure physical moments that you wanted to land actually did. So Saoirse and I were just--

we were just really great friends, and I think the mutual respect for each other's work-- I mean, I just she blows my mind in everything she does, and she's been doing it for almost as long as I have even though she's almost half my age. And so, you know, it was just really helpful that we had that sort of quite easy bond. It meant there was a kind of an emotional shorthand between the two of us and, you know, just that sense of like checking in with each other all the time-- how you doing? You

OK? What do you think of that? Shall try anything differently? Well, I really like the one you did two takes ago. Oh, OK. I'll do that one again. We had conversations like that, so, you know-- so we sort of played equal parts in kind of almost contributing to each other's performances. But obviously, together, you know, the gradual build, that sort of space for longing that we had to trust in between Mary and Charlotte, we had to be in that level of kind of longing and trust together, and we wer

e just very, very lucky that we got along as well as we did. The central love scene that occurs really towards the end of the film, it's, first of all, just completely extraordinary, and it's really one of the best I've seen depicted on film period. It was just-- Oh, great. --beautiful and passionate and-- but also very equitable. The dynamic between you in that scene is really remarkable in the way you-- we have eyes on both of you in a very particular way, and you can see your interaction with

each other in a really beautiful way. Given that you have done love scenes over the years, what was it like to film that versus maybe something you'd done 10 or 15 years ago? Like, did it feel different? Did it feel-- Yeah. --special? Yes, it did. It felt very different, and it did actually feel special as well for a variety of reasons. But what you just said, I think, is really interesting, is that, you know, as an audience, I think, perhaps, there is the ability to see these-- those two women

connected-- really connected in terms of their emotions and their eyes and their physical closeness, their touch. And that, I think, is the way in which it was shot. It was all handheld, believe it or not. It was all handheld. Oh, wow. And we actually only did the entire scene start to finish. 'Cause we did it like a set piece, and we only did it three times. The cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine, who was also a camera operator, he just changed up how he was moving around us in the space on eac

h of those three takes so that there was masses and masses of footage for Francis to intercut with. But most importantly, for the majority of each frame, we're both in it, and of course, that's what that scene is. It isn't each individual's character of that intensely intimate moment and the impact it's having on each person. It's the shared connection, the shared impact that it's having on the two of them. That, for me, when I see that scene, is the most special thing that I get from it because

I think that that is actually quite unusual; and that, typically, we see parts of bodies, or it's left in a certain way, or sometimes, you can tell if an actor is trying to, like, hide a bit, or they don't want that bit to be seen. And we just had none of that. [LAUGHTER] That's not how it was ever going to be. So when I think, you know-- we wanted it to be good as well. We wanted to act the scene as well as we could because, of course, at that point in the story, you can feel as an audience me

mber that Mary and Charlotte's relationship is really about to shift after that scene, and it's building up to that moment happening. And so, whilst it's very tender and intense, it's also quite painful and heartbreaking because you know that perhaps there's gonna be a separation between these two characters shortly afterwards. It did feel safe and sort of strong and very unself-conscious, you know, in ways that perhaps I don't think I've ever been able to truly feel before. And I've played LGBT

Q characters in the past, but I've never-- I've mainly only filmed heterosexual love scenes before. And it's just there's always that odd thing of, you know-- do you mind if I put my hand there? Or do you mind if I don't do this? Do you mind if I-- there's always this very strange, slightly comical conversations that happen between two actors. For Saoirse and I just didn't have any of that. We were like, well, let's just, you know-- this is what we'll do, and we'll just make, you know-- this is

how it should be. And there was no sort of-- there was respect, but there was no sort of pointless niceties about stuff because we were just in it together. And in that regard, it was very, very different and really special. There's a freedom there that really shows-- - Yeah. - --I think. That's right. And we felt-- we did feel very free actually, yeah. Thank you so much, Kate Winslet. KATE WINSLET: Thank you. The film is "Ammonite." You can watch it on demand right now. And thanks so much for l

istening, everybody. This has been the "Awardist" from David Canfield. [MUSIC PLAYING]