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Tell me how Damien Chazelle persuaded you to be inFirst Man.
[Laughs] I think it was the other way around.
Youve got the part!
So I came to L.A. and read for it, and we went and met Ryan.
You recently described Janet as an absolute cracker.
Ill always regret that.
She was very private about her relationship with Neil anyway.
Nobody wants to do that!
The hardest scene was Karens funeral.
But he didnt put us through the wringer.
I was driving the scene quite a lot.
Thats always hard, when youre the person responsible for getting it going.
How much of the film was improvised?Improvisedis a general term for what we did.
We were doing takes tied to dialogue and takes where Damien would be like, Do whatever you want!
It was more of an exercise, I think.
But before shooting, we did two weeks of pure improvisation.
Me and Ryan and the kids were a family, all of a sudden, in a cabin.
We were like, Hi!
Were you living together in the cabin?No.
Dear God, no.
I mean, thats a lovely idea, but I have a child.
I cant go disappear and be somebody elses mom for two weeks.
But the premise was that we came to work eight hours a day with each other.
And that was amazing.
We had two weeks to build the world that then gets shattered by everything that happens.
She didnt know that by marrying a fighter pilot shed suddenly be on the front cover ofTimemagazine.
But up untilThe Crown,Id been relatively unscathed by any of that.
Im still unscathed, because Im still me.
But I think Janet found it more restrictive and confining, like being in a straitjacket.
Theres a scene where she really gives it to NASA.
She says, You dont know what youre doing.
Youre going to the moon, which is the most important thing in the world.
But hes my husband, the father to my children.
Has that ever entered your mind?
But Janet knew who she was and what was happening.
She had such a backbone of steel.
Youve now played several women who are secretly stressing out while having to seem calm for various reasons.
Do you relate?I suffer really badly with anxiety.
Not about work, but life in general.
Internally, everyones struggling.
