Brie Lar­son: ​‘The hard part is let­ting go’

If you don’t know the name Brie Lar­son by now, you cer­tain­ly will do by the time the 2016 award sea­sons draws to a close. Last week she scooped the Best Actress gong at the Gold­en Globes for her spell­bind­ing, intense turn in Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, which has been adapt­ed from the best­selling nov­el by Emma Donoghue.

The film sees Lar­son attempt­ing to main­tain her guise as a lov­ing moth­er while being held cap­tive in a shed with her five-year-old son, Jack, played by Jacob Trem­blay. As the film pro­gress­es, it becomes evi­dent that it’s not a sto­ry about revenge of escape or sur­vival, but about the mean­ing of moth­er­hood and the emo­tion­al trails that come from bring­ing anoth­er human being into the world. We met Lar­son – who, at time of writ­ing, has no chil­dren of her own – to dis­cuss how best to pre­tend to be some­one else’s mother.

LWLies: In Room the actor Jacob Trem­blay plays your young son and the film is about your rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er. How did you get along with his parents?

Lar­son: His par­ents are so love­ly and warm. They under­stood how impor­tant it was that Jacob felt com­fort­able with me. They know him bet­ter than any­body. They knew what type of para­me­ters to set that would not make it feel like an intim­i­dat­ing sit­u­a­tion. It was going to be like, ​‘Oh hey, there’s this girl you’re going to meet, we’re going to hang out with her a lit­tle bit and see what happens.’

Do you remem­ber your first meeting?

It was real­ly casu­al. It was at a piz­za par­lour with his par­ents and direc­tor Lenny [Abra­ham­son]. A few of the pro­duc­ers were there too. It was a big set­ting, so very much not just the two of us. It gave the oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to share a few words, but the inten­tion was not focused on that. By the end of that evening, he invit­ed me over to play Lego with him. And his mom was there, but she would wan­der in and out. She would say things like, ​‘Jacob, you were say­ing before that you were curi­ous to find out what Brie’s favourite ani­mal is, so why don’t you ask her?’ And he’d ask me that. It allowed this sense that it was nev­er this intim­i­dat­ing one-on- one. It was safe. It was on his terms with his stuff and in his space.

How close were you when film­ing started?

As our three weeks of rehearsals came to an end, we were so close by that point. We had spent so much time togeth­er. We would do the rou­tine you see at the begin­ning of the film every day in rehearsals. So we were hit­ting the point where he felt com­fort­able jump­ing on me, grab­bing me, let­ting me hold him. That’s a big deal. That’s how it all came togeth­er at the begin­ning. On set, his par­ents were always there, but once we’re shoot­ing a scene, they wouldn’t keep com­ing over and remind­ing him of things.

Do you think it was strange for them to see their son in this rela­tion­ship with anoth­er mother?

At first I was wor­ried about it, because I’m not a mom. I’d always look to Christi­na – his mom – to ask, is this right? She became the best expert on that. She’d pick up on the sim­ple tri­als and tribu­la­tions of being a moth­er. The key moments are where you’re exhaust­ed, but you have to keep act­ing like it’s okay.

You’re very con­vinc­ing as a moth­er. How does one learn to be a good mother?

I would be curi­ous to know what oth­er women have to say about it, but from my own expe­ri­ence, some­thing just clicks in when you start to care about some­one, or some­thing that isn’t your­self. One aspect of that from my life is the work that I do: it has always felt like an act of ser­vice for me. It’s some­thing that’s beyond me. The oth­er aspect is that I’m an old­est grand­kid, and I either lived with my cousins, or next door to them, while they were babies up until about 11 or 12. So I was always the fam­i­ly babysit­ter. I think it’s just one of my super­pow­ers that kids are just attract­ed to me.

At Tel­luride, we went to this piz­za par­lour as they had air hock­ey and there were breaks between screen­ings. I was plan­ning on hang­ing out with the adults, eat­ing piz­za and hav­ing a Moscow Mule, but instead I some­how end­ed up get­ting roped into being the ring­leader of eight small chil­dren. With­in min­utes, I’ve got a bat­tle of the sex­es hock­ey game going. We’re scream­ing. We’re falling on the ground. A woman came up to me and asked if I was local, if I was a babysit­ter, and could we hire you. I ran into some friends at the piz­za par­lour and start­ed talk­ing to them, and this lit­tle girl came up to me and start­ed pulling on my shirt and I picked her up and they asked, ​‘who’s this?!’ and I was like, ​‘I have no idea.’

Your role in the film Short Term 12 is also quite mater­nal, though in a less lit­er­al way. Have there been any pre­vi­ous parts which have felt like tri­al runs for this one?

Short Term 12 was the first time I worked with kids. And I absolute­ly loved it. It’s why I knew I could do Room because I will take any chance I can to make my job not about me, and make it about some­thing else. The thing I strug­gle with the most is, what­ev­er I do, it’s always my face up on the screen. I want to be more of an Andy Serkis where you’re CGI’d into some­thing else. My phys­i­cal pres­ence is there. Because I had met with these real fos­ter kids for Short Term 12, I felt such a mate­r­i­al, strong love, I real­ly want­ed to fight for them.

Is it sad when a film ends and you have to move away from these people?

For dif­fer­ent rea­sons, I find one of the hard parts is not being able to fix it. Every day on set, you’re work­ing with­in the fac­tors that are there, whatever’s avail­able to you emo­tion­al­ly, and no mat­ter what, you think, ​‘Well yes­ter­day might have been bad, but I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty today to fix it.’ To hit the final day, it always reminds me where you’re watch­ing those cook­ing shows where you have to cook an entrée in 20 min­utes, and it’s all good dur­ing the 20 min­utes, but as soon as the time’s up and you have to take your hands away, sud­den­ly you’re like, ​‘Oooooh, I wish I could redo that whole thing.’ The hard part is let­ting go of the process. Let­ting go of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the process. Hope that you’ve giv­en a good enough range of colours for the edi­tor to paint with.

By talk­ing about this movie, do you find you’re learn­ing more about it?

Yeah, that’s the cool part. And that’s why I’m picky about what it is I make. You want some­thing that can exist beyond a sin­gle view­ing and is not just about one thing. You don’t want a film with a moral at the end. You want some­thing big­ger than that. You can take it, you can spend hours talk­ing about it, and when you do, it con­stant­ly changes. It res­onates per­son­al­ly in dif­fer­ent ways with dif­fer­ent peo­ple. And not to men­tion dif­fer­ent coun­tries – they pick up on dif­fer­ent things. It’s nice that it’s a liv­ing, breath­ing con­ver­sa­tion. The hard part about inter­views like this is try­ing hard to make it seem like every­thing made sense. That these deci­sions were con­scious. Because a lot of the time they aren’t. It’s just cre­ativ­i­ty and intu­ition going in one direc­tion. But as you talk, you get to learn more about how your sub­con­scious was work­ing back then. You get to see the larg­er pic­ture of the movie.