Gre­ta Ger­wig: ​‘I’ve nev­er felt suc­cess­ful at being some­one who looks perfect’

It should come as no sur­prise that Gre­ta Ger­wig is a pro­found­ly thought­ful and ener­get­i­cal­ly self-dep­re­cat­ing inter­vie­wee. Her off-kil­ter charm has seen her rise from mum­blecore begin­nings – work­ing with the Duplass broth­ers and mul­ti­ple times with Joe Swan­berg – to indie-dar­ling ter­ri­to­ry. She was delight­ful­ly grave in Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Dis­tress, but it was Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha that estab­lished her as a lead actress with the pow­er to charm a wider audience.

Baum­bach looms large in Gerwig’s life. The pair are part­ners both in the writ­ing and roman­tic sense. Mis­tress Amer­i­ca marks their third time work­ing togeth­er and their sec­ond time writ­ing togeth­er (Ger­wig co-wrote Frances Ha). When LWLies sat down for 14 heav­en­ly min­utes with the actress, she was forth­com­ing on how this col­lab­o­ra­tion works with­out ever once men­tion­ing his name.

LWLies: Mis­tress Amer­i­ca real­ly remind­ed us of F Scott Fitzger­ald just in the way you have this kind of glitzy hero­ine, and it all seems so great, but there’s a lot of sor­row under­neath. Is he an influence?

Ger­wig: Struc­tural­ly we did talk about ​‘The Great Gats­by’, just in terms of how to meet a per­son as big as Brooke and with as many facets and lay­ers and lies. And it felt that the right way to do it is through some­one like Tra­cy who, in a way, was our Nick Car­raway. Even in the way that in ​‘The Great Gats­by’, there is that big show­down in the hotel, there’s some feel­ing of this thing that’s going to boil over, and get­ting sucked into the dra­ma of some­body else’s life. I mean we didn’t lit­er­al­ly think that we were mak­ing ​‘The Great Gats­by’! We tend to look at dif­fer­ent films as influ­ences but also nov­els and short sto­ries because I think it’s just the way both of our minds work. We tend to put a lot into the machine and see what comes out. It’s so plea­sur­able too. It remind­ed me of what it felt like to be in col­lege and you’re writ­ing a paper and you’re doing read­ings for all kinds of class­es and all of a sud­den some­thing you read for a class that seems com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed to the paper that you’re writ­ing ends up feed­ing right into it. That’s how we go about writ­ing scripts.

It sounds quite lib­er­at­ing because you can join things togeth­er rather than hav­ing a pre­scrip­tive route forward.

And also because we write so intu­itive­ly, we always let the char­ac­ters dic­tate the sto­ry. We don’t write out­lines. We just see where its going to go. To feel like, in some ways, your movie or your script is talk­ing back to a set of influ­ences is a nice way to make it feel less lonely.

Does the fact that you have a col­lab­o­ra­tor make it less lone­ly? And how does that even work, with some­thing so per­son­al as writ­ing, to have some­one else in as well?

Def­i­nite­ly, hav­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tor makes it less lone­ly. I would say we talk a lot about it. We talk about what we want it to be and what we think it is, and we go off and write, alone most­ly. We’ll gen­er­ate pages alone – so I’ll go off and write 10 pages and bring them back, and vice ver­sa. Then we read them out loud and edit each oth­er and start putting things togeth­er. What real­ly hap­pens is that we end up almost shar­ing… it feels like we share a brain about it. It’s not like we argue or say, ​‘I think it should be this’ or, ​‘I think it should be that.’ It’s like we intu­itive­ly build the same thing together.

That sounds magical.

It is. It’s very mag­i­cal and it’s deeply plea­sur­able and sat­is­fy­ing to the point where, when we’ve writ­ten things sep­a­rate­ly, you real­ly do miss hav­ing that oth­er per­son to just share the task with and go on the jour­ney with. I mean, we read drafts of what we’re doing, but it’s not the same thing. It’s dif­fer­ent to be com­plete­ly inside some­thing with some­one else.

Could you ever imag­ine hav­ing anoth­er writ­ing partner?

Yeah, I have. I’ve been try­ing to write some­thing with some­one else and it’s a real­ly strange process. I don’t think there are that many peo­ple you can write with, to be hon­est. It’s spe­cial and it needs to be cul­ti­vat­ed. It takes time too, to cul­ti­vate it. And now it feels like, ​‘Oh, well, we wrote togeth­er so well right away’, but the truth is, I think there was a lot of work­ing towards it, and also I was so shy about what I had writ­ten the first time we worked togeth­er and then grad­u­al­ly got more con­fi­dent about show­ing him work. But it’s like any rela­tion­ship, it doesn’t hap­pen overnight, you kind of have to build it and build trust with each oth­er and it’s a long process.

Was he real­ly encour­ag­ing when you were shy at the beginning?

Yeah, he always thought that my writ­ing was real­ly fun­ny and rich and worth devel­op­ing and I think that gave me so much hope for what I was doing. Yeah, he would always say he was excit­ed to get my pages because he knew that they would be good, which was nice to hear.

It’s kind of ide­al feedback.

Yeah, def­i­nite­ly. I mean his pages were amaz­ing too, but that was more, he was also, in addi­tion to being 14 years old­er than me, he was just more estab­lished and so I think he def­i­nite­ly had less self-con­scious­ness around it.

Down­load the Mis­tress Amer­i­ca issue of LWLies Weekly

So the char­ac­ter of Brooke, for­give me for mak­ing this link, but it seems like there is some kind of con­nec­tion with the way she’s seen through Tracy’s eyes, Tra­cy just look­ing at her glo­ri­ous out­er shell. It strikes me that as an actress, maybe you have sim­i­lar things, of peo­ple being like, ​‘Con­grat­u­la­tions on your excel­lent shell.’

Oh yeah, that’s true. You know, I nev­er real­ly felt like I had such an excel­lent shell to con­grat­u­late. Not that I feel bad about myself in any way but I always feel like I wish I could hide some of my flaws more than I can but I can’t, so ulti­mate­ly I think that’s a good thing. But yeah, I’ve nev­er felt quite suc­cess­ful at being some­one who looks per­fect. I think I always look like a per­son who put on a dress.

What flaws do you wish you could hide?

So many things. As any­body who’s been pho­tographed, even by their friends at a birth­day par­ty, and then if you see a pic­ture of your­self and think, ​‘Oh god, I don’t walk around think­ing I look like that, but Jesus!’ I mean, a mil­lion lit­tle things. I used to hate my smile because I thought I was too big and too gum­my and now I’ve accept­ed that’s just my smile and it’s okay. I mean, that’s a phys­i­cal thing. I wish I could hide my thought process a lit­tle bit more. Some­times when I’m talk­ing, I real­ly think through my thoughts out loud with peo­ple and some­times I wish I had an abil­i­ty to come up with a pat answer more quick­ly. I wish I could stop appear­ing to be so ner­vous at times. My moth­er used to always say, ​‘You should try to be more mys­te­ri­ous!’ And I was like, ​‘I don’t know if any­one is going to buy that, mom.’ I feel like I’m not mys­te­ri­ous, I just won’t be able to pull it off. But I think she has an idea in her head of the Lau­ren Bacall type, deep voice, few words, sort of sexy and I said, ​‘I don’t think that’s my type. I don’t think that’s what I’m going to read as. Ever.’

It seems like you’ve owned who you are now, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Frances Ha. Does every­one now think you’re their best friend?

Ah, it’s real­ly nice. In New York, I live by NYU, so every fall I see these fresh­men mov­ing in and they’re very sweet to me and it’s real­ly nice. I like it. I sup­pose if you’re a per­son who’s hound­ed by paparazzi it could be hor­ri­ble, but for me, I just have 17-year-old girls com­ing up to me say­ing, ​‘Oh my god, I am Frances’. And I love that, that’s nice.

You’re not hound­ed by paparazzi?

Oh god, no. I live a bless­ed­ly anony­mous life. It’s great. When I’m not work­ing, I spend so much time just wan­der­ing around the city and work­ing in dif­fer­ent cof­fee shops and I think I would hate that, it would be a real bum­mer if that ever became my life.
What are you work­ing on at the moment, apart from pro­mot­ing Mis­tress Amer­i­ca?
In Sep­tem­ber I’m start­ing a film, I’m act­ing in a film, writ­ten and to be direct­ed by Mike Mills. He’s great. He did Begin­ners and Thumb­suck­er and he’s ter­rif­ic and it’s a great cast. Annette Ben­ing, and Elle Fan­ning and Bil­ly Crudup. And it’s just a real­ly beau­ti­ful script. It’s called 20^th Cen­tu­ry Woman.

We read this inter­view you gave to The Huff­in­g­ton Post where…

Oh god…

Oh no, it was good!

It’s just, it’s hard when peo­ple quote things back to me because I’m like, ​‘What did I say? Oh no.’

It’s more like an inter­est­ing theme, rather than what you direct­ly said.

Oh good.

It was about lik­a­bil­i­ty and the pres­sure to per­form like­able characters.

Oh yeah.

Are there any par­tic­u­lar­ly dark emo­tions that you’d like to explore that are not remote­ly likeable?

Oh, um, yeah. A mil­lion. I’m most­ly inter­est­ed in the things that you don’t want any­one to know about you. I think those are the things that when they are brought to light through art are the things that con­nect peo­ple and every­body com­plete­ly under­stands it. And I think that humans have such a huge capac­i­ty for empa­thy, and it’s so weird­ly under­used in the cycle of build­ing peo­ple up and tear­ing them down, but any­thing that taps into a sense of all of our bro­ken­ness is ele­vat­ing, even though it feels like it’s show­ing some­thing dark.

One hun­dred per cent agree. Films touch me where they con­nect with some­thing that I feel is shame­ful and it’s free­ing. What do you love about movies?

Um, I love that movies are a reverse mag­ic show. I think mag­ic is always about mak­ing some­thing appear that wasn’t there, like mak­ing a bird come out of a hat or a bun­ny or some­thing. And what I love about movies is it’s all this weight, like cam­eras and sound equip­ment and peo­ple and light­ing and cos­tumes and make­up and it’s all this weight and all this stuff and all this effort and then it dis­ap­pears into 90 min­utes of flick­er­ing light, and that’s a reverse mag­ic show. It takes the phys­i­cal and makes it spir­it, which makes me sounds crazy, but that’s how I feel.