Kather­ine Water­ston: ​‘I would love to make this film five times’

At the time of writ­ing, Kather­ine Water­ston is locked down in Lon­don, on hia­tus from shoot­ing the third instal­ment in Warn­er Bros’ Fan­tas­tic Beasts and Where to Find Them fran­chise. Being in iso­la­tion these past months has giv­en the British-born Amer­i­can actor plen­ty of time to reflect on her role in Mona Fastvold’s lyri­cal fron­tier west­ern The World to Come, which Water­ston describes as one of the most reward­ing expe­ri­ences of her career.

She plays a 19^th-cen­tu­ry farm work­er who, apt­ly enough, is cut off from the out­side world, sole­ly reliant on her car­ing but emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant hus­band (played by Casey Affleck) and the small patch of land they have cul­ti­vat­ed togeth­er. Secret­ly she har­bours a desire to break out of her domes­tic shack­les and forge a deep­er connection.

LWLies: The World to Come is set in Upstate New York but was filmed on loca­tion in Roma­nia, on sets built from scratch. How was that experience?

Water­ston: You know, it’s just occurred to me that the two most help­ful things I’ve ever expe­ri­enced as an actor are hav­ing a script for a long time, and shoot­ing on loca­tion. Because it takes time to get a char­ac­ter in your bones. And to be able to have low-stakes time with a char­ac­ter where you can just day­dream about them and you don’t have to deliv­er any­thing or get any­thing right is such a gift.

With this film I was lucky to have the script for a year before we start­ed shoot­ing, and I was so unpre­pared for how much arriv­ing in Roma­nia would do for me, how much it would give me. It was com­plete­ly over­whelm­ing. Just because it was so remote – we were about four hours’ dri­ve from Bucharest, and the air was like air I had nev­er breathed before, it was so crisp and clean. We were work­ing very long, very hard hours, but being in that envi­ron­ment was real­ly quite ener­gis­ing. There was no burnout on set from any­one, which is pret­ty rare; I con­vinced myself it was the beau­ti­ful coun­try air.

Maybe there’s noth­ing more impor­tant when you’re watch­ing films than being able to focus. There’s obvi­ous­ly in between takes so much going on on set, and no actors under any illu­sions about what they’re there to do. We have to deliv­er in these brief moments when they call ​‘acton’ and tell this sto­ry; in this case a sto­ry that meant so much to all of us. So the pres­sure to main­tain that focus is quite high, and when you get to have an immer­sive expe­ri­ence where you essen­tial­ly live your days on set and off – we nev­er left the mile radius of the set for the whole time we were shoot­ing – it real­ly helps you to stay in the state of mind of the character.

How long was the shoot, exactly?

It was so intense it feels like it was so long, but actu­al­ly we only shot for three weeks – that was in the sum­mer – and then we returned in the autumn and shot for I think sev­en or eight days straight. I’m not even sure I’m sup­posed to say that, I’m sure it’s some kind of SAG breach or some­thing [laughs]. But it was real­ly impor­tant to Mona [Fastvold] from the begin­ning that we cap­tured the dif­fer­ent sea­sons. If you try and fake it the audi­ence will pick up on it. You can always tell if it’s sup­posed to be a cer­tain time of year and someone’s bun­dled up and you’re sup­posed to be able to see their breath but the sun feels too warm, or there’s a nice big green leaf in the background.

Espe­cial­ly for Case [Affleck] and I, there were so many scenes of us just labour­ing on the farm, and I think it serves the film to see those scenes and it also served us to actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence them and to feel the stakes of that kind of lifestyle. If you lose a chick­en in a storm, for exam­ple, it real­ly mat­ters; the health and well-being of the farm was in direct cor­re­la­tion with the health and well-being of these two indi­vid­u­als. Shoot­ing those scenes and going through the sea­sons real­ly gave me a feel for what that kind of life might be like.

You used the word ​‘immer­sive’ ear­li­er. Does work­ing with a small cast and crew enhance that?

If I look back at the films I’ve made, there’s an ener­gy on set when a script is real­ly good. On this film, there were many peo­ple who didn’t speak Eng­lish, and I don’t speak a lick of Roman­ian, so in that sense it was much more of a vibe, there was a feel­ing in the air of that kind of ener­gy, but it wasn’t so much ver­balised. But that was actu­al­ly very help­ful to me, my char­ac­ter being so locked with­in her­self and iso­lat­ed in her dai­ly expe­ri­ences. It was odd­ly help­ful that every­one was speak­ing a lan­guage I didn’t under­stand, I wasn’t dis­tract­ed by some­one say­ing, ​‘Oh, we’re nev­er gonna get that shot before the sun sets.’ I was less con­scious of the dai­ly strug­gles on a film set, which are inevitable, and I was able to stay in character.

This is in essence a love sto­ry, but it also address­es themes of domes­tic vio­lence, the his­tor­i­cal sub­ju­ga­tion of women, iso­la­tion, and moth­er­hood. What was it about the script that appealed to you specifically?

When I opened the script the first time, on the first page there was a line of voiceover that I don’t believe made it into the final cut: ​‘At night I often won­der if those who have been my inti­mates have found me to be a steep hill whose view does not repay the ascent.’ I hadn’t even got­ten halfway down the first page and from that line I knew I was going to love the film and I knew I was going to love the char­ac­ter. It so struck me, the idea of some­one who has such self­less con­cerns haunt­ing her at night. That was a very com­pelling idea. And also, the idea of being an asset, which is anoth­er descrip­tion on the first page of the script. I just thought that was a real­ly loaded and inter­est­ing notion. Obvi­ous neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive con­no­ta­tions come to mind.

At that point I didn’t even know about the love sto­ry or any­thing of this world. As the big themes and events of the film were revealed to me I just felt like I was being tak­en on such an excit­ing jour­ney. The scenes play like scenes in plays, and in the best plays I’ve worked on there’s no end to the work you can do on them. I would love to make this film five times. There was just such tremen­dous room for the actors to play. We all very quick­ly became very invest­ed in try­ing to mine these scenes for what­ev­er truth and fun and love we could find in them.

Were you able to do any research into what life was like for a woman like Abi­gail at this time?

I did read the Anne Lis­ter book which was help­ful, although she was from a dif­fer­ent coun­try and of a dif­fer­ent class. Her diaries were writ­ten in a code and fam­i­ly mem­bers found it years lat­er and decod­ed it and then hid it again and then it was dis­cov­ered again. It’s the most fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry, and as I was read­ing it I was like ​‘This should be a film’ and then I realised some­one already made a TV show about it.

I also read a lot of very niche, obscure stuff about farm life in the 19^th cen­tu­ry that I don’t high­ly rec­om­mend. The writ­ers gave me a read­ing list that was real­ly help­ful, books they had referred to in the process of adapt­ing the short sto­ry. But I think the whole notion of research is a kind of dan­ger­ous thing, like it’s a way to prove that you’re a seri­ous actor. Hav­ing said that, what I do find help­ful about it is where it can ran­dom­ly take you. When you dig around enough, some­times you stum­ble on a good idea.

That’s the way that I pre­fer to use it, as a spring­board for the imag­i­na­tion. But there’s so lit­tle known about the life of a farm woman from that peri­od in his­to­ry. The orig­i­nal short sto­ry was based on a farm log that was all about how many eggs were pro­duced that week and that sort of thing, and there were just one per­son­al line in the entire book and it was: ​‘My best friend has gone away, I do not believe I shall ever see her again.’

There’s one scene I want­ed to ask you about, which is the bliz­zard sequence. What was that like to film?

One of the books I read was ​‘The Great Storms of New Eng­land’ [laughs]. Yeah… This film has turned out to be odd­ly pre­scient, I think. I remem­ber when we pre­miered at Venice there’s a scene where Dyer [played by Casey Affleck] gets sick, and the first time he coughed in the film, I felt this ten­sion move through the audi­ence. It so sur­prised me because these were the things when we were telling this sto­ry that we thought peo­ple would strug­gle to con­nect with. You know, pre-pan­dem­ic, is any­one going to relate to how ter­ri­fy­ing some­one get­ting a cold might be at a time when some­thing seem­ing­ly quite innocu­ous could actu­al­ly be deadly.

I think, giv­en the time the film is com­ing out, peo­ple are going to be more moved by the storm sequence because we have all expe­ri­enced our own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty over the past year. So much of this film is about phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, how pre­car­i­ous our lives are. That’s what I was struck by watch­ing this film, just how vul­ner­a­ble these indi­vid­u­als are and how much is at stake when things we don’t think of today as being a big deal, like a snow storm, hap­pen. I’m curi­ous, what struck you about it?

There’s a par­tic­u­lar image that’s lodged in my mind, where Abi­gail seeks shel­ter in a barn that turns out to be occu­pied – it real­ly empha­sis­es how iso­lat­ed and vul­ner­a­ble she and every­one in this world is.

I think one thing that’s so smart about the sto­ry and how it’s writ­ten is it isn’t the sto­ry of two women run­ning from their hor­ri­ble spous­es into each other’s arms. Cer­tain­ly on Abigail’s side it’s a much more com­plex dynam­ic; there’s a real bond and real love between her and Dyer. I sup­pose the storm scene also illus­trates what an asset she is to him, her respon­si­bil­i­ties to him and to the farm that extend beyond the roman­tic. They are tru­ly allies; she is his pro­tec­tor and much as he is hers; their rela­tion­ship is an eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ship and they are depen­dent on each oth­er. It’s a real­ly beau­ti­ful­ly and intri­cate­ly pre­sent­ed exam­i­na­tion of partnership.

The World to Come opens on lim­it­ed release in the US on 12 Feb­ru­ary, and is avail­able in the UK from 2 April.