Vicky Krieps: ​‘Phan­tom Thread is more of a dance than it is a fight’

Although Vicky Krieps is not yet a house­hold name, it almost goes with­out say­ing that Lux­em­bourg-born actor’s star­ring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phan­tom Thread may be the ulti­mate call­ing card. In the film she plays a wait­ress named Alma who is swept up into the inte­ri­or and intense world of high fash­ion design­er Reynolds Wood­cock, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. She stands toe-to-toe with the method mae­stro in every scene, and what ini­tial­ly feels like a pres­sure-cook­er bat­tle of the sex­es even­tu­al­ly reveals itself as some­thing more com­plex. We sat down with Krieps to dis­cov­er how exact­ly she stepped into her character’s shoes.

LWLies: Do you enjoy talk­ing to peo­ple about Phan­tom Thread, and hear­ing their the­o­ries about it?

Yes, I enjoy dis­cov­er­ing what exact­ly they have seen. Every­one gets some­thing unique I think.

Do you feel you know the actu­al mean­ing to the film?

A lit­tle bit. I’ve had all these ques­tions from all over the world and they give me a sense. And also because of the dub­bing, I saw the movie scene by scene, over and over again. I could study Daniel and Les­ley work very closely.

As you’ve trav­elled around, do dif­fer­ent coun­tries have dif­fer­ent read­ings of the film?

Yes. It’s very inter­est­ing. Also, I’ve found that the more time that pass­es, peo­ples’ inter­pre­ta­tions change. As if peo­ple allow them­selves to see more. In the begin­ning, the ques­tions I got were quite super­fi­cial. I was only asked about Daniel and Paul and whether it’s a pow­er strug­gle. Orig­i­nal­ly, peo­ple were only inter­est­ed in the pow­er strug­gle and Alma win­ning. And had to say that I didn’t think any­one wins, and that the film is maybe about dia­logue. It’s more of a dance than a fight. Peo­ple are more open now. They’re ready to see more. It’s inter­est­ing how the per­cep­tion of the movie pro­gress­es over time.

The more I think about Phan­tom Thread, the less I seem to know about it.

Exact­ly. After see­ing it three times I start­ed to be able to feel the movie. I wouldn’t say that I start­ed to under­stand it, because even now I don’t real­ly under­stand it. But I under­stand that there’s no need to under­stand it.

When you first saw the com­plet­ed film, was it a sur­prise to you?

To me it was a com­plete sur­prise that it actu­al­ly worked. That was my ini­tial impres­sion. I was so excit­ed – I went to Paul and said, ​‘It works!’. Imag­ine this movie as a script. It was great – the dia­logue is genius. But then in terms of what’s hap­pen­ing, espe­cial­ly with the end­ing, you start to ask ques­tion about what it all means and how it all works. It’s a bit like what you do when you’re watch­ing it. I won­dered if peo­ple would believe this thing. If I say it works, I mean that the love sto­ry works. And if you believe the love sto­ry, then you believe the end­ing. You accept it. And that was a surprise.

It’s hard to imag­ine a script for a movie like this.

This film in par­tic­u­lar, there’s a lot of edit­ing work that’s gone on. A lot of the cred­it goes to the edi­tor, Dylan Tichenor, who works with Paul. You always say, a movie is made three times: in the writ­ing; in the mak­ing; and in the edit­ing. In this case, it’s very, very true. In the writ­ing stage, I was able to relate to the film with­out under­stand­ing it. I had a taste of this sto­ry with­out ever real­ly know­ing what it was. There are scenes, like one near the end when I make an omelette and I sit down and he’s there. We didn’t rehearse any of it – we just trust­ed that it would work. The lines don’t give you the answer. We just did it.

What was the atmos­phere like on set?

Paul cre­at­ed an atmos­phere that was so silent and still. It was almost holy, like a church. He made the con­di­tions so we could open our­selves up.

Did Paul ever time and explain the film to you?

No. All he did was tell me why he wrote it and how it came to him. He was sick and he had his wife look after him. We con­nect­ed on an emo­tion­al, intu­itive lev­el. Just this image gave me so much. For Alma he just said that she lost her moth­er and she immi­grat­ed just after the war, and that was enough for me to build a back­sto­ry. I knew he wasn’t going to give me any more than that, except maybe ​‘be your­self’. And often you don’t know who you are. I went back and looked up every­thing I could find about my grand­par­ents dur­ing the war. I found out what it was like to be a young woman dur­ing the war and lose peo­ple you loved. Mov­ing to a new coun­try. Build­ing a new life. Being a moth­er for your father and broth­er and sis­ter. This woman had to be super strong. We shot a scene which we didn’t use in her house, and it real­ly was the tini­est house you could imag­ine. She had no mon­ey. She was prob­a­bly cold for most of her life. Yet she was open enough to have these scene in the restau­rant, see this man and fol­low him. So Alma was like a rid­dle I was try­ing to solve. I gave her what­ev­er she need­ed to be able to do this.

The sto­ry Paul has told about the mak­ing of this film, about being ill and being nursed by his wife. Did you feel that you were play­ing a ver­sion of Paul’s wife?

I nev­er thought of this. I know his wife, and I’m so very dif­fer­ent so I could nev­er even imag­ine it. Also, the main issue for me is I can’t imag­ine Paul sick in bed. It’s the last think I could ever imag­ine. It must have been very bad.

You hadn’t met Daniel pri­or to shoot­ing the film, so I won­dered if you could tell me about the first time you made eye con­tact with him?

It was emo­tion­al and it was nice. And it was also the strangest feel­ing, because some­thing about it was so obvi­ous. I expect­ed myself to be more ner­vous and scared and inse­cure. But I wasn’t at all. I don’t know why. I knew I could be this per­son that he was see­ing. He was Reynolds, obvi­ous­ly, and I had this feel­ing that, yes, I can be Alma. And I had to do so in this one look.

It must be hard to play a scene like that when you’ve read the script and you know that he’s been sin­gle for about 12 hours.

I had seen it, but I for­got about it. I was good about for­get­ting every­thing I knew about Paul and Daniel. Every­thing I didn’t know about method act­ing I decid­ed to not find out. I didn’t watch all of their movies. It was like med­i­ta­tion. This film was like walk­ing through nature. Most of my work here is just about for­get­ting. And even for­get­ting that I am an actress.

Phan­tom Thread is released 2 Feb­ru­ary. Read our review here.