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Hear Me Roar
Oscar-winning actress Melissa Leo sheds insight on starring in Kevin Smith’s indie horror flick ‘Red State’, and speaks candidly about difficult co-workers...
Veteran performer - and now Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner for The Fighter - Melissa Leo is warm, welcoming, funny and charming. She's also remarkably frank, as demonstrated by the conversation she had with us about her role in Kevin Smith's upcoming horror film Red State, in which she plays Sarah, the blindly obedient daughter to charismatic cult leader Abin Cooper (Tarantino favourite Michael Parks).
How did you first come to the project?
Well, I didn't really know who Kevin Smith was. He seemed to get a lot of respect from people whose opinions I know and respect. So I decided to chat with him, and he flattered me so, even though, having read his script, I didn't quite know where he was headed with it.... And he said he'd been making a very different kind of film and now he wanted to make this, and he wanted people to know he was serious and he felt that if I was in his film, people would feel that way. So I said, ‘Well gosh, okay, sure!' and joined him there in California and shot it.
How did you approach the role of Sara?
It's like playing anyone else; it's like playing Juliet. Who is she? What does she want? Where is she coming from? What are her circumstances? As I assumed her character, with the help of the costume department and the hair department, I could understand it. Betty Aberlin [who plays Abigail, another church member] was an enormous help; she had a lot of factual information about very right-wing Christians living in the country today. The family, although not based on anybody truly in particular, is a kind of fantastical notion on what could easily happen! [Laughs] So I tried to give Kevin what he wanted for his film. He had a very specific kind of thing he was trying to do, in a specific kind of way.
This is Kevin Smith's first real departure from comedy. What was it like working with him?
Kevin is one of the most jovial, loving, caring and right-thinking people I have ever met.
And Michael Parks? You share the majority of your screen time with him.
You're the first person that's asked me that in a long, long time, in all the questions about Red State for over a year now, and I can only tell the truth: horrendous. And it's something I would rarely say about another actor.
Why was that?
Selfishness. He banned me from the room when he was working. Sorry to lay you flat on it. There's a very old school of acting we don't do any more: we used to call ‘em hams. The life of an actor is a hard, hard life, and mostly when we get to play together we know what the others have been through, and treat one another with a great deal of respect. It's hard to work with somebody when they don't let you in the room.
I imagine the work must have been very difficult for you.
Some of the most difficult I've ever done. But then John Goodman showed up! Off camera we snuggled. He's a wonderful human being. So when Parks would get really snarky, I'd just mutter under my breath, ‘Wait ‘til my husband gets here, you!' [Goodman and Leo play husband and wife on the HBO series Treme.]
Finally, what effect has your Oscar win had on the roles you're being offered?
Not a whole hell of a lot as yet! I'm still hoping! I've had a very slow uphill incline, after a great deal of up and down over, I don't know, twenty-some odd years. For ten years now, a very slow uphill climb, insofar as what is available to me and offered to me and so on. The job with HBO and Treme is really a pleasure and a joy.
Red State is released in cinemas October 13.
