Jessica Chastain: Holding All the Cards

By Travis Johnson

You know, the second sentence of your Wikipedia page reads “She is known for her portrayals of strong-willed women in films with a feminist theme.” Do you find it odd that someone felt the need to underline that? Is being a feminist so unusual?

Well, it’s an interesting thing. I am a feminist – I believe that women should be paid equally for equal work and I’m drawn to female characters who defy the expectation of what society expects for them, so perhaps that’s why. If you look at a lot of my characters, like The Zookeeper’s Wife, or The Tree of Life, or even maybe a little bit of The Help, I think those characters are so aggressive and ambitious in wanting to stand out on their own. I think those characters are different, but I do think that women are inherently strong, so I’m happy to showcase that in films.

Which segues nicely into the story of Molly Bloom, who definitely stands out from the pack. How did you become involved in Molly’s Game and what drew you to her story? 

Well, I was sent the script, but I wanted to be in it before I even read it, because I am a big fan and a big admirer of Aaron Sorkin. I think he’s such an incredible writer and he’s a political filmmaker – there’s a sense of idealism in his films. I think he inspires you to be braver than you are, more intelligent and more funny than you are, because his characters are. You kind of lean up to reach his characters, and I think a lot of times our entertainment gives us the lowest common denominator. And so I’m inspired by someone who inspires idealism and justice.

So I definitely wanted to be a part of it and once I read the script I was blown away by her. Not just for her personal story, but because it’s a film that explores patriarchy and I was shocked that, for his directorial debut, a man who has so much power in our industry, he could have told any story that he wanted to and he wanted to tell this story, and I was very moved by that.

Were you aware of Molly’s story beforehand?

No. There was a lot of Googling after I read the script!

How did you react to her “real” story as opposed to the version we have in the film? What did you get out of your research?

Well, actually, how accurate the script was! Aaron spent about a year with Molly writing the script and we see that relationship depicted in the film. The Charlie Jaffey – Molly Bloom relationship in the movie? Idris Elba’s character is basically Aaron Sorkin. From the very beginning where he says “You don’t need me, you need a publicist” to the end of the film when he says “You’re my daughter’s role model and I’m okay with that” it shows Aaron’s initial judgement of Molly and then, as he spent time with her, realising there was more than meets the eye.

Did you meet her at any point?

Oh yeah! I spent a lot of time with Molly and she was very generous with me, to allow me to study her, be a little detective, and she was very helpful in answering all my questions in terms of what she had done to get where she was.

How do you approach playing a real life character? Not just someone from history, but someone who’s alive now, who has their own life, and who is going to react in one way or another to the way you portray them on screen?

I make sure that they know from the very beginning that I don’t want to tell a story that’s just serving them. I find a lot of times when we look back at our past, we’re very different today than we were 10 years ago, and the Molly I met was a very different woman because she had a lot more experience than she was at the start of our film. It’s important for me that, if anyone knows that I’m going to play them, I’m interested in their mistakes, I’m interested in the complicated aspects of what it means to be a human being. I’m interested in how many times she falls down, because I want to see the character get back up. I like to see them grow. It’s a lot of vulnerability for someone to allow an actor to do that.

How did you find Aaron as a director? With his TV background, which is a very disciplined working environment, did he allow for much feedback or improvisation?

He did allow for it but, firstly, his dialogue is so good – it’s very rare that you get dialogue that’s crackling like that. Sometimes, Idris and I, we would go through the scenes and we would say “Hey, could I try this line instead of this line?” and Aaron would let us try it, but every single time it wasn’t as good! But sometimes Aaron would come in and he’d switch a line up. So he did allow for experimentation but, because he works so much on his scripts before you ever arrive, he’s worked out all of those short cuts to get a character to where they need to go.

Were there any points where his conception of Molly and your conception of Molly diverged a bit?

We never butted heads but, in the very beginning when I was studying Molly and I met with some of the men who played in her game, I was asking them a lot of questions about Molly, and a lot of them were talking about the drug use. I went back and I asked Aaron “Why don’t you explore the drug use in your film, because it’s the one thing that everyone keeps talking about with Molly?” and we discussed it a little bit, and the next time I got a draft of the script he had put the drug use in there. So I never felt like we butted heads; it felt like such a collaboration between the two of us. The character that I play is because of Aaron, and because of that back and forth in dialogue that he and I had.

Molly’s Game is in cinemas now. Read our review here.