Gill Pringle
“Really? I didn’t know that,” Mary Elizabeth Winstead laughs when FilmInk informs her that the makers of 10 Cloverfield Lane have proclaimed her their first and only choice for the film. “That’s so cool! I always assume that I’m like the fifth person that they’ve gone to. That’s lovely!” The on-the-rise star of films like Death Proof, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Alex Of Venice, and Smashed, however, has her doubts about these claims, despite her obvious excitement. “I know that they were auditioning people, and I think that they just weren’t finding the person that they wanted that way, so they decided to offer it out to me,” Winstead says warily.
The offer, however, wasn’t the standard type thrown out by producers and directors. Seemingly dropping out of nowhere, 10 Cloverfield Lane was finished and only months out from release before anybody even knew about it. No leaks in the trades, no internet gossip…nothing. Then came the whispers that the film was in some way related to the 2008 found-footage alien flick, Cloverfield. “This movie is very purposefully not called ‘Cloverfield 2’, because it’s not ‘Cloverfield 2,’” power producer, J.J. Abrams – who has guided both films – later revealed, “but the association is clear, and there are multiple connections. There is a bigger idea at play for us with these movies and this connection.”
Not surprisingly, the project was shrouded in secrecy right from the off. “They sent me the script, but it was this very secretive way of doing it,” Winstead explains. “I got one link, that I could open one time on my laptop, and then as soon as I was finished with the script, it would delete automatically. A lot of times, I read things a couple of times, and really figure out how I feel about it, but this was like one chance. I read it once. Even my agents didn’t get to read it. It was really all on that one read, but I fell absolutely in love with the story, and the characters, and in particular the character of Michelle. Shortly afterwards, I was able to attempt a Skype meeting with [director] Dan Trachtenberg, which failed, because technology fails us so often! It turned into a phone call, and he was so lovely, and we both had the same ideas on who this character was, and how she should be portrayed. He took away any fears that I had about anything…he just completely took them away. He was such a lovely person to talk to. So, between that, and John Goodman, and J.J. Abrams, I was in completely!”
In 10 Cloverfield Lane, Winstead plays Michelle, who wakes from a car accident to find herself in the basement of a house belonging to John Goodman’s Howard Stambler, who says that he’s saved her from a chemical attack that has left the Earth’s surface uninhabitable. “I read a couple of biographies about women who had been kidnapped, and held captive in small spaces, just to get an idea of what that would feel like, even though that’s not exactly happening to Michelle,” Winstead says, “or at least she doesn’t quite know what’s happening to her. I wanted to understand what that would feel like to be held somewhere and not to be able to get out, and to be suddenly taken away from everything that you know. So I did a little bit of research like that, just to get in her headspace just a little bit, even though this obviously isn’t a true crime film. But it was good to get a little of that perspective.”
Though the implied connections with Cloverfield might ultimately make 10 Cloverfield Lane a science fiction flick, on paper, it certainly sounds like a psychological horror film, which would certainly place it in the career wheelhouse of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who has clocked time in the likes of Black Christmas, The Thing, Final Destination 3, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Does she have a face for horror? “The funny thing is, when you think about it, often times the protagonist in those films aren’t the type of people that you’d say, ‘Oh, they should be in a horror film’, because really, you want somebody that you can empathise with,” Winstead reasons.
While 10 Cloverfield Lane is helmed by debutante, Dan Trachtenberg, much of the buzz around the film has been created because of the involvement of J.J. Abrams as producer. “He was a huge presence on set,” Winstead reveals of the surging power player. “He was off making this little movie called Star Wars which nobody’s heard of, so he was a little bit busy. I didn’t expect to hear from him at all, because I thought that he’d be in over his head working on that film, but he called every day. Every day, he would check in. He would have new ideas, he would be sending emails, and he would be commenting on the dailies. He was a constant presence, just in terms of being creatively involved, which I didn’t expect. I was blown away by just his energy level, and his ability to be constantly thinking about this movie, at the same time that he was making this huge, huge franchise. He’s just bubbling with this super smart energy. You feel like everything that comes out of his mouth, you want to record it, and harness it, and say, ‘This is brilliant. Whatever you are saying, I want more of that.’ I feel like he probably never sleeps. I think his brain never turns off. He’s just so present and alert and with you, and ready to take on whatever’s coming. It’s such an incredible quality.”
A chilling chamber piece that plays out for the most part with just three characters (Short Term 12 and The Newsroom’s John Gallagher Jr. is stuck in the basement too), 10 Cloverfield Lane is a far different beast to the big, city-destroying movie that was its apparent “blood relative”, Cloverfield. This is a psychological horror film where manipulation, deceit, and deception are the order of the day. “I love the fact that even though it was this genre film, it really focuses on the characters, and who they are as people, and where they are in terms of their psychology,” Winstead says. “In a lot of the scenes, it felt like we were doing more of a character piece. You don’t often get to meld those two things, and I think that people are starved for that a little bit. You have these big genre movies, which are about scares, and they don’t really have a lot of substance. Or you have these really serious dramas that can maybe not draw the biggest crowds. This movie melds those two things in such an interesting way, and that was something that I was really drawn to. I think that other people will be too.”
And one final question: do Winstead’s friends and family call her Mary Elizabeth, or is the double-barrel moniker a requirement brought on by the fact that there was perhaps another Mary Winstead out there, causing a Screen Actors Guild-enforced name change. After all, that’s why there’s a J in Michael J. Fox. “It was a SAG [Screen Actors Guild] thing, but I didn’t need to do it, I just wanted to,” the actress replies. “I joined SAG at twelve, and I just wanted to sound fancy. That’s really what it was about. If I got in trouble, I’d be called Mary Elizabeth, but on a day to day basis, it’s really just Mary. But as a kid, I thought, like all kids do, that my name was so boring. Mary Winstead sounded so boring to me, so I threw the Elizabeth in, just for good measure.
10 Cloverfield Lane is released in cinemas on March 10.
