(upbeat, drum music)
- Hi, this is Marya Gullo from The Hollywood Reporter
and we're In Studio today
with Eliza Scanlen from Sharp Objects.
- Hi! - Hi, Eliza.
How are you? - I'm good, how are you?
- Good, I'm good.
I am reeling from Sharp Objects.
What an amazing series. - I know.
- It's very impressive.
This is kind of your first major role.
- Yeah, yeah, it's pretty insane that
for one of my first roles,
it's this and it's this dark
but yeah the reception's been awesome.
Everyone seems to be really loving it
and really getting into it. - Yeah.
- Yeah, like you said, after every episode,
people just have to take a breather.
- [Marya] Just kind of collect themselves.
- Yeah, yeah, it's pretty dark.
- You have, your character Amma,
is having a moment on the internet.
- Really? - Yes.
There have been so many articles written about her
and about your performance.
And one of the things that they're comparing you to
is Joffrey from Game of Thrones
as like an ultimate bad teen.
- Oh my God!
- (laughs) How does it feel to be?
How does it feel to be compared
to Joffrey from Game of Thrones?
(Marya laughing) - It's insane.
You know, it's weird that people are even
talking about me on the internet.
Six months ago, I was pretty anonymous.
Yeah, the whole thing is just weird.
Last year, I was shooting the show
and I had just come out of school
and it's just been such a new experience
for me this past year.
So, I feel like every day I have to pinch myself.
Something new and weird happens literally every day
and I don't know.
Yeah, it's strange.
It's strange and I'm very humbled by the whole thing.
- Tell me about the process of
creating the character of Amma.
'Cause you had the book as the source material.
But then, you're also working with the director.
You know, what was it like to kind of
create that character with,
just tell me the process.
- Yeah, it was actually really kind of
an independent process.
I didn't really get a lot of advice
from Gillian which I was like "Oh, okay."
She really just sort of handed me the reins
and let me explore myself
which I found really scary at first
but in the end, it was really freeing I think.
You can go so many different ways with Amma as a character.
She's just so multi-faceted that in a way,
if you were to kind of
pigeon-hole her into one sort of direction,
I think it would limit her as a character.
And yeah, I actually had this scrapbook, I guess,
that I used to write about the character
and she's really interested in a lot of historical figures
so I did a bit of research like Joan of Arc.
So I wrote a lot about that and I stuck that all in
and if there were ever scenes I needed flushing out with,
I mean, a lot of the scenes are really confusing.
Like, Amma is just so enigmatic as a character.
So whenever there was something,
I was like, "I don't really know why Amma's doing that.
Why does she have to be so mean?"
I sort of write it down and try and justify
her actions and what she was doing.
So yeah, I think,
at the time I was just as confused
as everyone else is by Amma.
(laughing)
- I mean she's, she doesn't have
multiple personality disorder but she has to be
so many different people for so many different people
in order to maneuver within the world
that she's created for herself or has been created for her.
Your two main scene partners
are Patricia Clarkson and Amy Adams.
And with both of them,
you have to be two different people.
- Mmm hmm. - What was that like?
Tell me about the process of meeting Amy and Patricia
for the first time
and then kind of creating these characters.
- Meeting Patricia and Amy
for the first time was
overwhelming.
They're both people that I really look up to as artists
and people in general.
But I think what made
performing with them so great
was that we already had a relationship beforehand
and by the end of the shoot,
we developed something that was,
I think really special
and we all felt really close with one another.
And like you said,
yeah, a lot of people,
they kind of see the duality of Amma
and it's easy to see it as good girl and bad girl
but yeah, I really see it as it's two different versions
of truth and everyone's identity is multi-faceted.
And depending on the person by communicating with,
we highlight one aspect to suit the situation.
And I guess that's what Amma is doing constantly
but in a more extreme sense because, you know,
the stakes have been heightened.
There's two dead girls and there's a killer on the loose.
So, I guess developing those relationships
came with the development of
our real relationships as people.
They both have a very maternal quality to them
and they always made it their priority
to make me feel really comfortable.
I guess
at it's core,
Camille and Adora, they want to take care of Amma
but they just have different ways of going about it.
Yeah, it was absolutely incredible working with them.
- How does it feel,
I mean, one of the things that's said
about your character is that she's creepy.
- (laughs) Yeah.
- What is it like to play creepy?
- I didn't really see myself as creepy
but I don't want to say it.
I'm like, "Okay, I'm just gonna go with it."
- Like, in the first few episodes,
people were like, "Something's not right."
- Yeah, she's actually pretty creepy, I'll admit.
Um, yeah I think it's her, I guess her way of
navigating the situation and she's like,
I don't know, the way I saw it,
so much of Amma is about the way she moves
and I found focusing on that and the way she moves
through situations really interesting.
She's kind of like a snake.
That's how I see it.
She's always navigating herself in and out of situations
without reaping the consequences.
But yeah, I think it's really funny at first
seeing Camille so thrown off by Amma
and she's very much an enigma to Camille in the beginning
and to the audience as well because the show is,
I guess you progress through this story in a way
that's not really the typical way that we see a story.
We're not given the juicy stuff straight away
and I think we're used to that.
Especially with, you know, the TV out there
that you can binge watch now.
And so, I guess,
yeah, I think it's nice that,
especially the bigger plot points,
they give in slowly.
Like Camille's cutting.
You only really notice that fully until you get to
the later episodes and that's when you actually really see
the extent of the damage and the trauma.
And I guess that's also reflective
of mental illness in a way.
You don't really see it on surface level.
A lot of the time,
you don't see that someone is suffering.
And yeah, as you progress through the story,
it kind of mirrors that opening up, I guess
when you look into the mind of someone
who is going through something traumatic
or they're suffering from a mental illness.
It's just a nice parallel, I think, yeah.
- It's repeated a lot within the actual series
that the story is about dead girls.
And some women may be uncomfortable
with that subject matter.
But then, we're looking at a cast that's all women
and it's about the women who are alive
and living within the plot.
So how does Sharp Objects kind of ride that line of
making you uncomfortable
but also getting amazing performances out of actresses?
- Um, yeah, that kind of
dead girl stereotype has been used
quite a lot over the years.
And I guess as we see this story unfold,
it becomes less about the dead girls
and more about Camille and dealing with her own demons
and I guess,
in a way,
refuses to fall into the stereotype.
And that's what I love about it.
It's about something deeper
and more
internal than anything.
I don't know, it's just weird.
The whole dead girl thing,
I don't really see too much of it in the show.
I really think it's about
the rise and fall of Camille Preaker
and everyone else around her.
And in the end, that's what people want to watch.
They want to see relationships unfold on screen.
And yeah, I think that people really
relate to the show in that way.
- How are your rollerskating skills?
- They're amazing. (laughter)
I actually went to a rollerskating camp a few months ago
because, I don't know, it was just really fun.
And it was with this rollerskating company
called Moxi Rollerskates.
Shout out to Moxi.
(laughs)
And it was insane.
I rollerskated on ramps,
I rollerskated on hills,
into foam pits and it was so fun.
And I recommend everyone should try it
at least once in their life.
But yeah, I had a lot of lessons
and there are a lot of long nights rollerskating.
(laughs) There was one night where I stuck it pretty hard.
It was three in the morning and I had the flu
and that's kind of where we ended that night
because it was pretty big fall!
Yeah, I mean, I love it.
I'm pretty proud of what I achieved.
- Yeah, I appreciate that touch that these are teens
from kind of a, they're in a different time period.
- Yeah.
- Because of the small town that they're in.
- Yeah.
- So they're on rollerskates,
not rollerblades or skateboards?
- Yeah, it's great.
(both laughing)
- So I just wanted to say,
congratulations on being cast in Little Women.
- Thank you!
Thank you very much! - That's very exciting.
We had Greta Gerwig here when she was doing the rounds
for Ladybird and she is an amazing director.
Are you excited to be working with her?
- Oh my gosh, I'm a huge fan of Greta Gerwig.
So, I mean, meeting her and being in the room with her
and auditioning with her was a blessing in itself
so actually getting the role is really quite an achievement
and I'm really, really humbled about the offer
and I'm so excited to get started.
- And this cast.
Meryl Streep, Emma Stone, Saoirse Ronan,
Timothée Chalamet, and Florence Pugh.
That's amazing. - Mmm hmm.
- Are you super excited to be working with these people?
- I'm very excited.
I think it's not going to be real until it is.
I don't, it hasn't processed in my head.
But I mean, I'm really excited to
just get onto set
and get started.
But it's, yeah, I feel like
(laughs) my life gets crazier by the minute.
It's really quite incredible, yeah.
- I mean, if I were you,
I'd be thinking about some small talk
that you can throw out to Meryl.
(laughter) - I mean, what do you say?
- (laughs) I don't know. - Do you like dogs?
- Do you like dogs?
Perfect! - Everyone likes dogs, so.
- That's great!
- That's a good place to start.
- Good opener. - Yeah.
(both laughing)
- Will you be watching the past versions of Little Women?
- I have seen the Winona Ryder one
but I haven't actually seen anything else
and I've got started on the book.
But a lot of my friends are huge fans.
I mean, it's nice.
I think Greta is
kind of revolutionary
and her filmmaking style is really unique
and I'm really excited to see what she's going to do with it
and how she's gonna approach the characters.
Because I've got a feeling she's got some new ideas
about how it's going to be adapted, so.
- Yeah, I see a lot of new ideas coming forward.
- Yeah, definitely.
- [Marya] A collective of creatives coming together.
- Yeah, yeah, for sure.
- Yeah, we have a thing we do at The Hollywood Reporter
called First, Best, Last, Worst.
- (laughs) Uh huh.
- So, I'll ask you four questions.
What was the first film performance
that really impressed you?
- Ooh.
Ooh, that's a hard one.
Probably
Silence of the Lambs.
It always does it for me.
Jodie Foster's pretty incredible.
- Yeah, yeah.
What was the best day on set of Sharp Objects?
What was your best day on set?
- Man, there was so many good days.
Probably the day where Amy and I,
we were just in a mood for singing
and we, like, whipped out
Spotify and literally played every song
that we knew word for word to.
And one of them included Eminem's song
Without Me and Amy and I would just rap battling it out
and it was really fun and obviously,
she's really good at musical theater
so she was doing the whole Moana thing
and we were just sitting there listening like,
"Sing more, Amy!" (laughing)
- Free concert! - Yeah, it was really good.
Yeah, we sang a lot on set.
(both laughing)
- What was the last piece of acting advice
that really stuck with you?
- Hmm,
I did a course recently
with Steppenwolf Theater Company.
We were studying the Meisner Technique
and probably the main thing I got out of that,
was, pardon my French, fuck being polite!
(Marya laughing)
And I think Australians do so much of that
where we're so cautious about saying the right thing
and doing the right thing and you just can't afford
to do that when you're on the stage and when you're acting.
So yeah, it's about just following your impulses
and no impulse is a bad impulse.
You just have to follow through with it.
And if you get rejected,
then you get rejected and it's fine.
Yeah, it was one of
the most life-changing courses I've ever done.
- Wow. - Yeah.
- Yeah, that's great advice.
Be more open.
- Yeah, exactly.
It's the most important thing about acting, I think.
Yeah. - Absolutely.
Do you have a worst audition story?
- (laughs) Yes.
I was in my final year of high school
and this was before I decided to take a break
to just study and this was probably the reason
why I decided to take a break
because I walked into that audition.
I think it was for Pacific Rim number two
and I thought I had the lines down
but it must have been with all the other study I was doing
and trying to remember that
combined with trying to learn the lines,
that I just, I didn't know them and I walked in
and I kept on apologizing.
That's probably the worst thing you can do in an audition
is to keep saying, "Sorry."
So yeah, that's my worst audition ever.
I just kept apologizing until I got out
and I burst into tears and that was the end of it.
And I didn't audition for a very long time.
(laughter) Yeah.
- Well, I have a feeling that's
your last worst audition story.
- Oh, thankfully, thankfully.
Never again.
- Eliza, thank you so much for being here.
- Thank you so much.
- The show is Sharp Objects on HBO.
(swiping)