VENICE DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
The Wild Horse Nine actor tells Hollywood Authentic how her friendship with Sam Rockwell made their on-screen marriage zing.
If it feels like Parker Posey and Sam Rockwell have real, tangible history together in Martin McDonaugh’s Venice-bowing Wild Horse Nine, it’s because they have. ‘I’ve known Sam for like 30 years and have always felt a kinship with him,’ Posey tells Hollywood Authentic at the floating city’s Danieli Hotel. ‘We’d had similar career trajectories, from the independent film scene in the ’90s and having lived and worked in New York. Sam was in Lawn Dogs in the ’90s, and I remember Tom Dichello telling me that if the part had been written for a female that I’d have played it. When we were in Venice, Sam reminded me of an improv bit we did when we were in our twenties, in a movie called Drunks, that took place in an AA meeting, and he’d thought ‘oh, i’d really like to work with her… I’d like to fight with her in something…’ He certainly got his wish in McDonagh’s film. With Rockwell playing an exasperated ’70s CIA agent on assignment with his rogue partner (John Malkovich) on Rapa Nui, Posey appears as his no-BS wife, Marge, on the phone from the US. It’s a feat that the duo paint the story of a marriage via combative telephone conversations and in only a few scenes. ‘Acting is like sparring and there’s such a wit and force to Martin’s writing. He brought a copy of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when we had a read-through and suggested we read scenes together from it. That never happened, we rehearsed on the phone instead, a few days before I flew to Easter Island.’
Even though her character was on the end of the line in the film, Posey was not about to literally phone it in. She was on-set in person to deliver Rockwell verbal volleys in real time – something she felt vital for the project. ‘It was important that the conversations had as much life as possible to feel present on film,’ she says. ‘“Acting” phone calls are weird because you have to guess how the other actor will perform them, as well as performing yourself. Usually, in these scenes you’re acting with the first AD or the script supervisor – neither of whom are actors – and they tend to call out the lines and project their voices, then the actor has to let all that go and lift it back up into the reality of the story. Phone calls are usually exposition, but in this movie they’re very much a part of the whole.’
Though she’s adept at improv, Posey felt no need to tinker with McDonagh’s scripted words. ‘I didn’t play with my dialogue at all because Martin’s a playwright! I was taught at drama school that the playwright’s words should be respected and the actors’ work is to learn the lines. If there’s room to play, then it’ll come out in the scene — but not until the lines are learned and inhabited — and then you ask the writer. The movies I did with Christopher Guest are a whole different thing, which is that they were entirely improvised on camera, as it’s happening while the camera is rolling. But Sam threw in a line that Martin kept, which was when he called me “a fucking ditz”, ha!’
Marge is the second memorable wife Posey has played recently after her standout performance in White Lotus as snobby Southern belle, Victoria Ratcliff. ‘I hadn’t made the connection to Marge and Victoria, but yes, both husbands have stressful jobs and Marge and Victoria like to lounge. They are both ‘kept women’. I am not a ‘kept woman’ but I do love the costumes of it.’
Little wonder she brought the drama to the Lido with her premiere look then: boating across the lagoon with Greg Williams to the premiere of the film in a pale pink Valentino number with floor length cape which billowed dramatically over the back of the water taxi and rippled in the Lido breeze. Victoria Ratcliff and Marge would surely approve…
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Wild Horse Nine premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival
Read our review here
