Rosemarie DeWitt: The Hollywood Interview

Actress Rosemarie DeWitt.

ALWAYS THE BRIDE:
ROSEMARIE DEWITT TIES THE KNOT IN RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the December/January issue of Venice Magazine.

After many years paying her dues in theatrical productions big and small, and in supporting roles on television and film, Rosemarie DeWitt gained major plaudits for her turn as Don Draper’s Greenwich Village lover in AMC’s hit Mad Men. As Midge, a beatnik who was mostly likely born with a silver spoon in her mouth, De Witt brought both cagey sexiness and striking vulnerability to the table, making her a stand-out in a series full of fellow travelers.

Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Rosemarie DeWitt attended Hofstra University and studied at New York’s Actors Center. She is also the granddaughter of legendary heavyweight boxing champ James Braddock, whose story was brought to the screen in Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, in which Rosemarie appeared as one of the Braddock’s neighbors. DeWitt now finds herself living a Cinderella story of her own, having just nabbed an Independent Spirit nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Jonathan Demme’s arthouse hit Rachel Getting Married, playing the eponymous character, who must deal with her dysfunctional and self-destructive sister (Anne Hathaway)’s return from rehab to attend her nuptials at the family homestead.

Rosemarie DeWitt sat down with us recently for a chat. Here’s what transpired:

Congrats on your nomination.
Rosemarie DeWitt: Thanks! I was really excited that the film got lots of nominations, that made it extra sweet. We were working on making it really honest, and getting out of our own way.

In many ways you had the toughest role because you’re constantly reacting to everything that others are doing, so it would have been easy for your character to be less three-dimensional than you made her.
But being surrounded by those actors really made it easy for me. You’re only as good as the people around you, and we had an amazing cast, so I didn’t really have a choice but to do what I did. (laughs) It was tough in the sense that Rachel is in a constant state of stress and anxiety about what’s happening and I won’t lie: I got a little drunk at the wrap party, and felt a tremendous sense of release when I could let her go, and kept saying to Jonathan (Demme) ‘I’m not Rachel! I’m not Rachel!’ (laughs) And I did this little dance to sort of shower it all off.

Rosemarie DeWitt (R) and Anne Hathaway (L) in Rachel Getting Married.

How long was the shoot?
Six or seven weeks, not that long to make a movie, but a long time to be in that mind-set constantly. Jonathan was very relaxed on the set. We’d shoot twelve pages and be done by two in the afternoon. He knew exactly what he wanted, which made it a lot easier.

The film is an interesting litmus test. The friend I saw it with completely empathized with Anne Hathaway, whereas I was with you and Debra Winger.
Isn’t that interesting? It captures such a classic family dynamic that we’ve all experienced that it only takes about five minutes before you just plug in and figure out who you are in the story. And you can see how easy it would be to become Debra’s character. (Screenwriter) Jenny Lumet said something really cool in a Q & A recently after a screening. Someone asked her how she got the idea for the movie. She said “I just had this image of two women looking at themselves in a mirror. One was in a wedding dress, and the other comes in and creates the moment, and at the same time, shatters it.” It was interesting to see how one character, one person, could have that much power over a family, but it happens, more often than not, I think.

DeWitt and Hathaway in the film's iconic image.

With Obama being elected and the concept of race in country, hopefully, changing, one thing I loved about the movie was that it showed an inner-racial marriage happening, but the fact that it was inner-racial was never mentioned.
I love that, too. It’s one of my favorite elements of the movie. What’s even more wonderful is that it wasn’t really a conscious decision on anyone’s part. Neda Armian, our producer, tells a great story about how she got all these submissions for actors for the roles in the film, and she wrote a note back saying “Would you please submit some additional actors: all these actors are white.” And there was no racial specification in the script, so I think she was like “Okay, let’s start over and hit ‘reset.’” Then Jonathan fell in love with Tunde (Adebimpe), because he’d just finished working on a Hurricane Katrina documentary, where he’d met a lot of the people he wound up casting in this film. He thought it would give them a chance to get out of New Orleans for a while, to give them a leg up. The fact that a lot of the people in the film aren’t actors I think also gives it a feeling of authenticity. That’s the thing about Jonathan, he just loves people, not just actors. I think this could have been a very different movie had he not directed it. Because he’s such a people person, he really allows his actors to sort of peel back the layers of the onion, so to speak.

Even going back to his early exploitation films, he did that. It’s one reason most of his films really hold up.
Yeah, exactly. They’re all very human stories.

Since we mentioned Jonathan’s early days, I saw that Roger Corman had his regular cameo, wielding a cheap video camera no less!
(laughs) Yeah, that was cool. I heard him say something really funny: “On their way up, or on their way down, sooner or later, everybody works for me.”

What was Demme’s process like?
That’s a tough one to answer. I just read an article where an actor who’d worked with Robert Altman was talking about how it always felt like Altman was giving you total freedom, when in fact, he was pulling all the strings. It might be similar with Jonathan. He felt kind of like a kid on a playground just watching other kids play in the sandbox, then every once in a while he’d chime in and say “Yeah, that was good. Now throw more sand.” It didn’t feel heavily orchestrated and he was kind of thrilled with everything. He never came over and said something wasn’t working. The only real note he ever gave me was “Be you, be you, be you,” and then he’d just drift back behind the camera. But before we started he said “Feel free to call me anytime, I’d like to hash this out before we get on-set, because once we’re on the set, I don’t like to talk a lot. That said, I’d encourage you not to talk to Jenny Lumet too much about your character. Just know that I cast you for a reason and just take responsibility for your character.

Sure, because after a point, nobody knows more about your character than you, not even the writer.
Yeah, and a lot of directors say that, but they don’t all mean it. Jonathan did, and really let us know.

It’s interesting that you mentioned Robert Altman, because this is a very Altman-esque film. Did you ever see his film A Wedding?
Oh yeah, of course. And Rachel has a lot of similarities, in the best possible way. It’s funny, because I did a reading with Altman shortly before he died. He was working on an Arthur Miller play in London, I forget the title, but it was one of his later works, but it was very bizarre, fragmented and deconstructed, like a lot of his later work. So Altman had already cast it, but didn’t know technically what he wanted to do with it, so he got a bunch of New York actors to read it. None of us knew what we were doing, but Mr. Altman put us all at ease when he said “Don’t worry about doing anything right. Whatever you bring to it is exactly what I want to hear.” And you knew he meant it. So even though I only got to spend two hours with him, it made a real impression.

The other great thing about Altman and Demme is that you don’t notice how well directed their films are until the second or third time you see them. They’re invisible.
Completely! I could watch any film of theirs a hundred times. I was watching Popeye the other night, which Bill Irwin (who plays the father in Rachel) was in, ironically enough. Rachel was that way for me, too. The second and third times I saw it, I liked it even more.

A lot of actors I know dislike watching themselves on-screen. Are you one of those?
Usually, but not in this case. Jonathan is one of those people that just always seems to find the best takes. They’re not always the most explosive or performative, because you don’t want it to get “too good.” Jonathan would say “Remember how real it seemed this morning before you knew your lines completely? Let’s do it that way.” It’s almost like in John Cassavetes’ movies, where he’d use the take where the boom mike was in the frame, and he didn’t care, because that was the best take.

I pray at the temple of Cassavetes.
Me too! A Woman Under the Influence is one of the great movies, and Gena Rowlands, God, she was just so fierce! She’s another one where I’d be happy to just sit in the background of a scene, just so I could watch her work.

Did you have a bit of that with Debra Winger?
Yeah, you know what’s funny is that she’s so good I forgot who I was sitting with. We had only one scene where it was just the two of us. It was raining and we decided to incorporate that into the scene, and at one point I turn around and I look at her and she smiled at me, and I realized ‘Oh my God, that’s Debra Winger!’ (laughs) And I got so nervous because she has that amazing, radiant smile. I had to talk myself down and think ‘Don’t panic, she’s your mom. She’s your mom.” (laughs) I wish they could find a Frozen River for Debra Winger so we could see her in every frame of the movie.

Speaking of family, do you have any siblings?
Yeah, my dad was married before, so I have eight, much older, half-brothers and sisters. It’s a testament to how well Jenny got the relationships right, because a friend of mine saw the film and told me “God, you were such the older sister, the way you just dropped everything and came to your younger sister’s aid.” And in reality, I was the baby, so I was never in that position. It’s just a testament to how much was there on the page, so I could play that moment.

You have quite a pedigree with your granddad.
Yeah, that’s pretty cool, isn’t it? (laughs)

And also cool that you got to be in Cinderella Man.
And I would’ve been thrilled to just walk by, much less have a really nice supporting role. I think that Ron Howard thought ‘Who is this girl?’ and as a courtesy, let me read, before casting me. I’ll say that before Rachel Getting Married that was the best job I ever had. Talk about a story that you believe in with all your heart.

DeWitt (with baby) in Cinderella Man, the story of her grandfather, boxer James Braddock.

I know your grandfather died shortly after you were born. What did your mother tell you about him?
Not much. I learned more about my grandparents during the shooting of the movie than I did from my mother growing up, ironically enough. My parents grew up together, and then my dad joined the Marines at 17, and soon after got married to his first wife. When they split, my dad moved back to his home town and reconnected with my mom again. My dad had fought in The Golden Gloves, so he really idolized my grandfather. He was the one hanging all the pictures and boxing trunks and putting the trophies up. My mom was sort of like “Oh, stop.” So the “legend” wasn’t always around. Ron Howard called me during the shoot and asked if I had any stories or anecdotes we could share about my grandparents and their love story. My mother isn’t alive anymore, but we found around twenty love letters between my grandparents when he was on the road when he was taking fights just to feed the family. So we learned how much they really loved each other through that.

Did you feel the movie captured him accurately?
I do. It’s in the movie that he paid back all the welfare he received. He was just a very quiet, gentle giant. My grandmother was the spitfire. They watered her character down a bit for the movie, since they needed him to be the hero. But she really wore the pants in the family. I got to know my grandmother. She passed away when I was in middle school. So it was a great experience being a part of that movie, and the fact that they made it at all, all those years later.

Did both your parents work when you were growing up?
My dad was a pilot in the Marine Corps, then was an executive in the aviation business. He traveled all the time, which suited his personality. He was the guy that needed to be on the run, living out of suitcases, although not anymore. He’s mellowed with the passing years. (laughs) My mom was pretty much stay-at-home. They were older when they had me, so it was pretty traditional, very old-school.

Where does your artistic side come from?
I have no idea! My family is really just one generation removed from being laborers. My grandfather didn’t go past the eighth grade, I don’t think, and prior to me, I don’t think anyone in my family could afford to be creative. They had to get jobs. My dad had to join the Marines at 17 in order to get an education, and he stayed in the Marines for 30 years. My generation was the lucky one that got to go to college and choose what we wanted for our lives.

Regarding “old school,” we have to talk about your stint on Mad Men.
I think a big part of what makes it powerful is that it makes very relevant statements about the present, as it does the past: how far we’ve come, how far we have to go, where maybe we never should have gone in the first place. I loved that experience. I love it even when I’m not on it! (laughs) It was such a lucky break, getting that. They were at the end of casting, and hadn’t found the right Midge yet. Originally they had a scene where she opens the door wearing a red kimono, and I remember thinking ‘I’m not that,’ so I wasn’t sure I was right for the part. Maybe the fact that I wasn’t this “vamp” is what made Matt Weiner give me a shot. Watching the show takes me back to growing up with my parents and their peers. I remember riding in the car with my dad, sitting on the arm rest with no seat belt. Everybody would be smoking in the car. My uncles, when they’d be talking about a drive they took, someone would ask “How long did it take you to get there?” “Oh, about six beers.” (laughs) They thought nothing of drinking while they were driving. I love that it’s not P.C., and they don’t shy away from any of it.

DeWitt as Midge with Jon Hamm's Don Draper in Mad Men.

What I loved about Midge is that she epitomized the girl on the cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” that new kind of Greenwich Village girl who wore no make-up, dressed down, but was still sexy as hell. She was the archetype of a new kind of woman: radiant and self-aware, which didn’t really exist prior to the ‘60s, at least as a cultural archetype.
Yeah, exactly. Matt had me read this book called “Memoirs of a Beatnik,” which was written in the ‘50s, and it was the first piece of feminist beatnik literature, so there were women like that, absolutely. At the same time, I think Midge is a bit hypocritical: there was one part of her that was toying with the old-school “good life,” which is what drew her to Don. I don’t know if we’ll see anymore of her in season three, but I’d be curious to know what became of Midge circa 1967.

I think she’s married to an ACLU lawyer, but they live in Scarsdale.
(laughs) Yes! Perfect.

I think she came from a privileged background: grew up in Connecticut, went to Sarah Lawrence or Radcliffe…
Which is how she can afford to maintain that existence: with her trust fund.

Right. And Don Draper represents her father, that ideal that she was raised to seek out.
I completely agree. One of my favorite moments in the “Midge episodes” is when, during the last time they’re together, everyone is in her apartment smoking pot, and one of the guys looks out the window and sees that the cops are outside. Don is about to leave and the guy says “You can’t go out there.” And Don just looks back at him and says “No. You can’t.” And then he just walks out the door. I’m so happy for everyone on the show, especially Jon Hamm. He’s so reminiscent of the old-time Hollywood stars like Cary Grant, but at the same time, he’s so simple and unadorned in that role.

That’s the goal of every good actor, don’t you think?
Yeah, I think after a while you really want to not only disappear into the role, but the simplicity that you try to bring to it allows the audience to see you. Not because you want everybody to acknowledge you, or know you, or love you, but because you want to illuminate the story, and the only thing you have is yourself.