Academy award winning actress Natalie Portman sat down with The Knockturnal to discuss her upcoming film “Jackie.”
Natalie Portman portrays Jackie Kennedy Onassiss in the bio-pic Jackie, which is directed by Pablo Larraín. Jackie tells the story of the biographical unfolding after President Kennedy’s death, focusing on the impact it had on Jackie Kennedy and her life.
When describing playing the character of Jackie, Portman said it was real and compelling. She had a lot of empathy for Jackie because of the tragedy she went through. Portman worked with trainers to get the voice, accent, and look right to portray the character of Jackie to the best of her ability.
Natalie Portman quoted Jackie from the movie herself saying, “Sometimes it’s like what she says in the movie– that sometimes the characters you create are more real than the people who stand beside you. You know, that can be as compelling, even if it’s a myth.”
Portman also said filming the scene of JFK’s assassination in the car “was physically difficult and it was also emotionally kind of unimaginable.”
We’re going to ask you all the questions you haven’t heard yet.
Portman: Perfect!
Why don’t you ask us the one you haven’t been asked yet?
Portman: What’s your favorite Muppet? [Laughs]
It’s quite a stunning performance. Congratulations. Can you speak about collaborating with Pablo, what you admire about him as a filmmaker and that collaboration?
Portman: I just loved working with Pablo. It’s one of the best, if not the best experience of my creative life. He has no choice but to be original. He has his own way of thinking that is unlike anyone else’s which I guess everyone does to a certain extent but I don’t know most people end up conforming in some way and he just sees things differently and has such a different outlook and takes it to new places but also has so much respect and allows for so much collaboration and listens to what you have to say but then also has incredible vision. That is a really rare combination and I think it takes an incredible amount of confidence and also openness and also just talent to have that. It was really just a wonderful experience.
You do a beautiful job of showing a dimension of an icon that we haven’t seen before. Can you talk a little bit about the pressure going into that and how you found your Jackie?
Portman: It was definitely scary. I’m not someone who— I’ve never prided myself on any ability to mimic or imitate. That wasn’t really anything I had even tried before but I always was like, “That’s not my thing,” but then you obviously would have to, taking this on. I was like, “Oh, no. I’m setting myself up for failure really big time here,” because people really know what she sounded like and what she moved like and of course what she looked like. But I was so moved by both the script and Pablo’s approach, which was to examine like you said the humanity of someone we’ve only considered as sort of a symbol. That I was like, “Well, you know, we’re actors. We’re not surgeons. If I mess up, no one’s going to die. Just, let’s do it!”
And you know working with Pablo felt safe in that way to try. So I worked with a coach, Tanya Blumstein, who was amazing, on the dialect and voice and we just listened over and over and over and over again to the White House tour in particular and also to the transcripts of her interview with Schlesinger, which there are chunks of that that are in the dialogue with Billy Crudup’s character. That really helped sort of just get the voice and the accent, and then once I was comfortable with that you can just kind of forget it and then you’re just focused on the emotion behind it.
Did you see her as a tragic figure? Pablo used that term.
Portman: Well, she certainly lived through more tragedy than anyone can imagine, and very particular. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s ever experienced what she experienced, but the fact that she was able to pull herself together and be so thoughtful and so strong and so brave in the face of so much trauma I think makes her a heroic figure who maybe overcame tragedy. A tragic figure to me is usually someone who succumbs-
Gets defeated, right.
Portman: -and she did not.
From Léon: the Professional to now, and with Closer, Black Swan, Garden State all in between, you have chosen all roles of all different areas. What do you find yourself attracted to these days in terms of characters, roles, and challenging yourself?
Portman: I never have found myself attracted to one kind of thing throughout my career. I wish I did because sometimes I feel like it’s a clearer type you are, style, or people understand better or something, but I’ve never really been attracted to a certain type of role. I think at this stage of my career I want to just work with people I’m interested in and feel connected to and I think this movie taught me, if anything, that the closer you are with the people you work with, the better you can create. There’s just a level of trust and openness that you have with someone that you’re close to.
It was really amazing to have someone like Pablo … Was such a partner throughout, and leader, of course, and also all of the actors were people I had known for a really long time. I’d worked with Peter before, I’d worked with Greta before, I’d worked with John Hurt before. Billy I’ve known for a really long time even though we never worked together, so it was like we already had this rapport, so when people would come in for a few days or a week to do their role we didn’t have to start from scratch.
Can you talk about the fact that he doesn’t use rehearsals? Was this something new to you, or did it spark a different kind of dynamic in how you approached the role?
Portman: Well directors work in all different ways, so I’ve made many things that didn’t have rehearsals. In terms of what that brings, like I was saying, because I had relationships with all of these people before, I felt that was really helpful because they were largely, except for the priest character, people that are very close to her. To have Greta, Greta’s actually my friend, you know? There’s a difference holding, you know, when she hugs me, having your girlfriend hold you is different than someone you just met so it allowed for a certain level of intimacy without having had rehearsals. That was really helpful, and you just feel comfortable right away.
You sort of get to play these different sides of Jackie. We see her before the assassination, and then immediately after during the breakdown, and then weeks later she’s much more control in that interview. Is there a certain point throughout that performance that you just said that you understood her, you could say that you really understood what this woman went through?
Portman: I don’t know that I can ever say that I understand any other human being. I think it’s actually the thing, the phrase that bugs me the most is, “I know exactly how you feel.” Like, no you don’t! No one knows exactly how anyone feels. We can imagine, and that’s the best we can do, and that’s empathy. I think that’s what I do in my work and I guess what all actors do in their work and hopefully what everyone does in their daily life, so I don’t…I also do not claim to have any truth about Jackie. I don’t. This is my imagination backed up by a lot of research about what happened during those days that of course Noah crafted this, so you know it’s the historical facts of how the funeral was arranged and who was talking to who and who made decisions. That’s all real, but of course everything we say to each other is not. Not everything, the White House tour is word for word what she said. There’s parts of the interview that are word for word from interviews she did.
Most of the things expressed were written in notes. It’s historically close but I think there’s a higher artistic truth that you hope for that has to do with fiction that sometimes it’s like what she says in the movie, that sometimes the characters you create are more real than the people who stand beside you. You know, that can be as compelling, even if it’s a myth.
Did you come in with picture of Jackie in your head from before you even started your research that maybe changes radically once you got into it?
Portman: I think I hadn’t really considered her. I think I thought of her very much as a façade, as this sort of thing, the Warhol Jackie, of like, the look. People talk about how she dressed and how she wore her hair but she was such a substantive person, I think I hadn’t considered her deep intellect, strength, control, and real agency in telling this story. She really took authorship of the story during a period of the most intense mourning, shock, grieving, and she had the presence of mind within all of that craziness and confusion to take hold of the legacy and shape it herself. It’s quite astonishing and I really hadn’t considered any of it before.
Coming back to the film now, I thought it was extraordinary. I’m a mom, too, just the idea of going through this unbelievable tragedy where you’re grieving, but also having to move house and take care of your kids. There’s not many situations where you have to completely up-end your life. Was that really interesting for you to explore, too?
Portman: Yeah, it’s a wild moment to think that someone has to go through such an extreme tragedy, lose someone, and then move at the same time. It is really unbelievable to consider, and it was something that Pablo really highlighted and brought to the movie that he was … We almost filmed almost every day moving scenes of her walking around her house for the last time, putting things away. What does she get to keep? What is she leaving, et cetera? It is really a big deal, especially for someone who put so much energy into the house and was such an aesthete. I think for someone who loves beauty so much to be confronted with such ugliness is really a quite jarring thing to watch.
I saw Jackie once before and saw her walk. Can you talk about the physicality of embodying that role and your walking? The camera’s always on your face. What was that like?
Portman: The walking was really interesting, because the main walking that is on camera that we’ve seen is from, well, there’s the White House tour and then the funeral. That’s the sort of footage that you get of her really walking, and it’s presented so you think she’s probably thinking about walking in a regal manner, but it’s quite stiff and almost to an unbelievable degree when you watch the White House tour, so we went for it but also had to be careful because it almost … When you watch the White House tour, it’s on the borderline of being like, that can’t be how she really walked, you know? That was a big deal.
Then having the camera so close up was a wonderful idea with Pablo because he wanted to make it so intimate and so psychological and really get inside her head and obviously being that close up helps. As an actor, that means you have a camera like right here all the time which can make you self-conscious, but luckily our DP Stéphane was also the camera operator, and he was so emotionally involved in the scenes that I felt like I could communicate with him. I would always have him in the scene with me and we had a kind of communication and movement together, because also a lot of the time when he had that camera on his shoulder and was following it was improvised so I had to be aware of getting in positions that would be good for him and he had to be aware of reading my mind about where I was going so that the camera’s not like, you know?
We would just go and Pablo would say, “Light it so you can shoot in every direction. No stands around.” People had to just be out of the room and we would just exist in the space, so it was a very special way of shooting and the cinematographer did an extraordinary job at creating the conditions that made it possible.
Can you talk about the camera pan over the car when it’s driving and you have his head in your lap. Can you walk us through that moment, because even your face is almost devastation, but also like a disengaged, like from the moment it’s like, is this really happening? Did you try to put yourself there?
Portman: Well, that was another Pablo idea that I thought was so brilliant that I think you don’t think about. We think about what’s given to us, you don’t always think about the missing pieces. He’s like, “OK, so we’ve all seen the assassination, Zapruder tapes, of course, but it was a seven minute drive afterwards to the hospital. What were those seven minutes like?” It’s unbelievable, you really think, that’s the drama. What is that, holding your husband’s exploded head on your lap for seven minutes trying to get to the hospital? So, we filmed that and I mean it’s harrowing because also it’s not recorded, we have no record of what happened, we don’t know what that was like, and who can imagine that?
You’re just like, OK, that was awful. The worst possible thing that could ever happen, but it’s really … It was very, very hard to do, and it was the coldest day when we shot it, so we’re on this highway that they had closed down so we could go in this open car and the poor actor who was playing Clint, you know, the security, he famously was like perched on the back the entire time. He was like harnessed in a split, basically, for hours. The guy was a very brave actor, speeding down the highway in a split.
It was physically difficult and it was also emotionally kind of unimaginable and that was a moment that I didn’t … You know, in the tape, when she crawls onto the back, I always thought she was trying to get out. I always thought she was trying to escape, which I was like, “That makes sense. Someone shoots the person next to you,” and it wasn’t. It was she saw a piece of his brain, she was trying to get it, because she thought they could put it back in. She saw a piece of his brain fly out onto the trunk and she was like, trying to pick it up, which you’re like, you can’t even imagine that your animal instinct in that moment of terror would be like, “Oh, I have to get that to put back in his head.” It’s unbelievable.
Did this inspire you to want to direct again?
Portman: I would love to direct again, so that definitely is my focus, to sort of create my next directorial project. After Jackie I filmed Annihilation with Alex Garland, which will be coming out next year. I’m going to do a small role in Xavier Dolan’s film Life and Death of John F. Donovan which has already started shooting but I’m obviously going to be doing that later.
You also have Planetarium?
Portman: Planetarium is coming out in France in November. It doesn’t have distribution in the United States, and it just premiered at Toronto and Venice and I’m very proud of that. I filmed that right before ‘Jackie’, I did those in a row.
Then there’s also the Malick film, right?
Portman: The Malick film, I think it’s called ‘Weightless’, but I don’t think it’s been officially announced. No one told me that officially, but I just heard the same way you guys did, that’s the title. We filmed it like four years ago, and I think it’s going to come out in the spring? I don’t know anything.
Alex Garland is such an exciting filmmaker. Can you say anything about that movie?
Portman: Yeah, Alex is an incredibly intelligent man and it was really exciting to get to enter this … He just has such an amazing imagination, you know. The stories he tells are completely, just, of course they’re inspired by life but they’re so different than our real lives that it’s really impressive to work with a mind like that.
Jackie will hit theaters Dec. 2, 2016.
