Peter Sarsgaard On Being Bobby Kennedy In 'Jackie'

Peter Sarsgaard is a celebrated actors, featured in such films as “Black Mass,” “Garden State,” and most recently in “The Magnificent 7.”

Sarsgaard sat down for an interview to discuss his role in Jackie, the latest film about the Kennedy family. Sargaard talks about his process playing Bobby Kennedy, why he took the part, and his thoughts on our new President-Elect.

You did a beautiful job of portraying this man who’s breathing.

Peter Sarsgaard: Thank you! I’m happy it’s, at least, passed. I get the sense that it’s okay, because I really have always liked him. When I was younger, we had an album that had famous speeches on it. There’s one that he did at Columbia University. There’s a Q&A at the end of it. I just always thought he sounded like such an interesting smart person and strong, not a pushover.

What was your first reaction when they approached you about the role?

Sarsgaard: I said, “No way.” I literally said, “No way.”

Why?

Sarsgaard: Because I didn’t want to play the famous person. I had to talk a certain way, and I knew I didn’t look like him. I don’t like wearing a lot of stuff. I like playing different characters, but the way I do it, I do it intuitively. [Pablo Larraín] said, “You can do that with this movie.” He said, “You don’t have to. You’re not going to end up looking like him. We’ll just do it the same way.”

I was influence by [Bobby Kennedy]. I listen to him all the time. I still have all his speeches on my phone now. We just listen to them all the time. I had recordings of him talking to his brother, which were really interesting in terms of power dynamic. It reminds me of The Dresser. Tom Courtenay is always working for Albert Finney. He’s done so his whole career. He’s prepared everything for him. Now, he is dead? And now I’m the dresser, asking “what’s my role?” What I think is amazing is [Kennedy] ended up becoming his most powerful self after his brother died, but I think at this moment he’s just like, “I don’t even know what I do.”

Can you talk about trying to maintain composure while being pulled in a hundred different directions? By people you loved, too, like your mom.

Sarsgaard: Yeah, and some of them look like they’re losing their mind. Like, “Don’t make me worry about you.” That feeling you can get when someone dies and someone else just isn’t able to pull it together. And then you don’t get to feel what you feel for a long time. One of the things I was really influenced by is his first interview that he gave, which was a year later. I think it was to Dick Cavett or someone like that. I just remember him sitting on a chair. I don’t remember who exactly he’s interviewing with. He’s just too strong. He took the time and gave himself the time to go through something, which I think is a real luxury in this world. It’s one he could afford, but it was also really wise. A lot of people would have just thrown themselves right back out there.

What’s your sense of his relationship with Jackie? Before this happens, and then being a catalyst for a major change in their relationship?

Sarsgaard: Extremely, extremely close. I don’t believe that they were romantic. I know a lot of people speculated about that kind of stuff. I think that Bobby was actually a very moral person, like there’s right and wrong. That’s how he ended up working with McCarty, because at that time, he believed communism was wrong. Also because his father set it up for him. Talk about always doing what other people are opening the doors for you to do. I think that what we explored a little bit in the film was that sometimes grief brings out unconscious feelings. [Larrain] would ask me to say things sometimes, and I feel like I could never say that to her. He would say, “Yeah, but you might think it somewhere in your unconscious mind.” The movie exist in that realm. I could even feel it the way we’re shooting it. It was like we were in a Roman Polanski movie. This is like a claustrophobic, anxiety, horror movie, post-traumatic stress syndrome thriller.

We just had the first democratic convention in probably 80 years without a Kennedy in it. The timing is interesting that way. Do you think that things people used to take for granted will be revelations for audiences now?

Sarsgaard: I am more ambivalent about whether or not she should have staged the funeral in such a kind of anachronistic way. You know what I mean? There’s much attention to detail. I see it as somebody who’s having a really hard time, probably breaking, and was allowed to do whatever she wanted, because everyone is afraid to say no to her. Like, “I can’t say no to Jackie right now. Whatever you want. We’ll have 50 horses. Never rode a horse, but that’s fine. What else do you want? Sure. We’ll walk. Oh my God, we’re going to have to walk.” There was no Camelot. She’s saying Camelot, but it was never there in the first place. If you really look at all the stuff that’s going on, there’s no such thing as Camelot. We’re all just leading normal lives. You might think “Oh, it was Camelot before my parents split up.” They’ve been wanting to split up. They’re waiting until you got out of high school. That’s why they split up then. There never was a Camelot, as far as I’m concerned.

Yeah, but you lived through that period as I did. There was a sense of optimism you don’t feel now

Sarsgaard: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

I feel that. Didn’t you feel that?

Sarsgaard: I know there were people though that. Including the way that my parents talk about it, who are southern democrats. I mean, they were really into Kennedy 00:07:03. I always few up with this idea. I didn’t know anything other than he was a great man, who basically died for what he believed in.

Did you interact with any surviving Kennedy’s when you were getting ready for this?

Sarsgaard: I’ve met Caroline a couple of times, just because my wife’s family has a place in Martha’s Vineyard.

I was wondering about Rory, too, because she seems like she’s pretty accessible and welcoming.

Sarsgaard: I was actually reading a book about Rose when I was offered this, randomly, which was really interesting. I was thinking about it as the biggest self-inflicted tragedy for the Kennedy’s. I think we also know the Misa family of tragedy. Right? It’s too bad, because they do have so much more to offer. I’ve met Caroline several times. I felt uncomfortable in the natural way that you would. I felt uncomfortable when I did “Shattered Glass,” because I am friends with Marty Peretz’s son.

That was a great movie. I love his role there.

Sarsgaard: His character is … Marty is not very well represented in that movie

Can you talk about collaborating with Natalie, and watching her transform?

Sarsgaard: I first met Natalie at “The Man In The Iron Mask” premiere 20 years ago or something, and obviously worked with her on Garden State, so I’ve known her for a while. The transformation was so smooth that it didn’t look like anything. That’s all I can say. She was very relaxed with it, which is the only way to be. It didn’t seem to require a herculean effort. She slipped right into it. She would joke sometimes about how her accent was bad, or she’ll fix it later in ADR or something like that. I’d hear her doing and I’d be like, “No. It’s absolutely perfect.” She had a very intense way of talking, very premeditated, too, that always sounded like she had clearly thought out the idea, and maybe set it a number of times. The off the cuff thing that’s a little bit more in the Billy Crudup scenes is a part of her that I’ve never seen. To me, that’s the most imagined part.

Was there are reason that you did not go after an exaggerated accent?

Sarsgaard: Yeah, because it’s a natural way of talking. It’s very unusual.

Was that your own decision?

Sarsgaard: I did it, so that I felt comfortable in my mouth. I could listen to him and do it, but it doesn’t seem like it’s coming out of my nasal cavity. It’s got to have my own voice in it. Do you know what I mean? My own voice has its own characteristics. I was made fun of for my voice, actually, when I was young. I’ve read that so was Bobby. I really identified with that thing of people attacking you for personal characteristics that you might have with him also a bit small. I really wish I could have made myself smaller. I wore a suit that was too big, but I was really trying to get smaller. I’m not a like gain weight or lose weight actor, because I care too much about my physical health. I, in my mind, I was smaller.

When we spoke at you at Toronto, you told me with with this film, you probably filmed the same scene in multiple locations. That was before I saw the movie, but now seeing it I could tell it creates this expansive universe when you are in a bedroom and then you are in the ballroom the next moment. What was that process like to take that scene from one location to the next?

Sarsgaard: It changed the scene entirely. The scene in the Lincoln Room used to play through for about half as long as the scene you see. It is the dialogue that’s in the ballroom. I said it, it really emotional. I was weeping and attacking her a little bit more. Then when we did it in a ballroom, it was like days, a week later something like that, we’re shooting another scene in there, and he was like, “Stay. Sit down there and do this scene.” Then you are doing the scene just talking to someone like this, and it’s got a little bit of the emotional quality and even anger from before, but now it’s like an echo.

Actually, you hear it a little bit in the scene when I say, I used to say, “What’s wrong with you? I’m worried about you?” I used to say all this other stuff. Instead, I just say, “Look at you in that scene.” Then I apologize for having said that. It’s not exactly clear what that line even means, “Look at you,” but we get a sense that it means you’re making this whole thing about you. He was my brother. And then I apologize for that. In the other scene, that was very explicit. When you go to stage it in different places like that, it gives, it brings out all these other qualities, lets under tones play like a music. That’s why it doesn’t surprise me that we have such a strong score. It felt like overtones and stuff that we were playing a lot of the time.

You have a really profound respect for Bobby Kennedy. I’ve got a question from one of our readers, Kevin, that said, “How do you think of narrative history would have changed if Bobby Kennedy wasn’t assassinated?”

Sarsgaard: I don’t actually put as much stock in the fact that our leaders are the Presidents or that people making the decisions or the President. It’s like one person pulling a huge amoeba behind them. I like to think there would have had great effect. I do think that the main job of being a president, he really had down, which is to make people think beyond themselves, to get people to think and to vote, and to behave in the interest of the whole. It’s not totally unnatural.

You know, I am reading this book “Sapiens.” They say in a gorilla clan, there’s one alpha male per maximum of 50 or so. When it gets bigger than that, it has to split up. Humans have invented a fiction, religion, mythology, government to create a fiction of ideas that we have to live up to that one person can’t enforce, like so, we shouldn’t kill someone. We have a religion that says that, we have a government that says that. I think what the president does is he reminds people of the ideals of the group. That’s the way you be a leader. If you try to be the alpha male leader that is only really capable of leading 50 people by force, then you’re going to fail.

It’s like Donald Trump’s going to beat himself, then no one has to beat him, because that’s not the way you lead. You don’t lead through force. You lead by reminding people of the higher idea that the greater idea, the spiritual idea, if you will.

You started to say something earlier about initially not wanting to take the part. What, or who, convinced you to do it?

Sarsgaard: Pablo convinced me to do it. I didn’t even want to talk to Pablo, because I admired his work. When I was offered it, I was like “I can’t do it.” I don’t want to talk to him about it, because I don’t want to be convinced by a good artist/conman, because all good artists are to be in this movie. Then Darren contacted me and said, “You really have to talk to him.” Then I was out in the middle of nowhere. I have a place that’s like five miles from electricity, and it’s solar-powered, and it’s really, really remote. There’s only one place in the property that has a phone signal. I sat in my car and took that call with Pablo. It was long distant. He’s in Paris, and I am in the middle of nowhere. He was super convincing. One of the things he said was, “You don’t have to look like him. You don’t have to sound like him. You just have to embody him.” I was like, “Yes!”

Then I was concerned that it might be a bio pick. I could feel the artist in him. I knew it’s like sometimes you pick a part because of the role, and sometimes it’s because of the people you want to work with. It’s almost like I did this movie in spite of the fact that I would have to play Bobby Kennedy on some level. I was like, “I really want to work with this guy. It’s going to be great movie. It’s going to be a movie that I personally would want to go watch,” which I tried to make as many of those as possible. I want to get to be an old man, go back, and not be bored by my own work in a movie.

What’s next? Do you know what you’re doing next?

Sarsgaard: I am doing this movie with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in Columbia that Fernando Leon’s directing. Javier plays Pablo Escobar, but it’s like a very specific slice of his life that includes his romance that he had with the journalist. I play the law. I play a DEA agent. I have a relative that I am very close with, who was part of the first team that was going after Pablo. Then went after “Cali Cartel.” I’ve just always been curious about what he does. It will be really interesting representing that.

Do you watch “Narcos?”

Sarsgaard: I haven’t. I’ve read, “Killing Pablo” and that “30 for 30 Documentary,” The Two Pablos. I am doing that. Then I finish that at the end of November. Then Errol Morris and I had been working on something together for … God I feel like almost a year-and-a-half. We are finishing the last part of it. It’s a series for Netflix that we’re doing. The topic on that is the program, MK Ultra, the CIA in 1950s. I played Frank Olsen, the agent that fell or jump out of window according to the CIA 10 days after he took LSD.

How satisfying is it to have this and Magnificent 7 in a short period of time?

Sarsgaard: I feel really fortunate to be asked to play so many different kinds of things. I feel like I don’t know why. I think people frequently think I want something that I don’t want, like to play the most sympathetic lead character in the movie. I would obviously like to try to do that, but I feel like I’m blessed in terms of what I get to do, because people come to me for all kinds of things. A lot of times, it’s when they don’t know what they want or don’t know how to solve it, or what this part needs to be significant, but it’s not at the moment.

Even as a writer, asked to participate in terms of shaping the narrative idea. A good example is like in “Magnificent 7,” the jar of sand that I had was my idea. I put that into the movie, because I wanted there to be an idea that what terror really is, is the unknown. It’s not something specifically in the jar. I’m one man who actually had consumption, which they took out of the movie, and everybody keeps asking me why I look so ill, and I’m like … I am actually coughing up blood, and I have consumption. I’m dying. I am playing someone who’s dying. Everyone working for him hates him. They all have guns. He has two hands. He killed this guy in one second. Why does terror get to have such power in the world? It’s a projection. I just let people project on to me as much as possible. That was just like I kept telling the director I was like, “I can do anything in this movie. I’m like Donald Trump. They are going to follow me no matter what. I could spit in a guy’s face that works for me, and he will be here tomorrow.”

The film hits theaters this Friday!

Peter Sarsgaard On Being Bobby Kennedy In ‘Jackie’

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