‘To Leslie’ star Andrea Riseborough on building camaraderie with audiences … and avoiding the ‘extra cautious’

Andrea Riseborough’s acclaimed performance as the title character To Lesley may be an underdog this season, but a recent Independent Spirit Award nomination for the actress suggests she’s finding her audience and the praise is well-deserved. The film, directed by Michael Morris, tells the story of a woman struggling with alcohol addiction ten years after winning a small fortune in the state lottery – and promptly squandering it. As she struggles to find her feet, her determination is strengthened by her love for her son, James (Owen Teague), with whom she is desperate to be reunited.

DEADLINE: Charlize Theron has a performance of To Lesley at CAA a few weeks ago. How was this experience for you?

ANDREA RISEBOROUGH: It was great. Two things. First, and I think it’s bigger than just that show, is that sense of real complicity among the viewers. Everyone slowly begins to admit that they have felt what Leslie feels. That strange kind of honesty or awakening happens in public, and that’s where camaraderie comes from. The second point is that the story is presented so subtly. There are great periods of movement, breathing and visual cues to enjoy. And Michael is fearlessly committed to it. So it’s great to be able to step into a completely different realm for a while, and I don’t think there are many movies like that to watch these days. We shot it in 19 days, all on film, and the feeling you get from it reminds people of what an intimate film experience can be.

DEADLINE: The film is autobiographical for screenwriter Ryan Binaco. Was that why you thought it was a full portrait?

RISEBOROUGH: When one of us looks back on our lives ten years later, we realize that we are very different people. And there will be things we recognize about ourselves and things we don’t. For Leslie, these are the unchanging parts she struggles with the most, and as wild and free as she is – as good as she is at telling the truth – she’s still stuck in victimhood. To see someone so vividly captured is quite an unusual experience. This is unapologetically presented in the film, and it is unique. Michael and I talked a lot about the idea of ​​Leslie as a female anti-hero, who has no idea what the film was focusing on.

The story is presented non-linearly, narratively, and this gives one the opportunity to understand both periods of Leslie’s life as they are presented side by side but far apart. So often a film will give you all the answers before you’ve even asked the questions, but it’s about understanding how Leslie has lost her compass and how the only true direction – her North Star – is her son.

I think all those things are true because it is based on a true story. It was written from the perspective of a child who saw his mother go through the same thing. It’s as if Ryan gave his mother, who came from a very different place and background, a chance at redemption. What’s important about the story is that it makes the film so beautifully hopeful, but Leslie isn’t released just as a storytelling mechanism. The film does not trust her to be redeemed. She will continue to take a bottle out and put it away for the rest of her life. It is a realistic representation of what the aftermath of this maelstrom looks like.

DEADLINE: What do you think of how the film deals with the complicated ups and downs of her alcohol addiction?

RISEBOROUGH: When you watch the film, sometimes you feel closest to Leslie when she’s happy. It is fair to let them drink in moments of happiness, because it is the most human reflex. “I’m happy, I want to celebrate. I want to be even happier.” Happiness is such a temporary beast for all of us.

No one chooses to become addicted, and it doesn’t matter if it is nature or nurture that pushes them there, when there is clearly no choice. I think one of the things that the film inspires is a feeling in the audience about their own relationship to addiction, either their own or people they care about because you’re so desperate for Leslie’s son and for Leslie’s disappointment in herself that she can’t be the mother she wants to be.

It evokes all those feelings within us where, despite knowing better, we keep trying to save someone or save ourselves and it really feels like it’s going to be possible. Mark Maron’s character, Sweeney, embodies this. He knows he can’t fill that hole in Leslie, but he can’t stop himself from trying. It is a natural urge to protect those we love from the wreckage of their own behavior.

DEADLINE: The process is ethereal, but can you streamline the work you do to find a character like Leslie? Are there tangible steps to creating a character for you?

RISEBOROUGH: I think it took us two years to get to the shooting. Michael sent me the script and said he wanted us to do it together. The character then just starts asserting itself. I had just played Audrey Withers in a film about Lee Miller, a model who became a war correspondent for Vogue during World War II. And if you look at the photos of Lee Miller from Dachau, you can’t undo that. There are things that, once seen, cannot be undone. I think this is the case with every character and really with every expression of truth. Leslie has been living with me for some time and you are starting to build a life for her.

She is a woman from a very different place, which helps. Michael dove into Texas, which felt right in every way, big and contradictory. As Leslie is, she reflects her condition in many ways. And then we really boiled it down to the details: I sketched her life, and those tools came from training and working with the most extraordinary directors.

But I think whatever you do, if you can’t fully commit to telling the story, it just won’t work. I am brutally honest about the very beautiful, dirty and complicated ways people behave and how I want to reflect that. That’s what I look for to feel satisfied as an actor, and I look for those qualities in all my favorite performances by others. I’m not particularly interested in something particularly clever, which doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. That’s just not my approach. I think this is an accepted practice, and it is not necessarily an accurate reflection of human nature.

DEADLINE: Do you feel like you carry the weight of a character like Leslie when you’re not on set, or can you compartmentalize it?

RISEBOROUGH: There are probably different opinions on this [laughs]. My partner would say he was done with certain characters when I did a few, and sometimes after that when I tried to posthumously edit them. But I think for the most part I really try to enjoy my life. I enjoy life and I enjoy people a lot and I socialize with them as much as possible. A character can’t help but make an impact, but I think I have a muscle honed over the years by keeping them at bay. I can slip in and out of characters relatively quickly and easily, and that doesn’t make the experience any less immersive. I think the dive can actually be deeper because you feel safer knowing you’re going to the surface.

DEADLINE: Also To Lesleyare you playing Mathilde the musical. It’s a joyful project, although your Mrs. Wormwood is quite a creation.

RISEBOROUGH: It was so much fun. I’ll tell you what wasn’t fun, and that was yelling at poor Alisha Weir, who plays Matilda. I think I apologized to that poor kid at the end of every take because obviously Matilda got such a bad deal.

But conjuring up the life of the Wormwoods was just so much fun, and there was actually a big song and dance number that’s not in the film that I think we worked on for four or five months. So there was dancing and singing and joy and colors – so many colors – and Matthew Warchus, who runs the Old Vic Theatre, is such a great director, who comes from the same world as me. There were many theater-oriented artists in the cast.

I also want to say that my favorite line of dialogue – and I don’t even know if it made it into the final version – is, “We’re going to have a TV in every room, just like Madonna!” hope it didn’t cut [laughs].

DEADLINE: Did it make you want more musicals?

RISEBOROUGH: I’m a trained singer and dancer, both classical, so it was nice to rediscover that. I’m so glad it’s coming to me now – even though my balancing act might have been better 15 years ago – because earlier in my career I knew it wasn’t a direction I wanted to commit to. It wouldn’t have been good for me then, even if I was as capable of these things as I am in acting.

So often as an artist you have to choose between one side or the other, which is strange when you can do both, but literature definitely drove me, and classical music too, more than musicals. Theater. But when you work with someone like Tim Minchin, who is so much fun, it almost feels illegal to be so rude at work.