Dane DeHaan and Odessa Young are set to play the adopted siblings of the Peterson family (whose tragic and suspicious story was laid bare in a Netflix true-crime docuseries that turned global audiences into sleuths) in a dramatised iteration of The Staircase by Antonio Campos, starring Toni Collette as the ill-fated Kathleen Peterson and Colin Firth as her accused husband.

This role comes straight off a scene-stealing performance in Eva Husson’s Mothering Sunday, which saw Odessa lead an extraordinary cast of Academy-Award winners with a level of maturity that will, no doubt, see her join that prestigious group one day soon. A common thread throughout is an exploration of the uncomfortable and the unforgiving: a scratch both Odessa and Dane can’t help but itch.

DD: Well I was coming off over a year-and-a-half not working because of the pandemic, so I think first and foremost I was eager to get back to work. Although it’s a smaller part, the ensemble aspect of it was kind of intriguing to me. I’ve had a personal relationship with Antonio for a while and I’ve seen the documentary twice so I was super into the story.
OY: You’d seen it twice before you got this?

DD: Yeah.
OY: You freak.

DD: [laughs] I really like true crime podcasts and documentaries. You live in New York?
OY: I do, I’ve lived in New York for pretty much three years.

DD: When you describe the New York film scene and Antonio and his peers, what specifically is it about those films that you really identify with or are inspired by?
OY: I think when I say the New York film thing, it’s less about what ends up being on the screen and more about the fundamental aspects of production. When I first moved out here and started to pay attention to what was being made, watching movies critically and thinking about what I was doing and what I wanted to do, Antionio’s films – along with his community of filmmakers, like Brady Corbet – made me really excited because it felt like something that had been undervalued or underappreciated in recent years. I spent two years in LA before I moved to New York and I’d never really found a film community out there that really excited me. There’s this very typical New York attitude of trying to make an uncomfortable point, trying to de-gloss a story or how one produces a movie. In the simplest terms, and I hate this word because it doesn’t ever really mean anything, but it’s ‘gritty’, you know what I mean? It’s less about the perfection of production and more about responding to the unpredictability of the city, that’s how I would intellectualise it.

“You have a purpose and that’s where the discomfort comes from, because having a purpose is actually not easy. I appreciate people who put themselves in those positions to try and get further.”

DD: Yeah, I’ve spent some time in LA and obviously chose to end up in New York also and I feel like LA is a place where I would say it’s easy to just exist, but in New York you have to fight to survive.
OY: You sure do, and I think everybody should in a way. I feel like you don’t ever have to make a choice about whether you live in LA, you just live there and all of a sudden you realise that you’ve lived there for years. In New York, you have to make a choice to live in that city every single day, it tests you and it challenges you – I think really interesting creative things come out of that constant fight.

DD: I also think that with Antonio, Brady and all those guys, they all really support each other, they’re all big fans of each other. So in their movies when they go to these uncomfortable places or focus on these singular topics that people don’t always address, they’re comfortable being uncomfortable. A lot of my favourite movies are ones where people are comfortable being uncomfortable, or being ugly, [where actors aren’t] afraid to go there.
OY: Those aren’t only my favourite movies but my favourite people, because it feels like you’re actually living for something. You have a purpose and that’s where the discomfort comes from, because having a purpose is actually not easy. I appreciate people who put themselves in those positions to try and get further.

DD: How would you define the purpose of your mission?
OY: Oh that is ever-changing. I’m interested to hear what your experience was like not working during the pandemic, because I think that something really happened to me early in 2020 where I had this big kind of crisis – the world went into lockdown and I was still getting sent self-tape requests, but I couldn’t do any of them because I was so depressed. I was also thinking, “Why don’t I feel excited about this?” and then I got really scared that because I didn’t feel excited about it, I was falling out of my position as an actor. I started thinking about what else I could do and I took writing workshops and stuff – I shouldn’t be a writer, put it that way. I think out of that desperation for clarity I had to find this idea of my purpose, like, “Okay, if I’m not doing this because I love acting so much that I just want to get on set and do anything, then what the hell am I doing it for?” It’s that desire to be uncomfortable, my pain tolerance is really high and I think that puts me in a position where I know I can do certain things and be okay, I can be made uncomfortable and make something productive out of that. I see that as a service I can lend to productions I believe in and that need something like that. For example, The Staircase feels like it’s a pretty emotionally demanding role, not only is it emotionally demanding when we’re on set and doing the job, but also because it’s based on a true story. These are real people’s lives, so there needs to be a certain delicacy, and I feel like we’re the kind of actors who can be sensitive about that. I guess that’s the mission at this point, but it’ll probably change next month when I have my next existential crisis. [both laugh]

“There’s this very typical New York attitude of trying to make an uncomfortable point, trying to de-gloss a story or how one produces a movie.”

DD: When you’re doing The Staircase, how much do you feel like you need to honour the actual person you’re playing?
OY: It’s a fine line. I think it would be really unwise to forget this is a real story, because it has real-world implications and I think that our production will be added to the canon of the way people see this, so it’s never felt to me like pure fiction even though there are some aspects of this show that are speculative. We didn’t have access to their private conversations, we didn’t have access to the pathologies at the time of the trial. That’s what we’re speculating, and in that way I’m comfortable with it being fiction because it feels like we actually get to give life to a private world, but it’s never been divorced from the reality of it. Saying that, in a technical way there are certain things I think we’re all trying to do to represent our characters in a physical or vocal way to differentiate them from the rest of the family, which I think is very important. It’s interesting because Michael Stuhlbarg for example, who is a very technical actor – he studies his characters, he studies these scripts – he’s had meetings with David Rudolf who he is playing and his approach is very involved with the reality of it, but I was talking to him and he was saying there’s a point where you need to stop thinking about that. There’s a point where you cannot have the real person in your mind while you’re doing these scenes because you weren’t present, you don’t actually know how they would react; you need to be present with your own emotional reactions, so I think it’s a fine line between fiction and reality.

“I can be made uncomfortable and make something productive out of that. I see that as a service I can lend to productions I believe in and that need something like that.”

DD: I watched Mothering Sunday last night and thought you were really wonderful, you really are a great actress.
OY: Thank you, Dane.

DD: There’s certainly a lot in that movie that could be seen as uncomfortable, like we were talking about, is that something that attracted you to the project?
OY: I think the attraction came in stages. It was undeniably a really good script and then being locked down with it and getting to re-read it distilled the parts that were really attractive to me. Specifically I liked the fact it was a story written before the pandemic, but it spoke to the themes of collective grief and loss in such a convoluted way – it felt a little ‘meant to be’. Throughout the script, and this might be one of the uncomfortable things that I really was attracted to about it, Jane doesn’t have a catharsis. I’ve done a lot of emotional movies and a lot of stories about grief. I’ve played a lot of characters who are going through that kind of grief and there’s always one scene where they scream and breakdown, the big crescendo of emotion happens and then life goes on. That’s all well and good, but I really enjoyed that there was no moment like that in this story. I lost my grandmother in November of 2018 and she was the first person close to me that I’d lost. By the time I read Mothering Sunday it was a month or two later and I found my personal experience with grief aligned quite similarly with Jane’s. Especially in the middle portion of her life, in the sense that there’s no big moment, there’s no catharsis, there’s no climax to your grief, it’s just an ache that continues and you just have to keep doing what you’re doing because there’s no other option. I liked the idea of that discomfort. I sometimes find as an actor, and I’m curious to hear how you feel about this, when you do have those emotional roles, to be able to sleep at the end of the day it really helps if you have one of those crescendos in the scene, if you get to let it out, if you get to scream and cry and do the big thing. I found that a really interesting challenge to never have that moment and just wait on eggshells in this emotional state for six weeks.

DD: You live in this world where you often have to suppress everything you’re feeling, but you also have private moments where you get to suppress nothing, right?
OY: Right.

DD: Which is really an incredible dichotomy and then you get to see yourself in the future looking back on all that with a more mature point of view, I guess. I hate it when a script says, “He cries” – it’s my least favourite thing in the world. The first thing I do with a script is scratch out all of those little things. I also find the performances I have less of a visceral reaction to, or that don’t sit right with me, are ones where there’s too much crying. I often sarcastically say, “Oh, acting is crying,” because I think a lot of people feel like acting is crying, right? Like, I cried today so that means I did a good job. It’s this strange association people have, to make a scene emotional equals I did a good job.
OY: Yes, exactly.

“Quite often in our real lives the things that happen to us that might be emotional enough to make us cry never make us cry in the moment. There’s always that buffer of shock which I find way more interesting to play with.”

DD: I’ve been there. [both laugh]
OY: I remember doing a job where I was looking through the progression of the script to be like, “Where’s the moment, where is it?” and realising that I didn’t have to put that in there and make it the big thing. There was much more strength to the other ideas of this character that were way more interesting. I’ve also done the film where I’m like crying in every scene and that’s something too, that’s a choice and a whole other challenge. But I think you really have to scrutinise where those moments belong. I think the most accurate and interesting way to experience distress, to watch distress and view it as an audience member, is to see where that person is unable to feel it themselves. Quite often in our real lives the things that happen to us that might be emotional enough to make us cry never make us cry in the moment. There’s always that buffer of shock which I find way more interesting to play with.

DD: Me too. I was looking at your bio and you’ve had the opportunity to work with some amazing actors that have had long careers and continue to do incredible work. I’m going to ask you about individual people and I’m curious what you’ve learned from working with them in the earlier stages of your career. One thing I also remember is when I first met you, there was a lot about you that made me reminiscent of my 20s and being a young actor and how exciting that can be. I feel like a lot of what I’ve learned since starting to act professionally has been through working with amazing people. So I think the one we have in common, who is in Mothering Sunday and The Staircase, is Colin Firth. What have you learned working multiple times with Colin?
OY: Such a good question. You also worked with Colin about a decade ago, right?

DD: He really goes out of his way to connect with everyone on a film set, he makes them feel at ease, and I think that creates an environment that feels safe.
OY: Yeah, he looks people in the eye with intention and it’s unfortunate that’s such a rare thing.

DD: How about Toni Collette?
OY: I mean, she’s amazing [laughs]. Toni as well, she has that level of professionalism where she can turn something on so quickly and effectively. I’m thinking back to when we were doing all of those making the lasagne scenes – it’s a running joke in this show because every time there’s a family dinner it’s always fucking lasagne. [both laugh]

Interview originally published in The HERO Winter Annual 2021.