Interview (Written): Greta Gerwig (“Mistress America”)

An Indiewire interview with Greta Gerwig, lead actor and co-writer (along with Noah Baumbach) of the movie Mistress America:

Tell me how it was generated, because it’s nice to see this female dynamic on screen that we don’t see very often, and in this smart, funny, complex way.

After we had written in “Francis Ha” together, Noah and I — even before the movie was out in the world — talked about making another one, and writing another one together, and I think part of it was that we really loved the collaboration and also the crew we had assembled which was really special: Sam Levy the director of photography and Jen Lame, who was our editor, and [production designer] Sam Lisenco, and [first assistant director] Oscar Boyson, and all the people who were tirelessly working on this. So, it almost felt like making a second album. Getting the band back together.

But, we had another idea and we were talking about what we we would want to write, and what ideas we had floating around, and there was another screenplay, about something else, but the character, Brooke Cardenas, was in it.

Another screenplay that had your lead character from “Mistress America” in it?

Yes. And we were reading it out loud and I started talking in the voice of Brooke, and then we started writing more about Brooke and every time I talked in the Brooke way it would make Noah laugh and then we thought, “Maybe we should give Brooke a movie. But how are we going to do it, and what kind of movie do we want to do?” We knew we wanted the essential relationship to be about women again, but we wanted it to be a different configuration — one’s 18, and one’s 30, and they’re strangers. And they go into this, kind of instant intimacy, with Tracy [Lola Kirke] idolizing Brooke. And inherent in idolizing someone is that you tear them down, at least in some ways. It’s almost impossible to only idolize someone and then not see who they really are later on. And that can be disappointing obviously.

So, we built a story around that idea. We spent a lot of time on the script before we got on set. Because, basically, what you see on the screen is what was on the page. We don’t shoot a lot of stuff that doesn’t end up in the movie.

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Brooke is such a hilarious creature of a character; such a bulldog, so overwhelming, but recognizable. She reminds me of when I first moved to New York and was intimidated by people who were super sophisticated.

[Laughs] Yes. She’s larger than life. She’s a hustler, she’s always on, she’s always acting. Except for these few moments where she lets it drop, which just shows her vulnerability, which is absolutely heartbreaking. But she’s got this incredible energy and confidence and I think when Tracy meets her, she’s just completely infatuated with her. And Brooke wasn’t based on one person, but more an amalgamation of different people. And different moments and people I’ve met when I was 18 and I was intimidated by them and just shit scared of. And I was always worried that they would see straight through me, and know that I was lame. Why would they hang out with me? And I think a lot of that feeling went in to creating who Brooke was.

Here is the trailer for Mistress America:

For the rest of the interview, go here.