Pike returns to the dark side
Role as manipulative Marla Grayson in ‘I Care a Lot’ chilling to watch
Anytime Rosamund Pike can score a Golden Globe nomination is sweet, though her third, for the new crime thriller “I Care a Lot,” is for a role with a dark, irreverent sense of humor that hits just right amid pandemic times.
Watching the film gives audiences “the opportunity to escape into something not socially acceptable,” says Pike. “In a way, it’s the license to indulge in another central part of being human, which is the dark side.”
Those who adored the British actress as the cool and calculating Amy Dunne in 2014’s “Gone Girl” – which earned Pike Globe and Oscar nods – will enjoy her as the chilly and manipulative Marla Grayson in “I Care a Lot.” Using morally questionable legal tactics and well-placed accomplices, Marla runs a grifting operation where she becomes the court-appointed legal guardian of elderly people, sticks them in a care facility and drains them of their money and possessions.
“The system is set up for her to win and she’s just seen the loopholes and jumped right through them,” Pike says.
Unfortunately, Marla’s latest ward (Dianne Wiest) has some powerful friends and the scam puts Marla on the radar of a powerful gangster (Peter Dinklage). Pike, 42, fell in love with Marla from the start. “She was so delicious. She was so shocking, so sort of ruthless and yet with this biting wit and intelligence and ferocity,” Pike says during a video call from snowcovered Prague, where she’s staying with family and filming the Amazon Prime fantasy series “The Wheel of Time.” Her 8-year-old son Solo has been camping out with Pike’s partner, Robie Uniacke, in a tent: “They’re braver than I am.”
Writer/director J Blakeson, though, was impressed by her stamina when putting Pike through some of the film’s more physical scenes. In one, Marla is strapped to a chair and roughed up with a teeth-rattling punch, and yet afterward she’s still trying to strike a million-dollar payoff for herself with not much leverage. “She sees opportunity
whereas other people would see fear and failure because she has no fear,” Blakeson says of Marla.
The filmmaker thought Pike was perfect for the role, having seen her knack for disappearing into a character – from early parts in “Pride & Prejudice” and “An Education” to “Gone
Girl” and “Hostiles” later. “You want to feel (Marla’s) joy of being good at this terrible thing,” Blakeson says, “and it felt to me that Rosamund could really bring that to the table.”
Pike also enjoyed letting loose Marla’s primal side: There’s a botched attempt to drown her but instead she emerges from the water, pulls a loosened tooth out, lets out a guttural roar and then calmly gets back to business. “Marla’s smile is one of her weapons and to lose a tooth is really irritating to her,” Pike says. “Even though she’s got a lot of stuff to get done, it’s still worth making a detour to the dentist to get that tooth put back in.”
A piece of backstory that got nixed from the final “I Care a Lot” script explained that Marla actually owned a boutique vape store and was “Walmarted out of business,” leading her to “play dirty like everybody else,” Pike says. But one of her inmovie bon mots (“I’ve been poor, it doesn’t agree with me”) touches on Marla’s real truth amid her chicanery: “She shamelessly and openly declares that wealth for her is freedom and that means no one can screw her over again and she won’t quit. And it’s unusual to hear a woman declare it like that.”
In the past, Pike has called Amy Dunne the role of a lifetime, but after playing Marla, she’s not going to say that again.
“I am fortunate that these extreme women have come my way, and I think what Amy Dunne let out for me was the ability to be extreme onscreen,” Pike says. “Maybe they’re not ‘of a lifetime.’ Maybe they’ll keep on coming. That’s the hope. That would be good.”