Maslany gets emotional
Boston Marathon bombing story required digging into script, meeting survivor
Tatiana Maslany leaves the busy company of Orphan Black’s fictional clones to play real-life character Erin Hurley in the Boston Marathon bombing drama Stronger.
Co-star Jake Gyllenhaal is generating early Oscar buzz as Hurley’s exhusband, Jeff Bauman, whose mangled lower legs were amputated after the 2013 terrorist attack. Bauman struggles to rebuild his life while balking at the hero image crafted for him by resilient Bostonians in David Gordon Green’s ( Our Brand Is Crisis, Pineapple Express) powerful drama, based on Bauman’s own book of the same title.
“Initially, I think I put Erin on a pedestal,” Maslany said Saturday, the day after Stronger had its gala world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
That was before she met Hurley and before she “really dug into the script,” which turns on Bauman’s recovery and reluctance to become a symbol of the city’s cry to not let the terrorists win.
“That is exactly what the script is kind of telling you, that nobody lives in that place,” said Maslany, who turns 32 the day Stronger arrives in theatres on Sept. 22.
Wearing a black floral dress, checked jacket and white Converse high-tops, Maslany spoke about the thrill of premiering the film at TIFF, although having a film here is not a new experience for the Regina-born Emmy winner.
She’s been at the festival both as an actor and “film nerd” fan, including for her starring role in Canadian director Kate Melville’s low-budget Picture Day in 2012, the same year she was part of TIFF’s Rising Star program.
“She’s extraordinary,” Gyllenhaal said of Maslany in an interview with the Star.
“She’s not afraid of going to scary places emotionally, she’s not afraid of learning more about things she doesn’t know about.”
Stronger is a relationship drama, focusing on Bauman and Hurley, who later married, had a child and have since split.
The day of the bombing, Bauman was at the finish line to cheer Hurley on as she completed the marathon, when the bomb went off. Hurley struggles with feelings of guilt, responsibility and resentment — a situation not helped by Bauman’s overbearing mother (a superb Miranda Richardson).
Maslany spent time with Hurley before filming and found that she related to her.
“It was just amazing how generous she was with her time and with her life and her story. But also I really just related to her as a person . . . and (was) kind of moved by how similar we were,” Maslany said. “We were very similar in age and we’ve deeply loved someone . . . (The bombing) is obviously something I’ve never experienced, but all of the nuances of their relationship are relatable to me.”
This idea of turning from hero worship also rings familiar in this age of celebrity culture.
“I don’t feel any connection to the image that people have of me, whatever that image is,” Maslany said. “They think as an actor you are sort of thrust into this world that is about other things, not about necessarily characters in your work.” Maslany heads to Wales next month to star in a relationship story about a couple at a crossroads opposite Jay Duplass. It’s the directing debut for her longtime partner, Tom Cullen. Cullen is keeping the script a secret. “It’s going to be a huge experiment,” she says.