Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
THE AGILE ELIZABETH MOSS
ELISABETH Moss wants to go to an honest place.
If you can’t watch what we’re making, she says, how can you look out and confront what’s happening around you in our country and in this world?
Sitting near a hotel bar to promote the nationwide release of her indie film Her Smell, the conversation casually turns to the Reverend
Martin Luther King jr. As she tells it, Moss was shooting a scene at the Lincoln Memorial for the third season of The Handmaid’s Tale when she looked down at her feet and saw the engraved space honouring King’s landmark “I Have a Dream” address. Then, in her red handmaid’s cloak, she knelt down on the marker.
Moss, who has forged June “Offred” Osborne – and Mad Men’s
Peggy Olson before her – into some of legacy television’s most notable yet unplanned feminist icons of the last dozen years, didn’t shy away from recognising the link between the show and some of the political and social issues unfolding in the country. She even calls it cathartic.
“I don’t know how many people have this experience of being in that costume on those steps,” she says, “with the president a few blocks away making massive decisions that will affect immigration and the freedom and rights of many citizens.”
If the red cloak is now the international protest symbol for women’s issues, whether it’s in support for reproductive rights abroad or against a Supreme Court nominee in the US, then Moss, or her character, is the face of that branch of the resistance.
If you ask her, Moss will tell you that Her Smell, the actress’ third collaboration with director Alex Ross Perry, was the hardest thing she’s ever done. The angst, anger and depression of 1990s grunge put Moss – who grew up with jazz and blues musicians for parents and adored Paula Abdul – squarely out of her element.
“Nirvana wasn’t my thing at all. I just skipped right to Britney Spears,” she says, citing Baby One More Time as her go-to classic.
Becky Something, Moss’s character in the fictional biopic, is the toxic, self-destructive frontwoman of the riot grrrl feminist punk movement.
She is less Courtney Love and more Kurt Cobain, as well as Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean – those who struggled with a life of incredible fame mixed with crippling addiction. You can’t take your eyes off the anxiety and instability of Becky, whose jarring benders, violent outbursts and subsequent sobriety are both gripping and awkward.
“In one sitting, she achieves what she does season upon season on TV – creating a multi-year narrative for her characters,” Perry said.
No matter how Moss got there, she left Grammy winning singersongwriter Brandi Carlile, a fan and collaborator, visibly shaken.
“I was, at times, visibly uncomfortable watching it,” Carlile told Moss at their talk in Austin, before going one step further. From the time she debuted on Mad Men in 2007 until now, heading into her third season on another critically acclaimed show and booking lead roles in feature films, the focus on the actress has never been higher.
But there’s a price. With the increased spotlight on Moss and her work has come questions from fans, colleagues and critics regarding her beliefs in the Church of Scientology. She declines to expand on those criticisms but says she stands by what she describes as a personal matter.
“What I’ll say is, I have very little control over what is mine and what is private and what isn’t,” Moss says.
“It’s been my choice to keep certain things private and not talk about them, because otherwise it sort of feels that you don’t have anything that’s personal. The truth is what I believe, and what’s important to me is in my work. Often, the things I stand for, the things that mean something to me and my heart, I try to put into my work.”
In that work, Moss’s striking range is on display throughout the weekend. One night, she’s Kitty, the vain, gossip-driven housewife who drowns her insecurities in rosé in Us.
The next, she’s hard-living Becky. She says she played four different characters in less than five months last year, casually mentioning how she’s just returned from working on a Wes Anderson film in France.
“Bill Murray’s in it,” she says coyly about the project, probably referring to next year’s The French Dispatch. “I think I can say that.”
That versatility was apparent to film-maker Jordan Peele, who wanted Moss to tap into a Real Housewives of
Orange County vibe in Us.
“The most wonderful thing about working with Lizzie, from a directing standpoint, is you can experiment,” Peele said.
“She has such refined tools that you’ll get a performance and a take of something that is so beautiful, so nuanced, and weird and off-balance, and then you say, ‘Try another one like that but different’, and she’ll give you the hardest options you can imagine.”
She sees it in simpler terms. “It’s not rocket science,” she says. “My job is, in a sense, ridiculous. I put on costumes and hair and make-up and pretend to be other people. Then, there’s a hundred people who are in on the game and also playing with you. It’s ridiculous.”
“My family is very important, my friends are important, my boyfriend is important to me,” she says.
Then, Moss returns to an honest place.
“Those are the people I actually want to hang out with.” | The Washington Post