Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
John Wayne with a mother’s heart
Frances McDormand talks about her role in ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’
Frances McDormand talks about her role in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”
“I will go to my grave being known as Marge Gunderson. It will be on my gravestone, if I have one. I don’t mind that because it was a great character.” — Frances McDormand
That’s exactly what Frances McDormand did when she was making “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” a thriller set in a small, workingclass town swamped with violence.
When she landed the role of Mildred, a mother who refuses to allow her daughter’s rape and murder to go unsolved and unpunished, McDormand was blown away by the complexity of her character. Mildred was relentless yet vulnerable, tough-talking yet wracked with grief.
As the actress was trying to get a grip on his character’s contradictions, she hit upon the notion of John Wayne.
“I don’t do a lot of research,” says the actress, 60. “I fly by the seat of my pants most of the time, as my colleagues know.
“But when I was looking for iconic characters in cinema that I might model myself after as Mildred, the only ones I could find were male.
“I thought of maybe Pam Grier in blaxploitation films in the ‘70s but her characters always lead much more with their sexuality, which Mildred doesn’t.
“So, really, the one that I latched onto the most was John Wayne. Even though it’s not really evident in the film because they edited it out, I even used John Wayne’s walk.”
It wasn’t just any John Wayne movie which moved McDormand but arguably his best film, “The Searchers,” the saga of a man who goes in search of his niece (Natalie Wood) after she’s been kidnapped by Indians.
“[Wayne’s ultra-conservative] politics aside and his personal beliefs aside, I think that as an American icon, a cinematic figure, he has stood the test of time,” says McDormand.
“I also thought it was really interesting how in “The Searchers,” he is an extreme racist but by the end of that film you are deeply, deeply sympathetic with him. So, that is whose footsteps I was trying to walk in, and he was a size ten and a half.”
As for “Fargo’s” Marge Gunderson, McDormand won an Oscar for playing the role, which was written for her by her husband and brother-in-law, respectively, Joel and Ethan Coen.
“I will go to my grave being known as Marge Gunderson,” says McDormand. “It will be on my gravestone, if I have one. I don’t mind that because it was a great character. In some ways, Mildred is Marge grown up.”
In “Three Billboards,” which was written and directed by Martin McDonaugh (“In Bruges”), McDormand plays a woman who refuses to accept that her daughter’s killer might get away with the crime.
As a way of shaming members of the police force (Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell) into action, she rents three billboards which question why the killers of her daughter are still at large seven months after the murder.
About 15 years ago, McDormand ran into McDonaugh at a performance of his play “The Pillowman” and told him how much she’d love to work with him. It took him more than a decade but he eventually wrote “Three Billboards” with her in mind.
“Frances has so much integrity and dexterity with humor and tragedy and melan-
choly,” says McDonaugh. “Also, she and I talked a lot about [Mildred’s] workingclass sensibility, which a lot of actors may not have or can be patronizing about. One of the fundamental points of this story is to be truthful to a working-class identity, and she [helped me do that].”
Ironically, the actress initially was on the fence about appearing in “Three Billboards” despite loving the screenplay.
“In an early discussion we had, Martin gave me the script when I was 58,” recalls McDormand. “I’m now 60. I personally come
from working-class America, and I didn’t believe that a woman of that socio-economic background would wait that long to have her first child.
“So, I said to Martin, ‘This is great, and I want to do it, but make her the grandmother, not the mother.’
“He said no because he didn’t believe a grandmother
would fight as much for her grandchild as a mother would for her child. I said, “That’s stupid. You’re a man and not a parent, obviously.”
“So, we went back and forth many, many times and then finally my husband said, “Shut up and do it if Martin thinks you’re right.’
In retrospect, it is a decision that McDormand is
glad she made.
“The movie is melancholy and funny at the same time. That’s what Martin does best. And that is a really good combination. That is what humanity is about, is it not?
“From an actor’s point of view, the best thing you can have is a really great script, and this is one. There were no blank [spaces to be filled in later.] It was all there, and that’s how a really good piece of literature should be.
“When you get a script that’s this good, you never get lost in the melancholy; you just surf it. You know what I mean? So I did. We all did. It was a nice ride. And it was really satisfying.”