New York State of Mind
Katie Holmes returns to the stage in ‘The Wanderers’ and behind the camera for the Gotham drama ‘Rare Objects’
Katie Holmes is impressively meticulous when it comes to her craft.
Over coffee at Sant Ambroeus in Soho, she’s discussing the importance of pacing in “The Wanderers,” an Off Broadway play in which she portrays a movie star named Julia Cheever, who becomes intertwined with one of the show’s two central and seemingly very different Brooklyn-based couples.
“When we were rehearsing, our director Barry Edelstein was like, ‘The play works at one hour and 37 minutes or one hour and 38 minutes. If you hop up to one hour and 40 minutes, then you aren’t faster than the audience. Your thoughts have to be faster than the audience,’” she recalls.
“You were there on Tuesday, right?” she asks. “We were, like, one hour and 38 minutes that night. The other weekend, we were at one hour and 37 minutes, and immediately, we had this overwhelming response.”
The attention to rhythm (and her astounding memory) also serves Holmes well as a director. “It’s so applicable to film,” she says. “When you’re editing, you think, ‘Oh, that moment is so good.’ But sometimes we don’t need it.”
As she returns to the stage in “The Wanderers,” Holmes is about to release her third feature directorial effort, “Rare Objects.” IFC is opening the film in select theaters and on demand on April 14.
Based on Kathleen Tessaro’s novel, “Rare Objects” tells the story of a young woman named Benita (“American Rust” actor Julia Mayorga) who works in a New York City antiques shop while recovering from a traumatic event. Holmes plays Manhattan socialite Diana, who forms an unlikely friendship with Benita after meeting her at the mental health facility where both stayed.
“I was drawn to the female friendship and this metaphor of ‘you are more beautiful for having been broken,’” she says.
Though the book takes place in Depression- era Boston, the movie is set in modern-day New York City. Holmes put a contemporary spin on the story because she feared she otherwise wouldn’t get the proper financing. “It’s very expensive to make a period piece,” she says.
The pared- down set of “Rare Objects” was essentially “go, go, go from the start,” Holmes remembers. Mayorga was cast two weeks before production, and they had just two weeks to rehearse before rolling the camera. “We worked very, very closely,” Holmes says. “It was long days.”
It’s not easy to film on the bustling streets of Manhattan. “In places where there’s not a lot of filming, people are excited,” Holmes says. Not so in the Big Apple. “In New York, it’s like, ‘No, you can’t shoot on my stoop. It’s going to be this amount of money.’ People are smart.”
But the city has a unique energy, she says. “You meet people outside of your bubble. That lends itself to having different perspectives.” It also inspired her creatively. “One morning,” she recalls, “I was getting on the train to Astoria, and all of a sudden, somebody banged on the window to wave at a friend. The doors had already closed. I love that. We put it in the movie because I just felt like that’s so New York.”
Holmes, an enduring presence in Hollywood since “Dawson’s Creek” catapulted her to fame in the late ’90s, has been reflective as she edges past 25 years in the industry. During the pandemic, she and her 16-year-old daughter, Suri, revisited the popular teen drama. “We had a good laugh about it,” Holmes says. “It’s wild to have a daughter who’s almost the same age as I was when I began all this.”