Winslet ‘just loves it’ when life imitates art
Labor Day debuts on heels of recent pregnancy
Kate Winslet is slicing a peach. On any other day, it would be little more than domestic trivia, but today we are talking about Labor Day, her new movie directed by Jason Reitman that contains many juicy scenes of peaches, the slicing of said peaches, and the baking of many golden-crusted peach pies alongside costar Josh Brolin.
“Don’t you just love it when that happens?” she says, acknowledging the sometimes freakish synchronicities that surround us daily.
Once we agree we are on the same page, there’s yet another lightning strike when her handset starts to crackle and she switches rooms. “Can you hear me? I live in a house with very thick walls.”
The imagery is too good to ignore because Winslet was still pregnant at the time the phone call to London took place. Mere weeks away from delivering the baby that would be called “Bear,” the “thick walls” comment had a uterine connotation that put us on the Grand Canal of birth, motherhood and what it means to be a woman.
“People in England haven’t a clue about Labor Day: They think it’s all about people giving birth. But isn’t it funny that we are talking about Labor Day and my own labour day isn’t that far off.” Do you like being pregnant? “Yeah. I do … but I’ve never been one of those women who says ‘Oh! I loved being pregnant. I felt so sexy and alive!’
“I have occasional moments where I might feel those things but mostly I think how can I keep myself energized enough to get through this, because it doesn’t matter whether you are rich, poor, young or old, as a pregnant person it’s the same for all of us: hugely challenging,” she says.
“But this pregnancy hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been very busy, which is good, because I’m an impatient person and the one thing you forget about being pregnant is how long it takes. Like, really. Am I still pregnant?”
Winslet says she couldn’t watch some of the scenes in Reitman’s new movie when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. They were too difficult because the character she plays in the film, based on Joyce Maynard’s bestseller, is a woman who struggled with pregnancy.
Her name is Adele, and when she finally does give birth to a son she calls Henry, she makes him the very centre of her universe. For years, they live a cloistered life until a dark stranger played by Brolin barges in and changes their world forever.
It’s a role that could have put Winslet in the role of victim, but there’s something about the way the actress plays all her characters that feels innately strong — even when she’s playing a suicidal wife in Revolutionary Road, or a young woman on the Titanic.
“I love being able to look my own daughter in the eye and say: ‘You are amazing!’ Because we are amazing! And sometimes, I think about my own childhood — which was perfectly lovely — but I don’t remember any celebration of being a girl. It was always girls against boys,” she says.
“But we don’t need to prove that we can do stuff too. We just f-ing can!”
Winslet says she enjoyed articulating that last sentence, and she loves feeling it even more. But she can understand how some people might think it sounds a little empty coming from a celebrity.
“You know, I can see how some might think: ‘Well, that’s easy for you to say in your fancy house and your large bank balance and people who work for you.’ Well, I don’t have any people working for me, by the way, but at the end of the day, we are all women in this world,” she says.