Molina opens up on highs, lows of long career
Alfred Molina has been a jack-ofall-stages, creating memorable characters and tackling multiple genres on the big and small screens as well as in the theatre.
His latest role as slumping Hollywood director Robert Aldrich, who sees his career revived amid great turmoil with the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is no exception.
Playing off exceptional castmates Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis, Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford and Stanley Tucci as studio mogul Jack Warner, Molina brings intensity to the FX drama Feud: Bette and Joan. We recently chatted with the actor about the trials and tribulations — and entitlements — of his character as well as a 40-year career that has had us laughing and crying.
Q: Everybody talks about the viciousness between Bette and Joan but what about Jack Warner and Robert Aldrich? Those were some crackling scenes.
A: Robert was a journeyman director and he’d gone through almost every genre. And when What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? arrived, his career, like the careers of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, was in very much of a slump. And so Robert and Bette and Joan were all desperate for something, and so as you say, their relationship was symbiotic, and particularly with Jack Warner who had very little respect for Robert but saw here a chance to make some money. So Robert was kind of caught, I believe, in between this strange place where I don’t think he was relishing the idea of stoking the fire of this rivalry between Joan and Bette, but at the same time he understood that it was going to create buzz, it was going to create publicity, and that was all going to be good for the film.
Q: He’s got Jack Warner, he’s got Bette, he’s got Joan, and he’s got his wife. I mean, your character is the character with the most problems.
A: But, in a sense, he created a lot of those problems because he belongs to a generation of men, men in the film business, who were pretty much allowed to just behave any way they wanted. They certainly weren’t answerable to any women in positions of authority. So his generation had a level of entitlement and privilege that they probably weren’t even aware of.
Q: It’s just the way that it was and sadly, to some extent, the way it still is.
A: I thought one of the interesting elements of that particular thread was the scene when Alison Wright’s character, Pauline, comes to me and suggests that she might direct this movie that she’s written. And with no kind of judgment — I can’t remember the exact line, but he says something like, “Well, women don’t direct films. You know, no one’s done that.” And he didn’t say it in any way that was mean. It was just a fact. It was like saying, “Well, you know, water is wet.”