Jennifer Lawrence took day out on Monday night time to shine a lightweight on her Oscar nominated co-star Brian Tyree Henry and his work of their Apple/A24 film Causeway, diving deep into his course of. The actress sat down with the Best Supporting Actor nominee for a Q&A following a screening of the movie on the London Hotel at Los Angeles.
The two play unlikely people, each who suffered trauma, as they discover and prop one another in New Orleans. Lawrence performs Lynsey, an Afghanistan conflict vet who’s affected by physique and mind accidents. Henry is James, a mechanic who misplaced his leg and a nephew in a automobile accident. Henry gravitated to the venture having identified the director Lila Neugebauer (making her function directorial debut right here) from Yale Drama School.
The pic started taking pictures throughout Covid, however needed to shutdown at which level the actors workshopped the script with Neugebauer as they mined higher resonance from the fabric, notably towards the ever-changing atmosphere. Was there one other aspect of trauma particularly with Covid impacting everybody’s lives? Above all, the drama for each actors was by no means considered one of ‘boy meets girl’.
“We all questioned who we are and what humanity even means and we looked at what we had done,” Henry informed the Silver Linings Playbook Best Actress Oscar winner.
“There’s something else to these people, especially Lynsey and James,” stated Henry.
Henry’s window into James was tapping into his personal humanity, nonetheless, in doing so, the actor encountered some self truths.
“I judged James: Why is he in the same place? He lost so much in the car accident. Why is he alone? Why is he still drinking? I realized I was questioning a lot about myself and me doing the same thing. Me using James as a mirror and me confronting my own shit. Film gives you a lot of space to do that,” stated Henry.
Lawrence introduced up how Henry has referred to as Causeway, which was a 2 1/2 yr venture for them “a baptism”. Lawrence produced the film along with her Excellent Cadaver producing companion Justine Ciarrocchi.
Lawrence referenced a swimming pool scene that the 2 had collectively through which the characters actually join and sync into their vibes.
Talking about that second Henry defined, “We wanted to be made whole again, we wanted to be cleansed of all the pain and all things we suppressed and wanted to emerge anew…The vail drops, the hammer comes out…No way we can come out of that water the same way we came in. It felt that life gave us an opportunity to to turn the lens on ourselves.”
“Our characters had a complex relationship,” Lawrence informed Henry.
While the 2 characters had been labeled disabled, of their friendship they realized a glimmer of hope of their lives.
“The two of us weren’t that label anymore,” explains Henry about their arcs, “you didn’t smile until I came along.”
“Lynsey — all the obstacles she was met with, all telling her that she couldn’t do something and that she shouldn’t do something,” he added, “There’s a glimmer of her not being her disability for a minute, glimmer of her getting back to who she was. Both of us served as reflections of who we were.”
Henry continued about how the characters complement each other: “They gave each other grace, and I realized how rare that is to see especially between a Black man and white woman in a movie; there’s always some type of trope that we’re denied.”
“We’re existing in this space and time, that this friendship is possible, and that this is what it looks like,” he added, “These two people suffered so much, so why not give each other a chance to find some friendship and hope in each other?”
Off which Lawrence responded, “Hell, yeah.”
Henry can be up for Best Supporting Performance on the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Causeway is on the market to look at on Apple TV+.
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