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Understanding Her Character’s Journey: It didn’t take long for Christina Ricci to understand her character’s motivations. “I have read over time and you see a lot about this occurrence, and this sort of phenomena of women being created this way unfortunately, and having this be the response to sexual abuse,” explained Ricci. “But then once I started reading about it… Because the first thing I wanted to look at was this nymphomania idea. I did research online and found out that nymphomania is basically a defunct word and any psychiatrist worth their salt will tell you that it basically means nothing now except that it’s a male fantasy. There is sex addiction, but nymphomania is really not something that’s really widely used. It’s like calling someone crazy. It doesn’t mean anything, really. But then I went back and looked at, ‘Okay, what is she probably suffering from?’ And what she would have been suffering from, what fits the description, post-traumatic stress is the thing which best fits what she’s going through.
If you think about it, if she’s a child who everyday is being sexually abused, then everyday she’s living with this dread and fear knowing something’s coming, knowing it’s going to happen at some point. And ironically the only time that she experiences relief or calm is after the abuse has occurred, because it’s when at least she can relax knowing it’s not going to happen again until the next day. So when someone’s suffering from post-traumatic stress, they’re experiencing the same emotions long after the event has stopped. It could be 40 years ago but you still feel that same kind of anxiety and stress of waiting for the abuse to occur. And if the only way she ever found relief before was from the abuse, now she’s an adult with this horrifying, crippling anxiety and fear. She’s got to then become almost her own abuser, because no one’s ever taught her another way to get any kind of relief or release from her pain. She creates these situations of degrading, anonymous, painful sex and that’s her way of abusing herself and creating at least momentary relief.
When I was reading tons of testimonials, there’s a lot you read expressed by many individuals that they’d rather die than ever be raped again. And so you can kind of understand her saying, ‘This is never going to happen to me again and it’s not going to happen to me again, because I’m going to do it to myself first.’”
A role like this really made Ricci count her blessings. “Oh absolutely. I read some statistics about re-victimization that are just horrifying and so painful. Over the years I’ve done a lot of work with RAINN and ever since I got into the research and really understanding what happens to these victims, I’m starting to work even more with them now. I feel like one of the things I would like for someone seeing this movie who maybe is a survivor of sexual assault, is to see that it could be 40 years ago, but you still need to get counseling. You still need to get help. You don’t have to report the crime, but for your own ability to move on and have a life, you need to get help. That’s the thing that I got from this movie that I hope other people will get from this movie. I’m working with RAINN right now to try to get that message out there even more.”
Rating Justin Timberlake’s Acting Skills: Timberlake’s recently added 'film actor' to his lengthy resume. How did big screen veteran Ricci think the pop star did in Black Snake Moan? “I thought he was great. Justin is so much fun to be around. He’s really silly and goofy, and we had a great time on set. I was really, really impressed with his acting. He was great. He really connects with other actors in the scenes and he could do a lot of things that took me years to learn how to do.”
Up Next – Penelope: “Penelope is a great story. It’s got a lot of heart, like this one does. It’s basically a really wonderful story for young girls. It’s a fairy tale in which my character is cursed, her family is cursed, and she is born with the face of a pig. She’s got a pig nose. There’s this riddle of how to break the curse and the family believes that it is to find a man who will love her in spite of her nose, when really the moral of the story is that she had the power all the time, that all she needed to do was love and accept herself.”
