Set in North Carolina, “Junebug” follows Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz), a British-born art dealer who specializes in ‘outsider’ art and her younger husband, George (Nivola). After six months of marriage, Madeleine still has not met his any of George’s family. When her interest in a reclusive artist from a small North Carolina town provides the perfect opportunity to visit his family, George reluctantly agrees to the trip and introduces his family to his new bride with interesting results.
INTERVIEW WITH ALESSANDRO NIVOLA:
With this role and in your past films, "Love's Labour's Lost" and Laurel Canyon," you have to sing. Do you look for the chance to sing when you're choosing a role?
(Laughing) “Well, I think probably ‘Laurel Canyon’ was the only time where my singing actually helped me get the job. Because I went in and I could play some crappy song on the guitar for Lisa Cholodenko and I think it sort of made the difference for me getting the job. Other than that, this one was totally sprung on me. I didn’t even remember it even being in the script when I first read it. Then I remembered Phil [Morrison], the director, telling me sometime after we started filming, ‘Oh by the way, I hope you’re doing your warm-up scales or whatever.’
This one was a really harrowing one because with ‘Laurel Canyon’ I got to spend months in the recording studio kind of working out the few songs. It was actually a really enjoyable thing that was kind of the perfect research experience for my character because I got to actually be living the life that my character was. I was going to the studio and drinking Jack Daniels and singing songs. But this time around, the whole thing was live and we only did the thing like twice or maybe three times. There were 150 people there in this church social, all of them basically went to that church on a weekly basis and I just had to sort of stand up and kind of launch into this hymn. So it was definitely sphincter-clenching.”
Does a short shooting schedule help you or work against you as an actor?
It helps not getting bored. I mean filming can be so tedious. You know, you can wait around for so long to film things and that happens even on small movies, but not quite as much because there’s such a time pressure that they tend to get going. The only thing is that on a small movie you don’t have to wait around very long to shoot your scenes but then when you shoot them, they don’t spend very much time with them.
On a big movie, you wait for hours and days to actually do your bit but then when it comes, with some exceptions, you tend to be able to spend more time doing it and over it. And I don’t know… I tend to get better as I go along, whereas some people sort of hit their first takes and they get worse from there.”
Were you hesitant to work with a first time director?
“Yeah (laughing). When you’re deciding whether to do a film there are usually three different criteria that you have to consider. One is the director, one is the script, and one is the role. And then maybe your co-stars - if you like them or not. And I would say that my top priority always is the role and like if I feel like I can be great in the part, I’ll do it in almost any movie. It matters less to me that the movie is going to be a hit, is going to be brilliant, is going to be – you just don’t really know about that kind of thing.
I feel like I’ll take a risk on the director if I think I can do a good job because most of the time you’re kind of, as a film actor as opposed to the theater, you’re having to rely completely on your own devices anyway. I mean, even the best directors may have a really good sense on how to put together a film and how to tell a story but as far as directing a performance goes, I’ve never really been helped by anybody. I feel like there’s just too much technical demands on a film director to really be able to spend much time kind of trying to find interesting ways of helping you with character and what-not. And I don’t even know that that’s their job, you know what I mean? I don’t feel resentful about it. I feel like that’s my job, it’s my job to be imaginative and come up with surprising ways of doing things and finding ways to bring something that’s on the page that doesn’t necessarily seem that exciting to life."
PAGE 2: Alessandro Nivola on Relating to His Character
