Husband and wife actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick do not usually take on roles in the same film. However the two broke their own rule in order to work on "The Woodsman," directed by Nicole Kassell and based on a play by Steven Fechter.
Kevin Bacon recalls, "I read the part and thought, there aren’t many actresses who can be beautiful and sexy and yet you’d believe they’d be working in a lumberyard. There was originally some trepidation that because we’re married it might be distracting and take audiences out of the film, but she was the right actress for the part.
INTERVIEW WITH KYRA SEDGWICK ('Vicki'):
How hard was it to let your relationship go for these characters, and then come back after you finished shooting?
It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as an actor, is to shoot a scene with my husband in that truck where I’m meeting him for the first time with someone who I’m so deeply invested in emotionally and married to for 16 years. It was for sure the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, probably will ever have to do. So it required a lot of work on the character beforehand and a lot of vigilance in staying very committed to the character.
Sometimes when you do a part, the wall between you and the characters can be very porous. You can sort of move in and out of your character’s persona and being. And that just couldn’t happen on this one because of working with him. At the end of the day, you let it go to a certain extent but also it’s something that you have to keep sort of stoked in your belly.
I think that what both these characters share for me is a deep shame. I think [Kevin’s character] for the obvious reasons, but she, though she is the victim of abuse, I think that often as victims we feel somehow complicit in the abuse, that somehow it was our fault. When you hear people that were molested as children from priests and somehow they feel so much shame like it was my fault. Or it’s not even able to be articulated as it is just like this shame. Shame is such an intense emotion. It just can drive you. And I think both these characters are really driven by it. So I think that that’s something that was always sort of in the pit of my stomach throughout the weeks of shooting. Ultimately, you know, I’m a grown-up, I’ve been in this business a long time. I’ve got kids. I’ve got to do my stuff. But I also need to keep it there so I can bring it up again the next day at work or whatever.
What is it like to go home together after intense scenes?
Very hard. It’s great to be together and thank God we had each other. But, in some ways, we were very separate throughout the whole filming, even when we were together. We’d go home and sleep in the same bed, and we were there. But we were both like… It really was, when I really think about it, it was almost like we were in the same space but not together. I don't know if you’re married, but sometimes there are times where one is really together with their partner. And then there are times when you’re both just in your own thing, but you’re there together. Really, that’s what it was like during the filming of it. And when the kids would come, we’d be on them clearly, but then they’d go and we’d both be separated.
I think it really takes some getting back together after a project is done. Even during “Loverboy,” which he directed, it’s the same thing. You kind of separate even though you’re together because I have to do my job [and] he has to do his job. When we would go to work on “The Woodsman,” I would go into my room, he’d go into his room, and we’d be called together to the set. And just come together on the set as colleagues but really, we didn’t think that we wouldn’t be together in the same room, but we just gravitated away from each other.
Did the kids notice when you were in those moods?
Maybe. They probably feel it on a visceral level, like just on a level. But when they came for the weekends or when I would go home because I wasn’t in every scene, Kev was. But when I would go home, you were there for them. That’s just the first priority and I’ve been, again, in this game long enough that they come first and even if it’s there, it’s there and they don’t see it. They don’t feel it.
