In person, Imelda Staunton is an attractive woman who looks nothing like her onscreen character, Vera Drake. Friendly, with a sharp wit and gracious to a fault, Staunton shared an insider's look at Mike Leigh's creative process and how the actors worked with the acclaimed filmmaker to breathe life into a simple family in 1950s England.
IMELDA STAUNTON PRESS CONFERENCE:
Where were you and what was your reaction to the Oscar news?
In London with Mike Leigh in the publicist’s office. We were having a Chinese take-away (laughing). It was wonderful. I mean really wonderful. For a film that is a difficult film, you know, to be in the race is remarkable. It’s great for an independent film to be up there. It was a real thrill.
Did you know when you read the script you had to do this project?
Well, with Mike Leigh there is no script. He never uses a script so the film was six months in preparation, which is improvising and creating these characters and huge amounts of research, and then three months filming it. Even when we started filming it I didn’t know how the film was going to end or anything, so it’s a voyage of discovery, to say the least.
You must have had great faith in your director.
Absolutely. But I mean, he’s got a bit of a track record so I didn’t think I was taking too much of a gamble on that one (laughing). So, yes. I’d never worked with him before so it was a first time for me and he doesn’t tell you what’s going to happen. I mean, he doesn’t tell you what the process is or how it’s going to work or, “This week we’re doing this. Next week we’re doing this.” You just go in every day and it’s like a theme park, in a way, of adventure because it is different every day.
How do you sustain a character if you don’t know what’s going to happen?
Because you have your character and that’s what you sustain, and he puts the story around that character. So by the time you’re filming, you’re very prepared and you know exactly what you’re doing because you’ve done it all in improvisations in the rehearsals. By the time you’re filming, you know what you’re doing although little changes happen and he really finely tunes everything. He absolutely knows what he is doing so you are in safe hands. I mean, there is an element of...I sort of compare it to imagining – not that I would ever do it – falling out of a plane with no parachute and there’s someone there going, “It’s absolutely fine. You’re fine.” And you go with it.
Was the entire cast on the set all of the time because you don’t know what’s happening next and who is involved?
No, not at all because your character only knows what your character would know. So I didn’t know there were any actors playing police. I didn’t know there were any police coming. I didn’t know anything like that, as the actors in the family didn’t know what Vera did. They only found that out at the very, very end of rehearsals before we started filming. They thought they were making a film about a happy family with a lot of tea (laughing).
Mike creates a situation in the rehearsal period so by the time you come to film it, you know what you’re doing. But there’s no script. You don’t write anything down. You’ve had the experience and you hold onto that. And it’s very easy to hold onto because it’s been happening almost for real.
If the actors don’t know the end until it happens in rehearsal, does that then change how you play the character after obtaining that knowledge?
Well, no, because in life we don’t know what’s going to happen in half an hour’s time. Whatever happens in half an hour, we have to deal with it in that moment. So when we started filming we had only rehearsed and improvised up to the point where she was alone in a cell. I didn’t know, I thought that that might be the end of the film. Then halfway through filming, he suggested that the natural thing to happen would be a court case, and would be a sentence. That’s what would have happened, so we started improvising that and creating that.
