Actress Nathalie Emmanuel Talks Game of Thrones

Get to know Nathalie Emmanuel as she discusses her iconic role as Missandei on Game of Thrones as well as her more recent roles, including starring along side Kevin Hart in Quibi's Die Hart and Mindy Kaling's Four Weddings and a Funeral reboot.

Tova: Hi and welcome to the backlot, I’m Tova Laiter moderator and director of the New York Film Academy Guest Lecture series. In this episode, we will take an in-depth look at one of my great guests and hear about her experience in the entertainment industry. And now Eric Conner will take you through the highlights of this Q&A. 

Eric: Hi, I’m Eric Conner senior instructor at New York Film Academy. And in this episode we bring you an actress whose credits cover pretty much every corner of the entertainment globe. She rode shotgun with Vin Diesel in the Fast and Furious franchise, helped turn Kevin Hart into an action hero in Quibi’s Die Hart, voiced Deet in The Dark Crystal reboot and RSVP’ed to Four Weddings and a Funeral in Mindy Kaling’s reboot. But a lot of you might know her best as the Khaleesi’s BFF Missandei in Game of Thrones. We are talking about Nathalie Emmanuel. Like a number of us, Miss Emmanuel got her start as a kid playing an animal in a show, except hers was one of the biggest musicals of all time. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: I actually just got into performing arts and dancing, singing, acting, it was just like a fun hobby. Like my mom wanted my sister and I to have, you know, extracurricular activities. And it was really just like a fun thing to do. And I was quite a shy kid. And so, you know, going to dance, going to acting classes and all of that kind of helped me build confidence away from her. I’m I was I am still a huge mommy’s girl. So, you know, being away from her was so traumatic as a kid. And she was like, I need to do something with this child. Like, she keeps breaking down every time I have to leave her anywhere. So with dance classes, singing, acting, it sort of helped me come out of my shell a bit. And then it just was this fun thing that we did. And like we used to have this newspaper in England called the stage. I don’t know if it still exists or if it’s just online now. And they used to post like auditions for shows, for commercials, for, you know, TV shows. It was crazy, like look through it. And my mom would circle the ones that weren’t like too huge commitments because she was quite particular about school. Yeah. And then I guess the sort of turning point for me was when I got cast in the stage show The Lion King, when it first moved to London, I was like 10 years old in this like huge production with all these incredible people like Julie Taymor was there to teach us the show, Lebo M. and all these incredible artists. And I think that’s when I went, oh, wow, yeah. This is what I want to do. I want to keep doing this. Whatever this feeling is, I want to keep doing it. And then and then I sort of got my big break, so to speak, in the UK when I’m 17. And I went and did a TV show. So that was pretty cool. And now I’m still here somehow.

Eric: Her big break was the long-running British soap Hollyoaks. But even after appearing on that show four years, Miss Emmanuel’s road to success was still far from a steady and straight line. In fact it was won with plenty of missteps and rejections. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: How did I keep going? I mean, I have a wonderful support system. I have people that really believed in me, and I’m lucky enough that those people always kind of rallied around me even when I didn’t necessarily believe in myself in the way that I should or could at the time so, you know, I’m I’m incredibly grateful to many people for that support. And I think at one point I had to I was making the decision about whether to go back to school and do a degree and try and like, you know, have something else. And and the reason why I made that choice was because I was like I’m a smart person. Like, I can do other things that I enjoy. I have lots of interests. You know, acting is like a passion. That was also another creative outlet, to be fair. It was a very artistic thing. And then what happened specifically was like Game of Thrones happened. I was very much like, I’m going back to school and blah blah blah. And that happened. And my life is sort of like I feel that fate just decided that now wasn’t the time. And then, you know, there have been other times where I’ve been kind of discouraged and think, oh, you know, I feel like the parts that I’m being asked to audition for are just all really like, you know, is this is how people see me? And you know, it can really mess with your head and your self-esteem and things like that. And I have had to work really hard up positive affirmation and like telling myself that, you know, I decide who I am and I am in control of me and my career and like the things that I will do and that I won’t do. And, you know, and there’s like a confidence that comes with that even when you’re, like, really discouraged and you’re like, no, no, no. I need to figure out exactly what it is that I want from my career and from, you know, the parts that I do. And if this isn’t the thing that works out for me, I was like, the idea of giving up, like, obviously breaks my heart, but like, I’m a smart woman. I can do lots of other things. There are lots of things I’m passionate about. And my life I think has sort of taught me that you have to give yourself time and that just because things aren’t happening in the speed that you think is or comparison to someone else’s timeline doesn’t mean that it won’t or can’t happen. Maybe you just need to find a different way to it. And I think there’s a lot of solace in that thinking because you just can go, OK, before I get all panicked and start being unkind to myself with my words and my thoughts, what can I do that is proactive and positive, as opposed to, you know, the opposite.

So, there’s no guarantees in this game, but the way that we speak to ourselves and the way that we, you know, encourage ourselves really matters. And like I said, also having a support system and a community, because nine times out of 10, a lot of your peers are going through a similar thing. And you can find comfort with those people and take those risks together and bounce ideas off the wall. I also think like now, like young people with all the technology that we have now just at our fingertips, that people are making movies on mobile phones, which are making it into festivals, you know, and launching careers. And I think there is also something really great about going, OK, like, OK, maybe I write something, maybe I’ll get my friend who I know does sound or my friend that does cameras. Great. Like maybe if I’m like, let’s get this guy and we can just go and shoot something. It’s just about keeping pro-active and trying to generate something either within yourself or literally physically with a piece of work. 

Eric: That attitude of making things happen and creating opportunities would eventually lead to Natalie Emmanuel’s biggest audition, a show that took her from working actor to star: Game of Thrones. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: I had been harassing my agent about Game of Thrones, I was like, so this show, I need to I just really want if there’s ever anything, I’m right for for it. You have to let me know. And so when I got that audition, I phoned her up and I seen it on a casting sign of, like, Joe, you know I’ve seen it. You’ve got an audition on Wednesday. And I was like, yes. And it was just like very exciting. And then the reality dawned on me and I was like, OK, this is a show you really like and you really want this. You can overthink it and then, like, freak out and then just completely sabotaged yourself. So like I said, I just like did as much research as I could. I hadn’t got into the books yet, so –  that’s not true. I’d read book one at that point and so I hadn’t met Missandei in the book. So I went online and the fandom really helped me with all the breakdowns of all the characters from all the books. And I found Missandei and where she came into the story. And I, I guess I made choices for her and I thought, well, this character is a child in the books and I was a woman, so I had to kind of just make choices. But that still carried the essence of that person that I was reading about online. And and I just tried to be as prepared as possible. And that’s kind of like, all I can do. The other thing with Missandei was they told me they were like, oh, no, we just want you to do a standard British accent. It doesn’t have to be. And I thought, you know what, this woman is from a different part of the realm and she’s speaking another language. Maybe I need to try and get like an accent that is like an accented English. And so I sort of prepared this accent that to be honest with you, I mean, I’ve no idea what it was even now, but I went into the audition and then we did the scene. And Robert, who is the casting director with Nina Gold, was like, oh, that was great. That was really cool. But you know what they haven’t really quite decided whether Missandei has an accent on not. And I was like, well, I thought, yes, this is like the joy of being prepared. And so I did another read with this accent I worked up and I walked out and I was like, great. And I sort of just let it go. And then the rest is history. But but for me, it’s like preparation like was so important and it meant that, like, I could be confident when they sort of did this other thing, I sort of considered all the possibilities. And sometimes it’s as simple as like doing a self take at home with your mum in the kitchen and then sending off. And then it’s like you’re just like, oh, OK, well, I did this thing and you just kind of wait to hear. And everything is really different. I mean, for Fast and Furious, a lot of those scenes were like really action scenes, which are quite hard to put on self type. You know, like that’s hard to do. And it’s like a lot of stage directions and you’re going like you’re crazy or whatever the scene is. And we just had to just try something. And then, yeah, sometimes the kind of preparation there’s not really time for, it’s not very clear what preparation you can do. So I guess for me it was like, OK, learn the lines, get the accent right or get whatever right, and then just throw it at the wall and see what sticks and see if they like it. I don’t know. It’s like it’s different from everything I’ve read – every audition.

Eric: Ms. Emmanuel’s preparation for an audition also speaks to the work she does when she gets a role. She connects with the character on a deep enough level to make her performance less like acting and more like being. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: For me preparation is key. I do lots of work kind of before we even get to filming, you know, it’s like all that character work, you know, figuring out in any scene like what my character’s intentions are and literally per line, I’m quite like methodical. I’m like, why is she saying that line? Why is she doing that thing, mapping that journey throughout the entire story, understanding how they feel about the people they interacting with or the situations they’re acting with and just sort of knowing this person in and out as much as possible. And then when you know your lines as well, I think once you know exactly what you have to do, like from the script, that gives you a confidence to kind of play and like, relax into it. I always feel like there’s this moment where, like, the lines and the ideas kind of drop in the body. Literally, physically, I feel like this person’s voice, this person’s movements, like it becomes second nature. And sometimes it can be inspired by like music or sometimes it’s as simple as just putting on their clothing or I don’t know. It really depends on the part on the day as well. And but yeah, I think for me, like making sure that I really understand the scene and that I’m about to do and just like the character as a whole and how they feel about the world and the people around them, like once I know all of that and I’ve done that kind of work, it kind of helps me connect to them quicker. But there has been, you know, in a sort of more technical sense, like if I’ve been doing an accent, for example, there is a real benefit for me when I just like, stay in accent all day because in a way, like I’m kind of staying in character. So I’m not like the person that’s living as this, like I’m not like that method where I’m living as this character for three months. But I think it’s just really useful for me to sort of stay somewhere close to who they are and how they speak so that when the cameras start rolling, I’m not reaching really far to access them again, like after lunch or something. And so that for me is just like in a more kind of simple technical sense. That’s something that I find really useful. And my mom, often she’ll phone me at work and I’m like in a different accent. She’s like, oh, you’re at work. And I’m like, yes, you know, whatever so, yeah. 

Eric: So all the preparation and training only went so far with perhaps Game of Thrones‘ trickiest challenge, acting believably opposite creatures that aren’t even there. Though her solution gets back to that kind of acting most of us did when we were kids. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: Well, the thing about green screen is, is you just – OK, so, you know, when you’re a kid and you’re like, let’s play dragons and knights and you all, you’re like, oh, we’re like on an adventure. And like, this is basically all the imagination that we just have as a kid. Like, you get to do that in front of a green screen. So you – often you can’t see, like they might show you a previous of like what the scenery looks like. But often you’re using your imagination and it can be quite challenging at times, especially in – the place where I probably find it the hardest is in the Fast and Furious movies, because, you know, you’re in a car often that’s in a soundstage surrounded by blue or green. And they’re like on the left, there’s a huge explosion like like there’s not really. So, like, I don’t know what it feels like to have a huge explosion happen right next to me. So it is really just like using your imagination and just going for it. And often you’ve got the director being, like, yelling stuff at you to add to the, like, energy of it. There’s also really fun times where you’ve got like, for example, in Game of Thrones, once the dragons got very big, it was just kind of this poor guy with a green ball on the end of a stick, just kind of running in the distance and we all had to follow it. And, um, yeah, it’s not quite as like, to look at this poor guy running as fast as he can with this kind of green lollipop. It’s funny, but we have to play it like oh wow there’s a dragon. So, yeah, it’s always fun. 

Eric: It takes immensely talented directors to help an actor navigate the technical and dramatic terrain of an epic like Game of Thrones. Fortunately, that show had some of the best. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: One of the best experiences I’ve had with the director. It was with Mark Mylod on Game of Thrones. I worked with him a number of times before in previous seasons. But during the scene, the scene with Grey Worm and Missandei when they finally acted on their love. 

Clip: [Clip from Game of Thrones] 

Nathalie Emmanuel: He just took the best care of us and, you know, we went into rehearsal and essentially, he did with us what intimacy coordinator would do, where we established what boundaries were, what we didn’t want to do. He gave his ideas. And then we, I would be like, oh, I’m not comfortable doing that. Or I’m like, yeah, that’s fine. And the same for Jacob. And he just was so respectful and so wonderful and really just helped us bring out the kind of beauty of that scene and the sort of like, oh, all that like, we really earned this moment. And he treated it with so much respect and treated us with respect as actors and obviously the people having to do this very intimate scene. And it just really – for such a challenging scene for the obvious reasons. Like, I felt incredibly safe. And it was also a testament to my relationship with Jacob and our relationship as friends and colleagues. Like we just kind of had each other’s back. And then it was just really, we were so happy when we found out that Mark was directing that episode and we were like, oh, it’s in the perfect hands. And it really, really was. And he just was so wonderful. And yeah, I couldn’t have asked because that was the first time for me doing a scene like that. And so for me, I just was like so grateful and like I was so proud of it when I watched it and I was like, Oh, thanks Mark and thanks Jacob. But we had to it was yeah, that was really special.

And in terms of communication, like, I just need people to tell me what’s what. Like I realized that often in this business with actors, they sort of treat us like we’re like these fragile things that you can’t be told no, or be told something negative. I am, like I’m just kind of real and I just want to know, like, what do you need? Like, you don’t have to worry about upsetting me. Like, as long as people talk to me respectfully, I don’t really mind what the note is. You might say to me, yeah Nathalie not really feeling it. I’m not really feeling what you’re doing. I think that we need these things. And like when it’s laid out to me in a clear way and like even if it’s negative, even if you don’t like what I’m doing, people are allowed to tell me that because I think that a set is such a safe space. It’s such a sacred space. And in like, sometimes you have to work stuff out. Sometimes people have to kind of get upset and get frustrated and then find something else, find a new way through. Like that’s part of the challenge for me as an actor. I’m like, I’m not afraid of those situations, although, you know, like we’re all human and we have emotions and I’m a sensitive soul just like anybody. But I really hate when people don’t tell me the truth and tell me, like, it’s not working because, you know, at the end of the day, like, I am the one that’s on camera and my director is, I guess in a way like I’m sort of tethered to them. I’m really looking for their – I’m I’m an actor like that really wants to hear my director and their thoughts and feelings and let me know straight up, like, what’s up and what’s not working or is and blah blah blah. So, yeah, for me, just being honest and being respectful, you know, that it really is quite simple, I think. 

Eric: And part of acting is also dealing with directors when the scenes or communication are not quite clicking. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: At the end of the day, it’s about compromise and sometimes something just isn’t working and you just have to be open to trying something else and stepping outside maybe what you perceived the scene to be or that moment to be, or that line to mean or whatever. So because often as actors, we can get so connected to a character. So it almost becomes a part of us that sometimes when people – like people can say something you’re like, no, that’s not that’s not what I was doing, you know, and actually to double down, I sometimes. You know there’s always opportunities where you need to fight for your character. But like, I think that sometimes when it feels like there’s so much of a wall there that maybe you just need to try something else. And that’s like you just have to try and practice openness and practice taking a new route. Then hopefully you will find somewhere that works, both of you, but kind of getting frustrated and angry and defensive. I just generally in life, I don’t really feel like that’s particularly productive and doesn’t really encourage, like, creativity particularly. So I try to, breathing and, you know, like try and kind of be like okay I’m trying to listen, I’m trying to be open and that’s all I can really do. And I guess hope for the best. 

Eric: After Game of Thrones finished its legendary run, Ms. Emmanuel had to face a new battle, how to move on from one of the biggest shows in history. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: I mean, there is always a period of time after you finish something where people will only see you as that thing. Like that’s just inevitable. I was slightly in a privileged position where I had this other thing, like I was doing the Fast and Furious franchise. So I was already kind of established in this other thing when I finished Game of Thrones, which is the not so common position to be in, I imagine. And so I kind of had that other thing and it kind of happened not too long afterwards. It came out like not too long afterwards. I can’t remember the timeline exactly, but I just remember I had some time off to the show where I was in this privileged position where I knew that I had that thing coming up and I could really take a moment to decide what do I want to do? You know, what kind of parts do I want to do? Like I had a whole meeting with my team and I said, let’s try and send these kinds of scripts and these kinds characters and just see what’s around. You know, that is an incredibly unique position to be in. You know, I was sort of like, you know, financially as an actor, I was like, great, I don’t have to worry too much for a while. You know, I can take some time where it’s not a matter of like, OK, I need to get money to live like it was. I had time. And so I really made the most of it. 

Eric: Nathalie Emmanuel found herself in an enviable position. Financial security, finishing a major role in one of the best TV shows in history, and she had time to find that next great role, which turned out to be not so easy. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: There was one point where I did get quite disheartened because there was a couple of things that I really liked and I got quite close to and it didn’t work out. And I was just like, I like people. Is it because they can only see me as this one thing? And and then while I sort of got a bit down. Suddenly this opportunity kind of came out of nowhere. And it was something that I’d auditioned for months and months, months ago. And it kind of just like came back around and I thought, oh, my goodness, this is amazing because I thought that had gone away and that I hadn’t got that thing. And I’m talking like five months ago I had auditioned for it. So it wasn’t like, oh, a few weeks ago. It was like I’d forgotten that I’d even auditioned for it. And so the fact that that came back around was like amazing. And it was like everything that I had been manifesting. You know, I tend to decide the things that I want for the next year or six months. And I’ve been craving all of these things. I was like, I want to work back home. I’ve been living out of a suitcase for however many years. I was like, I want to be in London. I want to challenge myself with an American role. I want to have a role that is more of a lead or supporting lead where I have more responsibility. And then Four Weddings and a Funeral kind of came back around and I was like, it’s perfect. It was shooting 40 minutes in the car from my house. I was like, this is amazing. And I got to and it was kind of just happened so organically as well. And it was a strange time because I really at one point was like, what is it? Is it because they can’t see me as anything but Missandei? Is it too soon? But yeah, I guess I kind of just gave in to the and just go, OK, got to let it go and just see what happens. That’s the thing about this life. It’s, you know, there’s no guarantees and you kind of have to let go into it a bit. And you know, what I was saying before how I count my lucky stars, well, they were shining on me then. And so I was, that happened and it was amazing. 

Eric: What helped Ms. Emmanuel’s journey since leaving Westeros was having a clear direction on the role she wanted. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: I will always read a script through, and I guess I, I look for aspects of the character that firstly, like I understand and can relate to or stuff that, you know, I’m like, oh, that’s really challenging. I always look for the challenges, really. Things that I’m like, oh, that’s going to be quite fun to try and discover and find. But really just like as a woman, as a woman of color, I always just want to see that these characters are being written in a rounded, authentic way and not in a sort of superficial trope-y way. So that’s the first thing I’m like, is this like tokenistic or is this, you know, interesting? And it’s always fun for me, like to play people who are complex and, you know, not all good or bad, all just one thing. So I like to see some variety in the character’s journey. And I guess I ask questions like, what else can I bring to this? How else can I kind of feel out or expand this character beyond what’s on the page? And do I think that’s exciting? You know, and if it sort of stirs something in me, I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s kind of cool. Maybe we should pursue this further. But just generally, it’s always fun for me to play kind of badass women. 

Eric: Which included the Kevin Hart action comedy series Die Hart, a chance for her to flex both her comedic and athletic muscles. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: The script was so great. I mean, I remember reading it and just, like, laughing so much. And it was quite funny, actually, because I was in Los Angeles and I was like on my way to a meeting and I had about an hour to kill. And I thought, oh, let me just have a little flick through that script that I got in my inbox earlier. And I phoned my agent within the hour. I just was like, guys, we’ve got to do this. This is fantastic. And it was so, like, self-explanatory and sort of like the way that this show was structured, like the writing was just so brilliant. And so it was quite clear for me quite quickly how to sort of map this character and some of the choices I made or what that might be fun. And it kind of inspired ideas for me. So, yeah, it’s always challenging shooting out of order. But I feel like Jordan was such a fun kind of challenge for me and I was really into it quickly. So and Kevin and John as well were just so, straight away, were just so committed and like, really embraced me and we just became this little trio that just kind of fit quite quickly. And it was great. It’s hard, though, like on your body, like after doing the same move a few times on one side, like suddenly you’re like, okay, my shoulder is really aching and then the next day you’re like, why am I standing like, lopsided? Because you only do it on one side all day as they get all the angles. But actually the stunt team are incredible and shout out to Deandra to who was my stunt double. She made me look so badass.

Basically, I was never really fighting, say, Kevin or the person that I was fighting, because basically, when the cameras on me, on my face, like I’m doing all of that fighting when it’s on the other person, like they’re usually fighting my double. And it’s a bit safer for the actors because the stunt guys are so great at reacting. If you throw like a wrong punch like their whole thing is like being able to move. And so if I throw a wrong punch or if Kevin throws a wrong punch, it might get a bit messy. So we worked very closely with the stunt team like I mostly fought Kevin’s stunt double and he mostly fought mine. But there was a couple moments where we had to do some stuff together. But yeah, we really yeah, it was very much like a partnership in that respect. But all the very dangerous stuff, I was more than happy for Deandra to do. 

Eric: Part of a filmmaker’s job is to make established performers excited about jumping on board, whether it be for emotional dramas, hardcore action scenes, or maybe even doing a short film for an up and coming director. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: There were many actors who want to discover and work with up and coming talent. You know, I’ve definitely done some shows because I just liked the idea and I liked the person. I was like, wow, you’re really interesting and cool. And, you know, and both the short films I’ve done, like, they came through my agent and they were like, hey, we know this might be a long shot, but would she do a short film? And, you know, it’s been it’s been it’s been a couple of years since I’ve done one. But it was such a fun experience. And to be able to work with someone who, yeah, is kind of starting out in their career. And I personally think that there are many actors who will want to enjoy that process of working with new filmmakers. But I think you just have to try. You just have to, like, shoot your shot, you know, and like who is like the dream casting? And then shoot your shot, you know, that’s all they can say is no. And then you can maybe have like a list of people that, you know, you would also love to have and then reach out to them, too, and see what you get back because who knows? Like, who knows? You might even make this great thing with an unknown actor. And it gets really well recognized, really critically acclaimed for the short film that you’ve entered into a festival and everyone and now you’re on this journey together, too. So, you know, there’s benefits to that as well. But I always say, like, what’s the best thing? Shoot a shot. Let that person know why you want them, why they are your perfect casting. You know, if your script is strong and your idea is strong and your vision is strong, I think people really respond to visuals as well. And I really enjoy like mood boards and things like that. Just to give me an idea of the tone and the colors and the worlds that you kind of want to create. And if you have any previous work, like let people know what you’ve done, show them what you can do, and that’s all you can do at that point, you know. Yeah, maybe someone will be like, hey, that’s great. And get involved. 

Eric: Although there are no guarantees you can get Nathalie Emmanuel for your project – she’s pretty busy nowadays – a success which can at least be partially credited to having a terrific work ethic. 

Nathalie Emmanuel: Yeah, I think that, you know, I’m a very determined person and I’m sort of a hard worker and I’m really determined. And I guess that I’m just willing to get, you know, in the trenches and roll my sleeves up and graft, you know. So I think that’s what’s kept me going. Like as an actor, I’m, I don’t know. I mean, I kind of hope that there’s something that people can connect to in my performances. Something that someone has said to me before is they’re like, oh, you know, it’s very clear that you have a strength about you. That’s really, you can see on camera. And I was like, oh, really? Thank you. That’s like a huge compliment. But they were like, there’s also this vulnerability. And behind it, that was a really nice, lovely compliment that people have kind of said to me before. And if that’s the thing, that means that people connect to what I’m doing. And I’m very grateful that that’s coming through. Yeah, I don’t know, really. I think just like my ability to kind of like just keep grafting and try anything until I find where I need to be. And maybe that’s it. 

Eric: Sounds like the right attitude to me. We want to thank Natalie Emmanuel for zooming with our students and sharing stories about her amazing career. And thanks to all of you for listening. 

This episode was based on the Q&A, moderated and curated by Tova Laiter. To watch the full interview or to see our other Q&As, check out our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by me, Eric Conner. Edited by Kristian Heydon. Produced by Kristian Heydon, Helen Kantilaftis, and myself. Executive produced by Tova Laiter and the New York Film Academy. A special thanks to all our staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs, check us out at NYFA.edu. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. See you next time. 

Academy Award Nominated Actress Juliette Lewis

In this podcast episode, Academy Award nominated actress Juliette Lewis recounts her start in the industry, her experience filming "Cape Fear" with Martin Scorsese and "Kalifornia" with then boyfriend Brad Pitt.

Eric: Hi, I’m Eric Conner, senior instructor at New York Film Academy, and in this episode, we bring you an actress who was nominated for an Oscar before she was even old enough to vote, a performer who’s worked with a remarkable list of directors, including Kathryn Bigelow, Garry Marshall, Oliver Stone, and Martin Scorsese, just to name a few. A rare child star whose career never slowed down. Jumping from film to TV to being in a rock band. No matter the project, her presence always makes it more interesting. We are talking about Juliette Lewis. Miss Lewis credits one person for providing the example she needed to navigate the industry. Her dad. 

Juliette Lewis: There’s a lot of these unpleasant politics to getting a job and, you know, getting a good job, a good film and all that, so I’m doing that and I don’t have that much patience for it, but I still have enough of a love. What’s good is I have a past body of work that I can pretty much meet with any filmmaker and have a conversation. And so that’s really gratifying. How I started in film is my dad is a character actor. He is a character actor. He’s the guy that has done everything from a Laverne & Shirley episodes to Clint Eastwood Westerns to everything in between. And I first was introduced to the world of film by visiting him on movie sets. And I always had a really practical introduction to movies, not from the magazines and stuff like that, but knowing that it’s long hours, there’s colorful characters. You never have the same job twice. Like it’s variety. It was it was perfect industry for me. And yeah, my dad’s a big influence in that way. 

Eric: But having a father in the industry didn’t guarantee Juliette Lewis instant success. As a teenager, she went on several auditions before joining up with a beloved screen family, The Griswolds. 

Juliette Lewis: Yeah, I was 15 and I started getting into acting right in those years, 13, 14, 15. The irony is acting professionally kept me out of trouble and I know they like to always give it a bad rap and stuff. Now, getting famous, very young – if you have any kind of emotional troubles and stuff is not good. But for me, acting gave me a purpose and I could channel some of this energy and stuff like that. And so Christmas Vacation came along. Huge studio movie, Chevy Chase, really? But the kids are different? That doesn’t make sense. Yeah, well, the kids are just going to be different, so go up for that part. So it’s me and Johnny Galecki who I’ve run into recently. He’s on the Big Bang Theory and he’s so nice. We laughed because every year, because they play that it’s a seasonal movie, so they play it every year. But that was a great gig for me because I was a big studio movie and and, you know, going to be seen a lot. And I’m working with some of the best comedians and really good comedic material. And it was a good experience. 

Eric: Though she’s worked with, a wide array of performers and directors, Miss Lewis’s approach to performing is wholly her own, including how she captures the character’s dialect, which in the case of the thriller Kalifornia, she’s not entirely convinced that she pulled off. 

Clip: Early, we shouldn’t be doing this. Now you know, you ain’t even allowed to be leaving the state and these people are strangers, and what kind of people would stop at places where other people got murdered? What if these people are dangerous, Early? 

Juliette Lewis: I kind of have like the worst Southern accent, but somehow. No. Well, my whole young life. Is she Southern? I don’t know. Adele? What is she, Early. I forgot how she talked, it came from this little baby voice that I used to talk in, and that to me was the essence of the character. So as far as an accent, when I was young, younger, for some reason, people always thought I was from the South because maybe I have my own sort of drawl or whatever. Cause I’m living in my head half the time. I don’t know. But yeah, you usually work with a dialect coach and you get a region of what the accent was. I forgot if that was specified in the movie or not. Oh yeah. And then Brad was playing because he grew up in Missouri, so he was playing like people he’s seen like that was fun for him, playing like really backwoods kind of f**ked up guys. You know, you grow up there, I’m sure you find those people. But you know, recently I did a movie called Conviction. Tony Goldwyn directed and Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell, two of my faves, starred in it and that was a Boston dialect and was very particular. And so I worked with a a coach, somebody that specializes in accents. And it’s real fun because you sort of you just pick it up by ear and really practice the dialect. 

Eric: More so than finding the perfect accent, Miss Lewis wants to find the character’s voice within the voice. 

Juliette Lewis: Well, when I read a script, it’s usually the text is, you know, it gives you a lot. And then from there, you really have to develop intuition. Just let that voice speak to you. Like maybe she wears this kind of clothes or maybe she sort of slouches her shoulders or maybe, you know, maybe she’s very, you know, just fine is sort of behavior. And then the other thing, you know, so your text will inform you. And there’s usually a general character description in any script or play. And then I always look in my environment, see if you can see elements of that character or people, because I love seeing it. A perfect example of this was Cape Fear. On the page that’s just a teenager. She’s a teenager. She sort of talks back to her parents. She’s a little bit precocious and she’s interested in this drama teacher because he listens to her. So, OK, fine. But that could be any teenager in the whole world. But what does she feel like? What does she move like? What does she sound like? And of course, I’m bringing elements of myself. But I had gone to a park and there was this girl there and she had bangs and she was always like half smiling, like she had a secret and she was holding a new kitten. She had just got a kitten and her name was Colleen. And I said, ‘Hi, Colleen, what’s your kitten’s name?’ And she was like, ‘I don’t know. I just got it. You know, she’s everything was like in here.’ But that one thing was that character, a girl that always looks like she has a secret. So that was that one seed. Now, then you have scenes that require all kinds of emotion and things. But don’t be afraid to use aspects of yourself, too. I know I said earlier that I like to escape myself, but it’s really – you’re just sort of using we all come to the table. We’ve all felt pain, apathy, joy, elation, embarrassed, like we’ve all felt these things. So you sort of each character, you’re just blowing up different aspects of emotions you felt and then they become sort of different aspects of yourself anyway. 

Eric: Only a few years into her career, Juliette Lewis landed a part that most actors can only dream of, the daughter in Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Miss Lewis went toe to toe with none less than Robert De Niro, resulting in both of them receiving well-deserved Oscar nominations. 

Clip: Well, why do you hate my father? 

I don’t hate him at all. Oh, no, I pray for him. I’m here to help him. I mean, we all make mistakes. Danielle. You and I have. At least we try to admit it, don’t we? 

Yeah. 

But your daddy, he don’t. Every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Your daddy too. Every man, every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise. You know what paradise is? 

No. 

Salvation. Because your daddy’s not happy. Your mommy’s not happy. And you know what? You’re not happy, are you? 

No, I’m not. 

Juliette Lewis: First of all, that scene is really rare because it’s nine minutes long and I didn’t know that, but that’s really rare in films today. And because every scene is usually like three minutes and we’re moving on to the next and we’re always telling a story. So that was very much like mini theater. And there’s many elements to that scene. My main thing is to be true to my character in the scene. And that character was going to visit a drama teacher who had called her up on the phone and gave her attention, which was really nice. This is validating. So the whole thing of that scene is that she’s feeling validated by him. So more and more feeling a bit more precocious, for lack of a better word, a bit more confident. And you as the audience is squirming because we know he bit a girl’s cheek out. I’d get so many questions when I was doing interviews because they were like, wow. And her burgeoning sexuality and all this s**t, and I was just like, I didn’t ever look at it that way. I just in that scene, somebody is talking nice to her and she’s trying to piece it together. She realizes, oh, he killed the mom’s dog and she’s going, oh, that’s not good. And then he makes her feel better and then, you know, they’re in this small space.

But it was so amazing. Again, it’s how your director lays the environment for you. And Marty Scorsese was so brilliant. He didn’t want us. He wanted to keep – there was this electricity happening between myself and De Niro. And there’s three different setups to it. There’s when I first walk in and see him, that’s one camera set up. Then we cut, we’re in tighter and he’s right there. And then when he offers her the joint, she goes closer. Now we’re close again. And then I, I retreat a little bit. And then he comes in for that kiss and the thumb. That scene was all scripted except for two moments that. It was scripted that he comes and kisses her. He’s never violent with her. And that’s what’s so upsetting for the audience is that it’s it’s seductive, but we know how dangerous he is. So what wasn’t scripted is the thumb part. And all Marty said was like, you know, Bob’s going to do something. This is my horrible Scorsese impression. He’s like ‘Bob’s going to do something. Just just just go with it. Just go just I mean, just do whatever you feel.’ And I was like, ‘OK, I don’t, no idea what that’s going to be,’ but but I know it’s in the context of the thing. And if you watch it, it’s just amazing because for her it’s just about acceptance. Even though there’s a sexual thing, if you see the expression after he does that with the thumb, it’s like, was that good? Did I do OK? And that’s that’s the tragedy. And that’s very, very, very young, young girl sexuality is sort of just sort of like pleasing.

So, God, that scene was amazing to do. It was amazing to do that. And DeNiro is really interesting because this is one of the things I love about him. He does not – I don’t know about his process. He doesn’t bring his process to the set. You know, a lot of young actors, we hear all these urban legends. I mean, you know, we’re all trying to be our own thing. But DeNiro, whatever intense s**t he was up to, I didn’t know about it. And he was up to some intense stuff because Marty told me he was like singing in tongues with a gospel singer in his trailer. At one point I was like, ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah, he’s he’s like Bobby’s, you know, has a gospel girl.’ And they’re doing it because he has that religious thing because in the end, last scene, because it’s his guy was in jail for a long time, got really into religion anyway. He does all this stuff. All I know is this guy who is very nice, was really sweet with me, gave me a hug, and he probably did whatever he needed to. I guess that was his thing, sort of where I just felt really comfortable around him and that that fed into the our scenes together. 

Eric: When you step into the proverbial ring with heavyweights like Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, not to mention Cape Fear’s Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange, training is crucial, but it only takes you so far. 

Juliette Lewis: Every project’s different and it’s good you all are in school because you want to learn different things that can invoke or make you think if you’re flat, if you receive something and you’re like, I don’t know anything, then you can rely on your training. But usually I’m a big believer in sort of really being open, open within yourself to ideas that come up and also open to your environment and experience. So whether that’s being connected to your emotion. So to answer your question, I don’t have a rote way that I approach every project, every project’s totally different for me, but I do have similar – what my search is incredible honesty, complexity, and surrender, surrendering to the moment. Actually, after you do all your work, that’s intellectual and breaking down a scene and understanding, oh, well she wants this and she’s doing this, and he’s. So after you analyze all that, there’s a point where you got to shut all that off and then just be. And that’s the thing of surrender and trying to do that on a film set too. You’re working within an incredibly technical medium.

I remember in London doing this project, there’s a drunk right in front of me heckling me. We’re outside. You know, I can’t, I have to be focused. But here’s the thing, because you’re also playing what if. Cape Fear, I’ve never experienced a psychopath who’s going to now rape and murder me in front of my parents. So you sort of like, how do you, what’s that going to be like? That level of fear and terror and all the stuff. And so a lot of this is make believe. You know, it’s hugely make believe. But I was flying on a plane and the plane dropped really far and all my adrenaline frickin’ rushed and I thought I was going to lose my life. That is what informs the other. And it’s just about being connected to your own experience and your own emotions. But you wouldn’t think a plane dropping. I’m going to use that level of terror, you know, in a scene where De Niro’s like get down, blah blah, and then she lets out this ripping scream. So that was a really interesting thing. 

Eric: Working with Martin Scorsese at a young age was only the beginning of her collaborations with top tier directors and though she loves these opportunities, Miss Lewis admits that sometimes a visionary filmmaker simply won’t take no for an answer. 

Juliette Lewis: More and more, what I’ve learned is the director is your boss, so you are there to serve his or her vision and hopefully they’re creative and intelligent enough that they’ve invited you on board to get your take, your point of view, your essence. And that’s usually what happens. And they like a bit of a dialog. But if you’re there, you really don’t want to waste the director’s time with too much explanation. And I find it’s nice to keep it simple for them. Don’t go like I was thinking, blah blah blah, you know, I get my questions answered.

For example, this is so frickin’ arbitrary, but this is what happened. Kathryn Bigelow, she’s brilliant. I was so happy she won the Oscar like, oh, my lord, that’s amazing. She makes really unconventional radical films. And as a director, she’s really interesting. Her style is more in the Kubrick way where she likes many takes because she really, she’s sort of painting and, you know, she’s doing whatever she’s doing. For an actor it’s pretty exhausting. But we have this one thing in. It was a little thing. I didn’t want to be wearing what I was wearing in a scene. The movie was Strange Days. I come off stage. I had a really logical argument. I’m wearing chain mail, so it’s like I’m kind of wearing next to nothing. The next scene I’m at my house or some weird loft with the boyfriend. He hits me. I just didn’t want to be half naked and hit. I don’t know, I had a thing in my mind, so I was like, can I be in a robe? Logically, she came off stage. She would have changed. You’re sweaty. She would be in a different outfit. She, for whatever reason, did not want me in any other outfit. But that because she’s a visualist. Is that a word? She’s seeing things all here. She wants this shimmery thing that I’m in. She doesn’t want a robe. Can I wear even a nightgown? I didn’t want, anyway. I just wanted to be more clothed. So she wins. She’s the director. 

Eric: Other performers might have gone full diva and just stormed off the set. But Miss Lewis understands how to be a professional, extending to not only how she works with directors, but to her cast mates as well. 

Juliette Lewis: That’s the other thing is because you all go to class and we all dream big and, oh I want to play, you know, Blanche from Streetcar Named Desire, but it’s like, OK, well, hold on a second, because there’s a lot of stuff that maybe you’ll play a little taste of something and you’ll develop within that. But yes, I’ve done not great movies as well that I would want to see it done differently. And that’s a real big challenge of how to stay honest to your own thing. But also, you’re working for somebody. My director is my boss. No matter if they’re inexperienced or have a different point of view, usually you hope you iron that out before you work together. But as far as actors, yeah, I’ve worked with people that have a completely different process or different take on the scene, and that’s people skills. That’s like you have to be very diplomatic in your conversation and hopefully try to play the best you can together. But there’s positive things of embracing other people’s process. Like I had a friend, Giovanni Ribisi, this movie, The Other Sister, now he’s hundred thousand percent method, which means I don’t even know, I would never even be able to be method. Meaning if I stayed – we were playing to mentally handicapped young people who find love and they’re searching for their independence. And he would stay in character through lunch, through the Christmas with his wife. I mean, he’d stay and I had to, I have to let go of that to then dive back in again. I need a breather from it. So we work totally two different ways, but the outcome is the same. So that was really fun. And then there’s been other actors. Yeah, I mean, maybe I didn’t. It’s tough working with people you don’t respect. I mean you wouldn’t know them so don’t think is nobody known, people or something. But just really really that’s what, that’s what you’re going for. Huh. And you got to keep that, keep that to yourself and just try to be as encouraging as possible. 

Eric: Her work on The Other Sister directed by the late great Garry Marshall, was a role that required both more preparation and more care due to its sensitive nature. 

Juliette Lewis: That actually was the hardest role I’ve ever done for many reasons. One is, sometimes when I see a script, you immediately see all the cliches, you see all the pitfalls, the booby traps of how it could go horrible if you don’t achieve a true honesty. And first and foremost, I want to make sure – there’s two things because visually and the way she talks is much different than myself, part of which I talk to the producer who had a sister who is mentally handicapped, who the character was based a little bit on, and her sister had a very low voice like that. So I had seen video footage of her sister, even though Carla Tate’s totally different, but I use that quality, placing my voice in a different way. And the first thing before anything else is the emotional content and what is she made up of but this pure goodness is pure benevolence? She has empathy for animals, a great deal. She has empathy for other people who are in trouble. She has a fierce will to succeed against odds. So all those ingredients I related to as a human being and I make sure I have those. So I related to her heart first. And then we also went, production facilitated that we meet with people who are high functioning, mentally challenged. So that’s a bit different. And there was one girl I met with who is really animated when she spoke. And so I would just sort of take from different people I met in my environment. This is what I mean about watching things in your environment, pulling from that, because that’s where you’re going to get the most truthful stuff within yourself and externally. 

Eric: Miss Lewis reminded our students that a performance should not be limited to only the neck up. Rather, one’s whole body is what comprises a character. 

Juliette Lewis: I think it just comes from that thing of Gnosis, you know, of observing people and knowing that we all communicate from the toe or the head down, whatever. So it’s not just we’re not all in the same movement. I don’t know how I’m really, really attracted to energy and how just even how people walk. If you just watch how people walk, you can see sort of where they hold. If they’re like uptight, some are like down like that. And some their gravity is like all in their hips. And I don’t know, it’s just an amazing you could do that as an exercise like five different walks. Do you all do that in class? That’s neat. Yeah. I mean, because I’m not academically trained, but I have a lot of friends that go to really exciting acting classes and I’ve noticed oh, I do a lot of the things that are taught anyway. But I’m, I’m sort of very intuitive, but I yeah. So I’m glad they do an exercise. Like if I taught that’s what I would do. Practice walks. Oh. But I do, I think it does help with being in touch with your instrument. Is that an acting language? But dance. Because early on I took dance, I took gymnastics even though I quit everything. Isn’t that sad to say? I was a quitter. But man, all these things I wish I didn’t quit like karate. I would have been a black belt. 

Eric: Her knowledge in karate came in handy when portraying Mallory Knox in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. It’s a character that could not be more opposite than her work in The Other Sister. And to help capture the almost feral nature of a serial killer, Miss Lewis just needed to find the right tune. 

Juliette Lewis: There’s so many different things that help you create the character. And for this, like I learned, fight training just because in some of the sequences are full on action sequences like the opening in the diner, it was much like a dance. So I was learning street fighting, using elbows and all the stuff. And that’s just, you know, conjures up an energy within you. Also, I use music a lot. And so for that film, you know, because music’s instantaneous, you could listen to a song and right away you’re the feel of feeling like within 10, 20 seconds, depending on the song. And so for that movie, it was Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Child (Slight Return) which is a very, every bend of his guitar, you’re going deeper into the jungle and all this chaos starts happening. And it’s really dark. It’s seductive. It’s filled with so much emotion. So to me, that was the the sort of the body of Mallory Knox. And then at the same time, there’s a lot of humor because it is exaggerated, that character, because it’s a kind of a farce in a way.

So that had many elements and that had a lot to do with how brilliant the director is and talking with him and being inspired by him. And he would encourage us. There was no boundaries in that film that was actually a problem for me because, like, we’d be in a driving scene and he’d go, yeah, ‘I’m going to just have some demons run across the frame.’ ‘OK, well, what, how am I supposed to react to that, Oliver? What’s that?’ ‘Just I don’t know. It’s just in the scene.’ So you’re sort of navigating between because a lot of it’s a bit psychedelic. But anything I do, whether it’s broad comedy or drama, I try to root it in honesty. And that character is rooted in, there are real people who have killed people. And you know what I took from them a little, like Aileen Wuornos. So basically, what are they? They’re damaged souls. And so you sort of have the thing and then there’s just all these different shades within the context of the movie you’re making. And he was making a social commentary and also very tripped out kind of psychedelic movie where everything goes. So I knew anything goes. So when we’re in the car and going, ‘Mickey,’ something something about looking up at the stars, what whatever. 

Clip: I see angels, Mickey. They’re coming down for us from Heaven.

Juliette Lewis: And I’m doing my f**king feet like that, like that was just, it’s because of the environment that Oliver created, I was just doing like ballet moves and just making that up. 

Eric: Viewing characters through the prism of music has expanded Miss Lewis’s career to include fronting the rock band Juliette and the Licks and unlike some other actors who’ve tried to become rock stars, she could actually rock. 

Juliette Lewis: Yeah, it’s funny because a lot of people associate me with these movies, you know, Natural Born Killers, Cape Fear, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape or different movies, and those are really the filmmakers points of view and personality. And I add the character, work to it, but musically is sort of me inside out. It’s sort of my true pure expression and it’s really visceral. And there’s songs that have different colors and personality. You know, you can have songs that are filled with just the drums, the drums, guitar, all the instruments represent your emotional – like you as well. So the band came out of, I think, all artists and you probably all have this. It’s a hunger and it’s a search you’re searching and you need to express. And so I was always meant to do music very young. You know, I took piano, I sang, I took dance, I, I did little plays, I did all that stuff. And I always thought of my creative self as having all of those elements. And so when I got successful and got put on the wheel, I like to call it in show business, in the movie industry, you know, you sort of on this wheel and got to do your next film and all this.

I took a step back when I was twenty two and was like, wait, who’s running this? Because I need to sort of take ownership of my own artistic destiny. And then it took me some years, because I was scared. I was terrified. I’d never led a band. I’d never wrote with other people. You know, it’s a very intimate thing writing music with other people, man. It’s a whole other thing. It’s spiritual for me, the music. Whether you’re writing about a little crush song or it doesn’t matter. It’s really about connection with people. So that’s a whole other different ball of wax that I will continue to do. But yes, I was influenced. I went off on a tangent, sorry, I was influenced. People would identify me with certain things. They thought I was into really dark films, which some I am. I really love Francis and Midnight Express, but my biggest influences growing up were musicals like. But there were twisted, like All That Jazz. It’s amazing about, you know, an artist sort of imploding and it’s a bit trippy. Hair was a huge thing. Grease, Rocky Horror Picture Show is sort of the the juggernaut of my feeling. If I can make my own Rocky Horror Picture Show in the future, I mean, that’s that’s what I’ll attempt to do, a whole different thing. 

Eric: Miss Lewis’s career has had a wide array of tunes, so to speak, including the gothic darkness of Kalifornia, co-starring Brad Pitt. When choosing roles, Juliette Lewis just wants to avoid playing Juliette Lewis. 

Juliette Lewis: I’m always looking to go as far away from myself as possible, but really it’s sort of the luck of the draw, you know, because I’m hired. I’m not making my own films. I’m sort of the great cosmic receiver of what’s going to come my way. And so I just happen to pick, especially in my younger career, I could have played somebody’s daughter, the girlfriend and all this stuff. It’s not like I can’t do that or play the ingenue, but I wanted characters that were complicated, multilayered, rich, and if they weren’t like that on the page, I was going to make them that way. And this film is really interesting for me. It goes down as a very important film for me because I consider it my first official character, Adele Corners, where I change my voice. She talks a bit higher. The director was Dominic Sena. He was a first time filmmaker. His claim to fame at this point, he’s since gone on to do like Gone in 60 Seconds and other huge movies. But at this time in his career, he had just come from video directing where his biggest thing he’d done was a Janet Jackson video. And I was sort of coming off the heat of Cape Fear. And even though I was really young, I sort of encouraged Brad to do the film. He didn’t originally. I don’t know if they’ll remember that, but he didn’t want to do the movie initially. Just because it was a first time director and there’s so many risks involved. But it turned out to have such a personality. The film. and I really believed in Dominic as a visual artist because he was really visual. And long story short is, Adele on the page – you know, when you have four people in a scene, it’s very hard that they all have a voice and they overlap and it be realistic. So Adele would just have like a line here or there. So I basically sort of improvise a lot of that part. I could tell you so many, like the song I wish Carrie is happy. That’s my early songwriting. 

Eric: Part of the kick of Kalifornia was having a chance to act with Brad Pitt again, who happened to be her boyfriend at the time. 

Juliette Lewis: The first movie we did, was not a movie. It was a movie of the week for TV. It was a made for TV. So it was very melodramatic, but it offered both of us the chance to play characters, very dramatic characters, because believe it or not, I came from late 80s sitcoms, you know what I mean? So I mean, this isn’t what I’m known for, but I was doing sitcoms in the late 80s, not very well, but I found my niche later. And so me and Brad and he had done Dallas like a soap opera. Yeah dude! I never saw it, but all I knew is he was from Dallas. And so this is like really gritty you know, she killed a guy and it was like this thing. And now they’ve sold it as a frickin’ movie because we both went on to do things. But it’s practically like “The Amy Fisher Story” or, you know, it’s something like that. But the second movie, that was fun. I mean, that was great. I mean, it’s like bands, they say don’t ever get in a relationship in your band. I mean, I don’t know. It depends. There’s actors and directors who work together who go together too. Maybe that’s more difficult. I don’t know. It was easier because we’re peers. So we’re just sort of like sharing like, oh, I think I’m going to do this. Or he was like, I’m not going to wash my hair for two months because, I was like, cool, that’s, that’s what you need to do to be Early Grace. He didn’t wash his hair for two months. So that was just like, cute. 

Eric: Let’s be honest. An unwashed Brad Pitt is still a Brad Pitt. Even after three plus decades, Juliette Lewis, his career continues to transform as she’s always looking for new ways to challenge herself. 

Juliette Lewis: My dream role is very much – I’m writing now, so I’m going to write a script, but it has elements of me. And it’s someone who half lives in their fantasy life and half lives in the now and is dealing with a lot of melancholy or deep emotion, depending on what they’re going through. And then there’s music involved. So it’d be a bit of a psychedelic thing like All That Jazz. But that’s not really a role that’s – so I would love to play a far out, like I just auditioned for a Wicked Witch. That would be fun. I’d play her like Betty Davis. So that was kind of a dream role. We’ll see what happens. You know, I’m interested in doing things that challenge me. So for me, because I’m very idiosyncratic and very physical, whatever, I would like to play something that is very restrained, you know, maybe a period piece. I would like to play a girl that’s very restricted by the social etiquette of the time. That would be really interesting for me. 

Eric: So what final advice would Juliette Lewis give to artists out there looking to make their mark? 

Juliette Lewis: I just wanted to say something really quick, because I know you were asking me about all the creative stuff. If you guys are trying to do any of this professionally, a big thing, I must tell you, is to not take rejection or people’s opinions personally. Like when you go on auditions or if someone says, I don’t know, you might, you, you don’t seem really seductive or you’re more, I picture you as a cop or you’re more of this or whatever. You’re dealing with opinions on everything. And you’re going to find your match up if it’s meant to be. I just have to tell you that because it can be a really brutal industry and people beat themselves up so much and we just got to treat it as a game and making it fun and all that good stuff. Right. 

Eric: We want to thank Juliette Lewis for sharing her years of successfully playing the game, and thanks to all of you for listening. 

This episode was based on the Q&A, moderated by Chris Devane to watch the full interview or to see our other Q&As, check out our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by me, Eric Conner. Edited and mixed by Kristian Heydon, produced by Kristian Heydon and myself. Executive produced by Tova Laiter, Jean Sherlock, and Dan Mackler. A special thanks to all our staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs, check us out at NYFA.edu. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. See you next time. 

Nollywood Filmmaker Femi Odugbemi

On this episode of The Backlot, we sit down with Nollywood filmmaker, Femi Odugbemi as he discusses the rise of Nollywood and the direction he hopes the industry will take.

Eric: Hi, I’m Eric Conner, senior instructor at New York Film Academy, and in this episode, we bring you a revered Nollywood filmmaker. In case that term isn’t familiar, that’s the nickname for the Nigerian film industry, one of the largest producers of cinema in the world. Our guest’s work includes producing the daily soap opera Tinsel, the TV series Battleground and feature films Fourth Estate and Gidi, which he also directed. He’s also served as a juror for multiple film festivals, produced a series of documentaries, is an arts educator and a voting member of the Academy of Motion Pictures. We’re talking about Femi Odugbemi. Though his storytelling stems from Nigeria, Mr. Odugbemi stressed the importance of connecting with audiences from across the globe. He believes that all storytelling really comes from the same place: humanity. 

Femi Odugbemi: Stories are important simply because they help us to understand, to understand our world, to understand our cultures, to understand ourselves. It’s how we communicate, really. So all stories eventually are about humanity. They are about the shared experiences and the shared ambitions and the shared desires. Everybody, regardless of where you come from, desires love, desires prosperity, desires connection, desires achievements. Regardless of what ways your culture structures, those desires are the heart of your connections. And because film is about the human connections, is about us communicating both in language, in gestures and so much subliminality in terms of context, in terms of the world that’s around from where the stories are located, it’s all about the shared humanity. That’s why I would understand a Chinese film without speaking the language or an Indian film, which were the films that were popular when I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Lagos, and they were never subtitled. But we understood the humanity of love, the anger. We understood those who wanted to be a champion or to be rich or to be strong. All of this is why I say all stories are in the end human stories, and I often say that so that we remove labeling. It’s easy to call something an American story. Well, it’s a human story from America. It’s a perspective. A Nollywood story is not any less a human story. It just provides the information and a backdrop of perhaps a cultural experience you’re not familiar with. So I’m not really keen on storytellers championing a culture. I want storytellers to champion the human experience, give us insight so that those of us who may not be of that cultural experience are still able to be enriched by the stories that you tell. 

Eric: Though his stories focus on the human experience that ties us all together, Mr. Odugbemi’s work still definitely captures the culture and experience of his home country. The Nigerian film industry has, in fact, grown exponentially and artistically over the years, despite working with much smaller budgets than Hollywood. 

Femi Odugbemi: The one thing that everyone agrees with is that Nollywood is an organically grown film culture from Nigeria that perhaps surprised a lot of people in terms of the quantity of its production, the passion of its practitioners, and the fact that they’re able to do so much with so little. If you’ll recall that Nollywood came out of a space where there were really no grants, there were no funding, per se. So a lot of it is really driven by just the passion of the storytellers to create something. And in doing so, I mean in the course of twenty five, thirty years, it’s something that has grown – organically grown in terms of the quality of storytelling, grown in terms of the quality of cinematic exposition, grown in performances as well. But it’s also grown globally because the audience have also been, how will I say, there’s a lot of Africans in the diaspora who have introduced African cinema, which is what I now call Nollywood as a way to connect with their neighbors, to introduce their origin, to get their children into a space where heritage can be visually communicated. So, yeah, that’s for me the first thing.

But in terms of “from here,” what I think is clear is that there is a constant understanding of possibilities. The idea that beyond being successful, Nollywood needs to be significant. Why? Because Nollywood may be the African voice for change in a lot of things that you would call the narrative about Africa. One of the things that I think has been powerful about Nollywood is that it’s provided basic information to update what you would call the National Geographic narrative of Africa, where anyone who has never been to Africa, or been to Nigeria, thinks that everywhere is a forest. And so it’s, in the most basic form, an interesting narrative side-by-side with what has been. Where, you know, you only saw Africa from the perspective of poverty and disease and wars, thanks to Nollywood you also see Africa that has cities, that has professors, that has beautiful cars, and I dare say, beautiful women, and incredibly successful entrepreneurs. And I think it’s very important. Nobody is going to tell the new African story on our behalf. The time of colonialism is gone. Storytelling is now what I call the new soft power. And so whilst we may not be able to compete in terms of military power, we may not be able to compete in terms of economic power. We certainly can compete in terms of the soft power of storytelling to sort of shape our view of the world and to put a voice out there that says, this is who we are, this is who we want to be. And it’s a work in progress. But it’s something certainly that I think Nollywood has been magnificent in achieving. 

Eric: Though it’s a relatively young film industry, Nollywood’s movies have expanded their reach throughout Africa, as well as the world. This is due to both committed filmmakers working hard to hone their craft and a dedicated audience who connects deeply with these stories, regardless of their technical scope. 

Femi Odugbemi: Remember, twenty five years ago, there were a lot of people who just laughed at Nollywood simply because the films were made with, you know, poor cameras. The performances were a work in progress. The storytelling was clearly not as educated as it needed to be. But over the course of time, thanks to its audiences, who were very aware of these shortcomings, but had decided that these stories were important. They were more important in substance and significance than they were in technical craft. And over time, a lot has changed to inspire other African countries and other African cultures. And I don’t like to say that Nollywood has exported itself. More like it has inspired filmmakers in neighboring countries, in Francophone countries, as far away as South Africa. And this is very important, I think, for African storytellers to simply make that shift from waiting for funding, for validation, whether it’s from Paris or from America or from England, to simply understand that unless they are the authors and owners of the narrative, the authenticity of it would always be up for debate. Because there is no way you get a grant from France and you’re not subject to the approval of those who give you the grants. And that approval may simply be a small shed in the story. A little bit of editing preference, but it’s still not entirely your story. And I think what’s clearly happening is Nollywood is inspiring Africa to tell their story. Don’t wait until you have 50 million dollars to make a film. And I think that’s a movement and a revolution that is also ongoing locally because we’re prioritizing training. As you know, I am academy director of the MultiChoice Talent Factory. The reason I am interested, and the reason this whole movement to train and to empower the filmmakers is so key, is simply because, you know, the passion is there. And for it to truly be sustainable, the passion has to apply education. And I think it’s important that an institution like MultiChoice is committing investment into that. Partnering with the New York Film Academy, partnering with filmmakers across the world to say, can we give these young people a chance? 

Eric: This drive for education in Nollywood is for both its future filmmakers as well as its audience. Mr. Odugbemi explained that one of the unique properties in Nollywood stories is their use of customs and cultural traits specific to Nigeria, which might not resonate to all corners of the globe, but are very much embraced by the local audience. 

Femi Odugbemi: One of the things that’s clear, that makes our storytelling different, is that it’s, in many ways, three dimensional. There is the added dimension of our spirituality, the fact that our stories are both physical and metaphysical. The idea that we can tell a story where someone interfaces with an ancestor or interfaces with a dead character and you do not have to prepare the audience for it. It’s not unusual. Why? Because it’s part of the culture. But, you know, we believe that life is sort of like an ongoing existence in realms. And it’s possible for your protagonist to be unseen. A lot of Nollywood films would talk about – especially in the early days – would talk about witches and wizards and people killing people by blowing powder on them. For you it does not pass the test of plausibility, but for us and our audiences, it works. It’s totally fine. There are things that you would have a problem with in a narrative. You know, a traditional man having more than one wife, having four or five wives, when he’s actually poor, to you would be weird because it’s illogical. But to us it’s also part of this culture. So there are so many cultural things that emerge in a Nollywood film that also have also evolved over the years, also represent our city experience, contemporary experiences, historical connections of family. There are things that we do here that is accepted. I can arrive in my brother’s house without warning and it would be unthinkable to I ask him why he did not give me a call before coming. Whereas anywhere else those sorts of things would be weird. So there is a way in which I do think subliminally there are many things that I put on the table, obviously I do not have to speak about things like costuming, habitats. The context of our stories provide a lot of information just about spatial relationships, cultural relationships in terms of parents and child and lovers and the kind of things that we, I mean, we we obviously are not, how shall I say? It takes a village to raise a child. That concept is essentially African. The idea of care and the fact that every young person in the community is to be taken care of by the nearest adult. Things that you still find in storytelling that I think allows us to present a unique world view with our stories. 

Eric: As Nollywood expands artistically and technically, it has worked to create more universal stories while still producing work that can resonate deeply with Nigerians. 

Femi Odugbemi: There’s a bit of a mix. I do think that there’s a whole section of Nollywood that does a lot of traditional stories, a lot of stories that maybe time, or period pieces. But there’s a huge chunk about contemporary experiences. There’s been one or two that have also foreshadowed a future. I am very keen. I think that over the 25 years or so that Nollywood has been, there’s a lot of stories told about the past. I would like that to evolve into us connecting, because we also have an incredibly rich literary heritage. We have a lot of authors who have done a lot of great stories. My uncle, Chief D. O. Fagunwa was one of the first authors of novels in Yoruba language. Some of those stories we do need to bring to cinema to connect them to very important works of the past. I do think that foreshadowing is a critical space we must move into. Our storytelling needs to begin to model a future that we desire. You know, we talk about our ambitions in terms of good governance, in terms of more rapid development, in terms of economic progress. And I think our films need to begin to create heroes along those lines, because right now we have stories that are contemporary, but in many ways timid and I’m being very careful. But the truth is, we have, in a way, a situation politically, you know, development issues that somehow have not made it into a cinema in a way that models how we would like it to be, not just how it is. I think that’s really critical. And I tell my students that the first idea that a Black man could sit behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office is from cinema. And that’s very important that, you know, people are able to stow away that image as a possibility in their subconscious. And so in the fullness of time, it happens because cinema does that. And for me, I think that’s something that cinema has to do. It has to begin to reach into the future, not just to talk about Nigerians going to the Moon or Mars or something like that, but something that connects us to our ambitions as a people, perhaps a more prosperous, more organized, less corruption ridden political culture. We just need heroes. We need to create those heroes through our storytelling. 

Eric: In 2020, the entire world faced the unprecedented pandemic of the coronavirus. For Nollywood, which already worked with limited resources before covid, the filmmakers were forced to reassess how to still move forward with their productions, despite these seemingly insurmountable obstacles. 

Femi Odugbemi: Well, I mean, covid is obviously something that is inviting all of us to rethink everything. The impact of it in a film culture like Nollywood that is actually, that doesn’t have a lot of funding, that is actually struggling in terms of the size of its budgets. The impact of that is that it introduces a cost element to its budgets that would have a huge impact. You now have to deal with insurance for that possibility. You have to deal with all sorts of protocol issues. You have to test people. And today in Nigeria, tests for covid done in a private hospital is over 50,000 naira. All of this, if you put that cost onto the budget of a Nollywood film, it’s a lot that’s not ending up on screen. So that’s going to be the first challenge. But I think the other challenge is also how we begin to mine these stories that are evolving and how we express this in terms of storytelling. Spatial relationships. I keep asking people, is a kiss still a kiss in a post-covid world? There are just so many things that I think comes into play that impacts a smaller film culture like ours. Of course, the distribution part is going to be a huge, huge hit because we don’t have that many cinemas to start with. We’ve got less than about a hundred cinemas for 180 million people. If you start to socially distance in cinemas, I mean coming from the impact of people having to get back into the cinema-going culture after being home for months, it all just looks really difficult. And you understand that the government’s already had a budget deficit. We’re not planning very much for this. Health care infrastructure was always a work in progress. So, yeah, the industry is really going to be badly hit and it needs conversations with other professionals. The insurance industry in particular, about how do we mitigate the impact of this, especially on budgets. Because, you know, when the budget is affected, choices are affected. Choices are affected in art direction. Choices are affected in the ambition of the story itself. Choices are affected equally, the selection of performance. So that’s really where it’s at at the moment. 

Eric: Ramping up production during and, hopefully, soon after the pandemic has proven difficult for every country. On top of which Femi Odugbemi and Nollywood are still actively trying to change the perception of their industry. 

Femi Odugbemi: I tell you, one of the regrettable things about stereotypes of Nollywood is that there’s a lot of films from the early days of Nollywood that are just making the rounds. And what it exposes or gets people fixated on is a history that’s long gone. When you see Nollywood today, you have to understand that there is a world of difference. There’s such a huge world of difference in everything. In the early days, there were a lot of folks who all they had was the passion, whether it was to perform or to tell stories or to be a cameraman. The passion was all it was, and the cameras and the equipment themselves were not great. But over time, there’s been a generational evolution. You now have more and more young people who are well trained in film schools, but you also have the simple, sensible logic that practice has made perfect for even people that did not go to school. You make enough mistakes over 20 years, you will get good at anything. And I think Nollywood is in an incredibly upward trajectory in terms of quality of exposition, in terms of visual narrative structure, in terms of the content and the representations and the power of the stories. I have been privileged to be head of jury of the African Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards four times and the awards are seven years old. So I was there in the first year to see the quality of the films, and I was also head judge last year and I see the quality of the films. And I’m very excited about where the quality is. So if there is a problem, it’s that in the age of digital video, you can’t bury your past. I mean, there are films I made in my early days that I wish I could kill everyone that saw it, or bury it somewhere. Simply because, you know, I think I’m much better than I used to be. And that’s the way Nollywood has been. And I think it’s important that people speak to Nollywood of today, not Nollywood of the past. It’s unfortunate because a lot of people in academia are doing research on Nollywood and constantly bringing up those films and those imagery from its history. While that’s important, I also feel like a lot of scholars like Jonathan Haynes, -inaudible- these guys, did the work at the time, and they helped define what that movement was, what it was trying to say, where it’s going. So I do think a lot of work has been done on the history of Nollywood. I do feel that a lot of scholars need to look at what it’s doing now. There’s a lot of courage, a lot of work, and there’s a lot of width to how it’s, the exposition of culture and culture is not just about the past. Culture is what are our contemporary experiences? There’s a lot of young Nigerians and it’s not just Nigerians. Africa is 60 percent people under the age of 50. So there is also a young, vibrant population that is also represented in this modern stories. And so for me, that’s the biggest thing, is that we’ve got people constantly, constantly resurrecting the past and using it as a measuring stick for the present. It’s not just unfair. It’s incorrect. 

Eric: Well, good news. The present and future of Nigerian cinema got a recent boost thanks to Netflix expanding into Africa. Mr. Odugbemi, for one, could not be any more thrilled at this opportunity to share Nigeria’s stories with the world. 

Femi Odugbemi: Well, yeah, of course. I mean, Netflix has got “Netflix Africa,” and I am just as excited as every film maker in Africa that this global platform is offering an opportunity, a window, for the work of Africans. And the reason this is very important is that it takes the work even farther, allows the rest of the world a window into our stories. So for me, it’s a win win. We need as many platforms as can come into Africa and help us find audiences to consume our stories. I think that’s the plus side. But regardless of whether it’s Netflix or ShowMax or, you know, whatever the name of the platform is, you are an artist just do your work. Don’t tell a story for a platform. Tell a story for people. Tell a story that has got you passionate, a story that when you look at it, you feel validated as a storyteller. And if the platform comes for it, all good. If they, don’t all good. There will always be somewhere for you to show your story. And I think the idea that we have this thing sometimes in an our industry where people have a one-upmanship with each other. The competition is, you know, what’s the latest thing? Does my film on Netflix mean I’m a better filmmaker? I’m not sure there’s a lot of poor films on Netflix. Just as much as there are some very, very good Nigerian films. So Netflix is a commercial platform. It gives you an opportunity for audiences to see your work. The audience must decide if they want to see your work. And that’s what I think all of us as storytellers must aim for. How do we give the best 100 percent effort to tell the best stories we can? 

Eric: Part of Nollywood’s expansion across digital platforms has also necessitated an expansion into a variety of styles and genres. 

Femi Odugbemi: One of the things that I hope we grow in is in being able to actually know how much an audience likes a particular genre film or what it is that, shall I say, trending now? One thing that’s clear, Nigerians love comedies. Oh, they love to laugh. Nigerians love to laugh. The films that have done the best in Nigeria, often have a large chunk of it has been funny. And of course, you know, it’s not just regular funny. It’s usually Nigeria funny because we’ve got teaching language, we’ve got cultural nuances. We’re a bit strange sometimes and we’ve got things that happen that don’t happen anywhere else. How we do our weddings, how we party. All these things, when you represent them in film really well, in a funny way, our audiences always go for a laugh. But I love to see what a slice of the audience is for horror. What’s the slice of the audience for thriller? What’s the slice of the audience action films? The idea of this is that not every filmmaker can make a funny story. I’m not any good at making funny stories, but I still want to be able to create a film in which there are things that are interesting, funny, quirky. I don’t set out to make a comedy. I would set out to make a dramatic story that may have a character that’s funny, but that’s it. So yeah, the genre is something that will encourage more specialization. It’s important that we’re able to build storytelling brands. I mean, when you hear someone’s name, you ought to be able to sort of guess what his film culture is, how he tells his story, what you might be able to expect in terms of genre. I mean, I think that’s something that would evolve over time, but that’s where we are. 

Eric: So the goal for Nollywood is to have movies across the cinematic landscape and the Netflix menu, too, which takes a lot of talented filmmakers. Mr. Odugbemi advised our students to find the right collaborators to make their storytelling work. And even when making a lower budget project, don’t cheap out on the talent. 

Femi Odugbemi: You have to also respect the work that directors do. If you don’t value a director’s work, don’t put them on the project because it’s a waste of money. You will constantly double guess their work. If you bring a director to a project, it’s because you think that director has the creative skills and know how to make that project achieve its best potential. And if you have the creativity to take that work to its best level, then put everything you’ve got into it. If you’re convinced you have the talent and you have the skills. But directing is not something that you simply decide to do. There’s a skill set and there’s a passion. And then there is, you know director’s disappear into this world. And it’s important that they are well remunerated for what they do, especially talented directors. I would suggest to you that the director is not where you save as a first time producer. Get a proper line producer. Get a proper production manager and figure out what’s your best budget to start with. You can always do barter exchanges. I always say to young filmmakers, not everything in film’s about money. Sometimes it’s an exchange. Sometimes it’s -inaubible-, you go do something for them so they can do something for you. Sometimes it’s about credit on the film. Sometimes it’s about showing goods or services. You just have to be resourceful, but don’t make the director the line item of savings. 

Eric: A big part of this investment in people is education, finding the next generation of talented artists who can deepen and expand Nollywood cinema. 

Femi Odugbemi: I’m here because I’m also part of the MultiChoice Talent Factory. And to say that in the last couple of years we’ve graduated now about 120 young filmmakers. It means that there are a lot of young, passionate filmmakers out there in the three regions of Africa who are in need of support, who are in need of mentors, who are in need of guidance. And I hope that all of us who have had opportunity as filmmakers and storytellers also understand that we owe it to this generation to pay it forward, to support their dreams and to to help guide them, to give them opportunity on your platforms and help us to sort of grow this generation next in a certain direction. So that’s something I’d like to leave out there. Obviously, to also say thank you to you, Lizzie, and to the New York Film Academy for a wonderful opportunity to be part of this conversation. 

Eric: And we’ll think Femi Odugbemi right back for his work in global cinema and for sharing his insights with our students. And thanks, of course, to all of you for listening. 

This episode was based on the Q&A, moderated and curated by Liz Henlein. To watch the full interview or to see our other Q&As, check out our YouTube channel at youtube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by me, Eric Conner. Edited and mixed by Kristian Heydon. Produced by Kristian Heydon, Helen Kantilaftis, and myself. Executive produced by the New York Film Academy. A special thanks to Ose Oyamendan and all our staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs, check us out at NYFA.edu. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. See you next time. 

Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond

Join us as we sit down with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, whose work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind garnered him an Academy Award. He speaks on his career and his experience filming McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Deer Hunter, and working with Steven Spielberg.

Eric: Hi, I’m Eric Conner, senior instructor at New York Film Academy, and in this episode, we bring you a cinematographer whose career spanned six decades and close to 100 movies, whose work did nothing less than change the face of film photography. He brought beauty and darkness to the gritty, earthbound realism of movies like Deliverance, The Deer Hunter, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. And with Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters, he won himself an Oscar while making us believe in the unbelievable. We’re talking about the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond. Shortly before he passed away in 2016, Mr. Zsigmond shared stories from his remarkable career with our students, including his work on the Academy Award winning Vietnam drama The Deer Hunter, a film which had a bumpy road to the screen, thanks in no small part to its talented but complicated director Michael Cimino. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: When I first read the script, I liked it very, very much. And when I met Michael Cimino I, we had a great time, you know, just to talk about movies and all that. We did like the same kind of movies, you know, going back to the classics and later movies. And then we thought that tastes is pretty, pretty close to each others, you know. And I didn’t even realize that we are going to make one of the best movies of all time, you know, at least in my time, you know, and I was very happy to work with a director who knew exactly what he wanted. He was very diligent about it, to get what he wanted. And he had a lot of fights with producers. And a couple of producers had to leave because he just couldn’t stand them because they were trying to not get the quality what he wanted to get, you know. And then finally, he got a producer from England who was already had a lot of experience and he really knew how to handle Michael. 

Eric: Michael Cimino and Vilmos Zsigmond were blessed with a remarkable cast in The Deer Hunter, including Fredo Corleone himself, John Cazale, easily one of the finest actors from 70s cinema, who unfortunately had been diagnosed with cancer right before filming began. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: I mean, it was like five major stars in a movie like Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep. This was the first movie Meryl Streep was in and in the case of her work – and of course, so it was like an amazing cast, all New Yorkers and they all knew about each other. Cazale was one of them, you know, who who was basically, had cancer and he was basically dying and they didn’t even want to insure him for the movie. So Michael Cimino had actually promised that if anything happens to Cazale during the production, he will write the character out of the movie. And we were very lucky, of course, that he survived, you know, the movie, which was quite long, three, four months, maybe five. And he only died maybe, I don’t know, five months later. It’s too bad because he was a great actor. 

Eric: The Deer Hunter is almost like three distinct short films. A tale of friendship on the eve of being sent into battle, the horrors of war, and the difficulty of returning to normal, with each section necessitating its own unique visual approach. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: We had to think about, you know, that the first part was like introducing the characters and we kept the first part actually more saturated with colors, you know, like reds. You know, the steel mill gave us the orange color of the steel flowing and the blue came basically from the overcast exterior, you know, so I tried to mix the light a little bit, you know, blue and orange. And so that was for the first part. And the second part was mostly like a documentary in the war in Vietnam. And that was like newsreel quality. And we had to do that because, I mean, a lot of shots we had to borrow from newsreels of those days and those were shot on 16 millimeter. And we had to almost match the quality of 16 millimeter. And in order to do that, I pushed the film two stops. That means that I underrated the film and we developed longer. So to make it a little more grainy and more like the quality of documentary or newsreel of those days. And I think it worked pretty good because I don’t think that you can tell too much, which were the documentary footage which was the one we shot because we shot a lot of things which matched the documentary footage. They’re getting out of the helicopter, the soldiers, you know, De Niro and Christopher Walken, they just walk into the place and we have a lot of shots of documentary and you cannot tell that we did that, you know. The third part of course, it was probably the most difficult thing, because I think the key there was, I don’t know which of the actresses say something of, what a gray day. That one word Gray was what captured it and tried to make that whole sequence sort of gray, sort of not contrasty enough and just just make it, you know, somber and make it just set the mood for that whole sequence when they’re coming out from the graveyard and then go inside and and that whole sequence there, which was so amazing for me because I mean – when I read the script I asked Michael that, Michael don’t you think that thing that, you know, that they are going to sing, you know, “God bless America.” Don’t you think it’s too corny? And, you know, hey looked at me and said, well, you know, you think it’s corny but just wait when the actors are going to do that scene and you’ll change your mind because you will be crying. I said, OK, we will see, you know. And I really honestly, when that scene, we shot it, I mean, I was crying behind the camera. I remembered what Michael said and he was correct. You know that, he knew exactly how that scene has to play.

Clip: [The Deer Hunter clip]

Eric: When collaborating with a director’s specific vision, a DP might need to shoot multiple takes to make the director happy, sometimes at the expense of a less than thrilled cast. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: We shot a lot of film, but I don’t think that it was like the Heaven’s Gate kind of. In Deer Hunter we had great actors and I don’t think that we repeated so many times. I mean we repeated many times because Robert DeNiro, he always likes to do something better on the next take and all that. And, you know, you deal with great actors. They sometimes want to have more takes. And there was one scene when we shot about 12 shots. That was also I didn’t know why Michael Cimino wanted to do so many takes. That’s at the wedding and they are dancing on the floor. We did take one, take two, take three. They all look the same to me. And then to seven, eight and finally I asked Michael, Michael, why you have to take so many takes. He said, just shut up and just do to the shot. Okay and finally we do I think it was take nine or something like that. But the actors were already so tired of dancing and doing so many takes and De Niro and Christopher Walken fell on their asses, you know, and they’re dancing, you know, they and they kept acting, you know, because they didn’t want to stop. He didn’t say cut. Michael didn’t say cut. But this was an unusual thing, you know, that happened. And I let the camera roll and that ended up in a movie. 

Eric : An issue that can arise with so many takes is not every actor peaks at the same time. As was the case with Robert Altman’s neo-western McCabe & Mrs. Miller. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Warren Beatty needs a lot of takes. And the other problem, you know, with Julie Christie, because she is such a talented person who who does it the first time, right? The second time is still good. The third time she’s already bored. Warren Beatty’s just warming up, you know, and then we got to take six or seven or eight and Julie Christie might be sleeping there next to him, you know. So, I mean, you know, you have to always work around people how they like to work. And Warren is a very hard working actor and a good director. And he knows when he needs another take. Funny story. One time, we had one scene for the whole movie when he’s drunk and he has this monologue going on for like six minutes. And one roll of film is like ten minutes long. And we kept shooting with two cameras, one wider and one tighter. And we went already something like thirty seven takes. We started at nine o’clock in the morning shooting and it was already eight o’clock at night. And still Warren wanted to have another take and Altman said, Warren I think we got the shot on take seven and if that’s not good enough, we got it on take nine and we are not doing any more takes. He said, no just do one more, one more. Altman said, OK, you take one more, I’m going home. Vilmos is going to be behind the camera. Just go ahead and and do another take. And he left. 

Eric: Working with directors like Michael Cimino, Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg meant that Vilmos Zsigmond got to witness firsthand some of the greatest performances in American cinema. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Well, you know, I pretty much saw it through the camera because I always operated the camera, so through the camera you always see the performance like you will be in a movie theater. I see the movie basically while it’s being made. I remember, for example, from this movie, that scene when Christopher Walken dies in Robert De Niro’s arms, you know, when he shot himself, you know. That was not rehearsed, absolutely not rehearsed because Michael wanted them to do it, like improvising because he believed that the first shot is going to have the best performance because it’s going to be fresh and new and without thinking about it and just let the actors do it. So we had to be careful with the two cameras. We had to sell it because we didn’t know exactly what they are going to do. So how are they going to move? The lighting was set pretty much, you know, that they could do anything they wanted to do because there was enough light. We had the key light. We the fill light. We had the cross lights. So no matter what they did, they will be lit enough, you know, that they can do anything that they want to do. I didn’t expect the depth of that performance what they did at that time. I mean I didn’t think that Robert De Niro have a performance like that in that. I mean, it was amazing. I mean, again, that was a scene which I was crying behind the camera with Robert De Niro, and, you know, it was just incredible. 

Clip: [The Deer Hunter clip]. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: After that, everybody was silent. And nobody said, let’s make another take. It was no other take. Because it would have been impossible to get that same performance, you know? It was incredible, really. 

Eric: That’s a good lesson for an actor. If you want to avoid a lot of takes, be perfect in one of them. Easy, right? Though working with Robert Altman also meant sometimes coming to the set with no idea of what they were going to shoot. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Altman, obviously, well he was a great director because he was the great improviser. To the point, you know, that me never shot the screenplay. We had a story written, but it never shot that. Every night Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, and Altman sat down for a couple hours and wrote the next day’s script and I was complaining about it that I’m not going to be prepared, you know, because I don’t know what we are shooting and where we are shooting. And he said, don’t worry about it. You will know in the morning what we are shooting. So you go on the set and Robert says, Vilmos we shooting over there at the edge of the set. You know, that was a big little village that we built. I said, wow that’s big news for me because we are not even cabled there. You know, we have to cable 400 feet, 500 feet and, wow how long is that going to take? Well it’s going to take three, four hours until, you know, they cable and put some lights and all that. OK, go ahead and start doing it. And he never pushed me. He never came to me that why is it taking so long or when are you going to be ready? He knew exactly how long is it going to take if I said he’s going to take three, four hours. And the way he was prepared and we still finished at four o’clock before the sun went down. And he was very good at using two cameras – many times, using scenes in one shot. 

Eric: Mr. Zsigmond also cautioned that when a director tries to control too much of the filmmaking, well, that can cause its own problems. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: There are many, many things the director can do, you know. A lot of them would actually get involved with the camera. And that’s not good news for me because then what am I going to do? But, you know, that happens. And then so I just have to follow the directions, you know. Some directors want to set up the shot themselves. You know, this is where we are shooting. And then other directors would just tell me that, OK, we are going to do a long shot here and maybe coverage and the camera will be somewhere here. And then he goes and talks to the actors because that’s the most important thing for him, is to rehearse with the actors on the set. In the meantime, I’m doing my job. If I cannot do it, I have to wait until the rehearsal is over. But at least I know what the actors are doing. So that helps my job because I know exactly. We make a walking rehearsal afterwards and make certain marks where they will stop or they go from A to B or C, so we know that, and we have a couple of stand ins who we will light the scene and then when I’m ready with the lighting, we go and start shooting. So it depends on what the director wants to do, really how much work he wants to do himself. You know, many of directors get involved with the props. Many of them, you know, that’s so important for them, that how the things on the table is set up and all that, you know. And mostly commercial directors do that because they shot many commercials and there the props are very important. But many directors who came from commercials, they waste their time, you know, to work with things which is not really that important, but other people cannot do. But it always depends on the upbringing of the director. What the directors learn to do and what they like to do, because many times they want to operate the camera. I don’t like that part at all, you know, because, you know, we have many directors, you know, who like to play the game. And instead of watching the scene from the outside and maybe on the video playback, whatever. So I think their job is really to to really direct the actors and not to operate the camera because operating is a job anybody can do that, you know? Good operators can do it. Bad operators, you don’t hire them. 

Eric: One filmmaker who impressed Mr. Zsigmond right away was Steven Spielberg, a director he worked with so early in his career that Mr. Zsigmond initially said… 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Who is Spielberg? Who was Spielberg in those days? I mean, he was a kid. He was a young guy who did one TV show, called Duel. And he wants to shoot me his movie. I said, well, I’d rather shoot another movie which is going to win the Academy Award. And that was a western, I can’t remember what the title was. But my agent said, well, you have to meet this guy because he is really a brilliant young guy. So I sat down with him for a coffee. And we started to talk and talk and talk and I’m telling you, I fell in love with this guy. I mean, I really I mean, he was brilliant, you know, in the conversation. He was talking about all the movies that I haven’t seen. He saw all the movies which everyone’s made. And he was educated very well to be a film director, you know. So anyhow, after that conversation, I said, OK, I give up the Academy Award, you know. And it paid off because I got the Academy Award on his next movie, what we did together. So it was a good investment. 

Eric: That good investment eventually led to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A groundbreaking sci-fi drama that faced some pretty stiff competition from another science fiction property. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Steven wanted to do that movie a long time before he was still probably a student and he wanted to do it low budget, 16 millimeter low budget. And that’s how this started out. When he started to make the movie, we had a very low budget because they thought that Steven really can bring it in for very little money. It didn’t happened. Because it started to grow. Suddenly he got actors like Richard Dreyfuss and once you have Richard Dreyfuss, you have to have other good actors. And everything started to escalate to the point that probably became about 25 million. That was a question mark, whether we did the right thing or not, to spend all that money on a movie which might fail. And it almost failed, you know, because it was in competition with George Lucas’s film, at the same time, you know, a little film like Star Wars and Star Wars got like nine or eleven awards. And Close Encounters got only one. It should have been the other way around, I think, because today everybody is very happy to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But I don’t know how many people want to see Star Wars. I don’t know. I certainly don’t. 

Eric: By working in the industry for decades, Vilmos Zsigmond had to adjust to the changing technology of cinema, including the use of video tap, when a monitor is attached to the camera, which was a game changer for how movies were shot. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Many, many directors actually lost their place from the camera and they like to be back, you know, where the video monitor is and watch the scene there on a tiny little monitor, which is ridiculous because you can’t see anything, you know, really to determine if the shot was good or not, you know. You can’t see the performance, really, on a small monitor. That’s why many of those directors like to make so many close ups, because the close ups show up on a monitor. So they can you know. I hated that when it happened, you know, but I always urge, you know, new directors when I work with many new, upcoming directors, first directors, I always told them be by the camera and watch the scene from that. That’s when the good directors do. Altman did that. Spielberg did that. Jerry Schatzberg did that. Brian De Palma did that. That’s where their place is. Is by the camera. Not at the monitor. The monitor is there only if you want to playback something and see what the actors did so you can match it. And it helps the script person very much because I could always admire those script supervisors that, how did they remember what the actors did in the shot? When you have four or five actors that do all kind of different things and you know, mostly things with props, you know, because in the middle of the thing, they pick up a glass and drink some water or something, and they had to watch that they do it every time in the same sentence and the same words. If they don’t do that, they have to make a note, because then at the end, when the director is going to say, OK, print take five and print take nine, they better know, you know, what they did with their hands. Otherwise, it will be a mismatch. 

Eric: Technological innovations also means the modern DP can adjust their cinematography digitally in post-production, which makes Vilmos Zsigmond’s earlier work that much more impressive for pulling off their look without digital processing. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: But then McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the next film I did, I knew that we cannot do that with bright colors like Technicolor, the like the days in those days when everything was so bright and colorful. And I actually studied the film Freddy Young, who was shot in London called The Deadly Affair. He used the technique of flashing because he didn’t have enough lights and he wanted to make the film more sensitive to work in interiors. And they didn’t have many lights, low budget. And I thought it was an interesting idea. And I made some tests and then I suggested to Altman that they should probably try out and test this how the flashing is going to work for the film. And so we made a test and he loved it because, you know flashing makes things look a little bit gray, but you had exposure at least. His idea was to make the images more like faded images of the days, like it was about the turn of the century when they were doing stills. They would all sort of different looking and then because of the times, you know, it was faded. And that’s what he wanted actually to shoot the whole movie with that idea. And that worked for that one. And for a long time afterwards, I tried to use it in a limited way, but I had to use it almost on all my films. Not much maybe because you couldn’t really tell too much which film and where I was flashing the film. Sometimes it needed, sometimes it didn’t. It depended on exteriors and the sun is shining on one shot and then overcast. And the only way I could actually balance it out if I was, I use flashing on the contrasty sunny days and didn’t use the flashing on the overcast days, so so that was one way to change the look of the film, which we could not do, of course, because we didn’t have digital intermediate. We had to try to do things. You know, other cinematographers did it differently, like Gordon Willis got the same result by simply just under exposing the film. And that worked very well for him. 

Eric: When working on Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, Mr. Zsigmond marveled at the swing shift lens system, which helps give Mr. De Palma his trademark split screen deep focus shots. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: I think I used a swing shift, actually on Black Dalia. You know a lot of other movies I used that actually, and mostly with Brian De Palma because he loves a great depth of field, you know, and that’s good. You know, that some people like one person being in focus and the other one out of focus, even if they have lines. To go, ping pong focus, you know, back and forth. I don’t like that either, you know, too much because that shows you we are making a movie. I know in my photography, I always I don’t want to hide it that we are shooting a movie. I want them to feel that they are seeing the real thing and whatever takes you away from that mood, you know, like the shaky camera. You know, I think it’s ridiculous because it reminds you that we are shooting a movie. I mean, that’s not the idea to make a good movie. And I think, yes, you shake the cameraman, somebody running, and you try to do the point of view of that person. Yes, that’s great. But to have that handheld camera going all the time through the movie with no reason at all, it’s ridiculous. But that’s the style now. 

Eric: So to be clear, if you’re going to shake or move your camera, make sure there’s a reason why. On the technical end, Mr. Zsigmond also described how he approached trading nighttime exteriors, which can be a battle for even the most seasoned camera person. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: I like to light very natural, in a natural way, so my style is to be very real as far as the lighting goes. I don’t want to light something which I cannot explain where the light is coming from. That’s why I bring in lights from windows, from doors. Lamps, actually from the ceiling. If there’s an overhead light, I want the light coming from there. So if you follow reality and the skin is going to look real and you know, my feeling is that the audience, when they see a movie, should never think about where the light is coming from. They should just accept the image like a true image that it looks real. Like we didn’t use any light at all. If somebody can see that a light is coming from a wrong direction, they will see it. So that made it difficult for me on a Woody Allen movie. He used a Steadicam, I would say about 50 or 60 percent of the time. And the Steadicam went from room to room, you know, in 360 degrees sometimes. So so everybody had to be hiding, you know, somewhere so the camera don’t see them. So in that case, also, the lighting was difficult because I could not see lights. So where do you put the lights, when you have a low ceiling. Woody always works in real apartments. He doesn’t work on stages. So the question is always, how to light and not see the lamps? And that usually end up with under lighting the set. That was really exciting for me to do what Woody wanted to do and come out all right and make it actually acceptable lighting for the scene. 

Eric: All of the planning in the world, though, might not be able to compensate for a limited budget or worse, faulty equipment. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: So we’re getting to the point that night shots are getting easier to shoot because if you have a street brightly lit, you can almost shoot available light, with some additional lights for the actors when they come closer. Then you just have to match the color temperature and then you can get away with very little lighting. So that’s today. But in The Deer Hunter days, we had a real problem because remember the scene near the end where De Niro is coming on a boat and a lot of refugees are coming through a bridge. I mean, we had generators which broke down and at the end we had hardly any lights, you know, left. Because we had bad equipment, because we had to get the equipment from Thailand. So it was very underlit. And we were just hoping that it’s going to come out in the film. Wide open and flashing. And, you know, luckily I saw that on the Bluray. It looked actually better than it looked on film, that scene. Because, you know, when you go to Bluray, of course, you digitally can improve things. So the contrast went back a little bit. And you can see the actors much better. De Niro in his white suit, you know, in the, on the boat when it was coming. On the film, I didn’t see that. 

Eric: How a DP approaches their lighting is especially important when filming what might be the most expensive part of a production, the star. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: With Bette Midler, for example, in The Rose. Bette Midler needed the most diffusion in my life. But, you know, interesting, when you start from day one on the whole scene, I have to use diffusion on men also, because otherwise it will not match, you know. One shot is sharp, the other shot is soft. It will be ridiculous. So I had to use that same diffusion basically on everybody and all the time, regardless of what the scene was or where. And, you know, the combination which really worked beautifully on Bette Midler. But I’m not going to tell you the combination because then you will steal my job away, you know. It’s a matter of also do it with the lighting also, because you have sharp lights and you have diffused lights and when you come into a close up, I usually have to soften the light. You can use the Kino Flos many times, even if in the long shot you used the directional lights, you can actually replace that in a close up, if it comes from the same direction, with a little softer lights and that will help already. So it’s a matter of, you know, you have to shoot tests before you do a movie and you have a problem face. Aging stars who would like to look 20 years old, you know, and you have to make a lot of tests and even test filters, lighting directions and all that. Many times I even do that technique that I’m going to not have a full exposure on their face. I will keep them a little bit in the shade. And that helps a lot, you know, and so you just have to test it out and then whatever works, it will work. 

Eric: So does a man who shot close to a hundred movies have a favorite scene? 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Oh boy. Thousands of them. The one I already told you about, that De Niro and Christopher Walken, when he dies. That’s probably one of the moment I will always remember in my life. But there are so many interesting scenes, like Heaven’s Gate has a lot of them, you know, like the roller skating rink, you know, I mean, that’s a classic there, you know. And so many beautiful shots, you know, when the immigrants are coming along, dusty road. And we actually it was interesting. I wanted to shoot that in the early morning sunlight. And Michael said, OK, people sigh and he got ready actually to direct that scene by afternoon at four o’clock because there were hundreds of extras and a lot of wagons and a lot of people. And so by the time we rehearsed the whole thing, it was four o’clock. And I said, Michael, I lost my early morning feeling. But you know what? I have a late afternoon feeling. So it turned out actually, it was really beautiful in the afternoon. It was like a painting, you know, and sometimes you get lucky, you know. 

Eric: Mr. Zsigmond’s advice for our students came with a warning as well, be patient. It’s going to take time. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Hard to succeed in show business. You have to work hard and you cannot become what you want to become in a year’s time or two years’ time, or three years’ time. I usually say that in order to start to do something, five years. You need five years from the start. Let’s say that you finish film school and then you want to become a cinematographer who is wanted by other directors, it’ll take five years, sometimes 10. For me it took 10, because I didn’t speak English. It took me five years just to get to the point that my English was acceptable and I understood what I said. Most of it, but I just understood that the director was telling me. I mean that was the problem at the beginning, because how could you get a job and you understand what the director wants to do? It’s impossible. You don’t have to learn the language, that’s good for you because you are in America, everybody speaks English, right? So that’s why I say five years is a good time. But you should always be determined where you want to be in five years from now. You can try to make it in two years, but you have to determine and work on it and you’ll end up five years anyhow. 

Eric: He also shared his formula for having a long career. 

Vilmos Zsigmond: I am not the only one, I think, because if you look at other cinematographers, we have long careers that usually than the average. And the only way I can explain that you stay young if you keep working. The worst problem is when somebody gets 65 years old and had to retire. Cannot do the job that he or she was doing and I think then his head is going to deteriorate because he’s not using his brains, you know. He’s not really living the way he used to live. And I can only suggest everybody to never retire. Let death takes you away from this world, not retirement. But if you don’t like your job, then retire early. 

Eric: Vilmos Zsigmond continued to DP well into his 80s, including The Mindy Project. He passed away in 2016 at the age of 85. If you get a chance, check out his remarkable work on McCabe & Mrs. Miller. For my money, the most realistic looking Western ever committed to film. Or watch one of his dozens of other titles. You won’t be disappointed. 

This episode was based on the Q&A, moderated by Michael Pessah. To watch the full interview or to see our other Q&As, check out our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by me, Eric Conner. Edited and mixed by Kristian Heydon. Produced by Kristian Heydon, Helen Kantilaftis, and myself. Executive Produced by the New York Film Academy. A special thanks to all our staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs, check us out at NYFA.edu. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. See you next time.