Peter Sarsgaard’s Lovelace, The Killing and Blue Jasmine

Published by Interrobang Staff at August 6, 2013

Actor Peter Sarsgaard started his career in “Dead Man Walking” and has continued to get great roles ever since. Films like “Boys Don’t Cry”, “Shattered Glass”, “Kinsey” and “Year of the Dog” and others have all earned him the respect of his colleagues, critics, and audiences everywhere. This year he’s also gotten tremendous love for his performance in season three of the tv series “The Killing.” He stopped by the SiriusXM studios this week to talk with Ron Bennington about two of his recent projects– the film “Lovelace” and Woody Allen’s latest, “Blue Jasmine.” Excerpts from the interview appear below.

* * *

Peter Sarsgaard Talks Developing His Character In “Lovelace”

Ron Bennington: You’ve got the movie Lovelace coming out and you’re playing a character, maybe one of the darker people you’ve played in your somewhat dark career.

Peter Sarsgaard: The thing that attracted me to the role was just the ability to create a sense of reality there. There was bandwidth, there was room to operate, in terms of creating a person. This was someone that, on the page, I guess somebody could have really turned him into a two-dimensional bad guy. I was not trying to make excuses for his behavior, but I wanted it to feel like an actual person. I think that this type of extreme behavior and extreme violence is best depicted and most effective, when the person seems like if you cut them, they will bleed.

Ron Bennington: But do you think that this happens to people at a certain age, that they go off? So many times we just see someone playing bad or evil as it’s sitting in its own place, but as an actor do you have to go back and go, how did this person end up on this path?

Peter Sarsgaard: That’s interesting, I do that sometimes to remind myself that everyone is a person. You go like, well this person was a baby, and certainly they must have been blameless when they were a baby, besides the original sin, I guess, if you go there. But, for this guy, I mainly thought about what it’s like to be a thirteen – fourteen year old boy. You see these kids sometimes and like, they are scary. A boy that age is terrifying; they kill animals, they’re messing around with what it means to kill things. You see teenagers getting involved in activities, that like, you feel like if they’d made it through their teens it would have never happened as an adult. I think of these, what was it, football players who raped the girl. If those guys had made it through their childhood somehow, I don’t think that behavior would have been there. It’s like a certain type of… I don’t know what it is, but I was really thinking about that reckless time in a young man’s life where you could go either way. So that’s really where I focused him, I thought of him as a young, young person.

Ron Bennington: Young in terms of the years, or young in terms of…

Peter Sarsgaard: Mind, his mind. He was stunted. That’s why he’s able to want to have a good time. He’s not a guy that just wants everybody to feel bad, he wants a party, but he wants his kind of party. If someone is taking his toy, he’ll hit them. And now he’s an adult, so he’s hitting them hard. I think with Linda, the more famous she becomes the more it feels like other people are operating and controlling her, besides him. He’s a bad bully and he comes in there and is desperate to get what is his back, even if he has to strangle it. It’s tough when you’re playing someone like this, I think mainly for me, before I start and after I’m done. Before I start, I just go, “God, I don’t want to do this.” There is a scene in the movie that I was just like, “I don’t want to do this scene.” There are these five guys… I won’t spoil it, but it’s not pleasant, and I just couldn’t bring my mind to go there. So, on that day, I was like, “Well sometimes violence has a blind hand and it disassociates, and so today I’m not thinking about what I’m doing, I’m just doing it.” So you don’t always have to go there in the most deep way; that’s the thing about violence, the people committing it don’t always feel it, completely.

Ron Bennington: And then you have to, as a civilized person, figure out how to leave that shit behind, after the filming.

Peter Sarsgaard: Yes. Wife, kids. (laughing) And they hit me, and they yell at me, and they demand things of me. And I have a wife who wants what she wants and we have a relationship, and all of that is what makes it possible and easier. When I did “Boys Don’t Cry”, a long time ago, that was way more like going into a rabbit hole, and it took me much longer to come out. You know, that’s what family is for.

Ron Bennington: Because you didn’t have that like base, at the time.

Peter Sarsgaard: I didn’t have a mirror. I didn’t have anyone. I came home and I didn’t have anyone that was like, “You look like you need a bath. And then some.” (laughing)

* * *

Peter Sarsgaard Talks About Working With Woody Allen On “Blue Jasmine”

Ron Bennington: So how was it working with Woody?

Peter Sarsgaard: Working with Woody is a totally unique experience, as I’m sure a lot of actors have said. Woody gives you the most freedom, I think, of any director you could possible work with. Meaning, character is up to you, so much is up to you. He doesn’t talk about it before you start. The first thing he said when I walked onto set, we had not spoken about the character at all, we’d had maybe a minute and half of talking when I first talked to him about the part, he just said, “You guys have total freedom, you can do whatever you want, just go for it, have fun.” And then the counter side to that, is that if it’s not in his world, or not working, he is brutally honest, not with a lot of emotionality. He’ll just say, “That’s bad, that’s not good.”

Ron Bennington: That’s not going in. That’s the thing, even when you’re on one of his films, you may not be. You may be gone from that film. He may reshoot it and he’s done it before with great people.

Peter Sarsgaard: Oh, absolutely.

Ron Bennington: But, it’s stunning, you know, because you see films being shot all over New York, but I’ve seen him shoot stuff that was so small, that I would look around to see where the crew was… no, it’s smaller than a commercial.

Peter Sarsgaard: Absolutely. And a lot of those scenes, he’s shooting in a wide shot and he’s basically like, “By the way, I’m not going to do any coverage on this scene,” meaning coming in and getting closer. And so, he’ll just say, “You might want to turn out a little bit to face the camera, otherwise you’re not going to be in the movie.” (laughing)

* * *

Peter Sarsgaard Talks About Andrew “Dice” Clay In “Blue Jasmine”

Ron Bennington: The fact that [Andrew “Dice” Clay] is in the film….

blue jasmine Peter Sarsgaard: Dice is so good in this movie! I mean, when I heard he cast Dice, I didn’t understand what was going on. I mean, I liked him in “Pretty in Pink”, but it had been a while for me. And he comes in, and he just… I think he has the strongest perspective of any character, in terms of, when I hear him talk in the movie, I know that he hates rich people. I feel that from him, Andrew says as much. Like, “rich people are motherfuckers,” and he’s like “I had this lady who lived next to me in Beverly Hills, and I just thought of her and what a bitch she was.” And I feel that from him, and in the movie it’s so strong and so great because the movie has class in it. So to hear this guy that has his head in the sand, in one way, but is also really a noble great character.

Ron Bennington: And, again, how brilliant to be able to know how to use Dice, properly. That has always been there, other people could have made the move, but they were like, “oh, his career is too hot,” Woody doesn’t care about those kind of things.

Peter Sarsgaard: He does not care at all. When you the way he puts together a movie — I think one of the reasons he doesn’t direct that much is he goes, “Well, I’ve cast it. Dice is going to be Dice and Peter is going to be Peter.” He must have seen the part of me that went to an all boys prep school in Connecticut, because I’m usually cast — because I lived so many different places, there’s a part of me that’s from Oklahoma, or St. Louis, Missouri, or places like that, where I lived in a more raw environment. I mean, I remember my years there, I was around a wider spectrum of humanity than I was at the prep school in Connecticut, which was a little bit like a bubble. It was a nice bubble, though. It was a bubble where I learned a ton. But I’m usually not cast that way.

* * *

Peter Sarsgaard On Politics

Ron Bennington: Does that make it feel like it’s tough to know where home is, though?

Peter Sarsgaard: I mean, my friends from Connecticut, whenever I talk about where I’m from they all go, “You’re from Connecticut!” But I lived in Connecticut from when I was fourteen to eighteen, I went to high school in Connecticut, basically. Then I went back to St. Louis for college because I was homesick for St. Louis. … I was born in southern Illinois. And I guess there is a lack of trust between the middle of America and the coasts, and you know it neatly divides into Democrat and Republican, and stuff. I grew up in a very pragmatic house, my dad actually is one of the few people I know who votes sometimes Democrat and sometimes Republican. I really almost know no one else who does that. He and I were talking the other day about whistle blowers and all that, and Bradley Manning, and I’m friends with Jeremy Scahill, who did “Dirty Wars”, which I think is an incredible film. And I was trying to talk to him about it, and he was a little weary at first, because he said, “Well now is this going to be some diatribe against the US government?” and I was like, “No, I mean, Obama doesn’t seem to look that great in it,” so it’s not Democrat. This is an investigative reporter who is just investigating, that’s all the guy is doing. And it’s the job of the government to protect it’s secrets, and it’s the job of a reporter to go after them, instead of get handed them. All of our great reporters through history, that’s what they do, they go after the truth and they go after the truth, and the government says, “I’m protecting this.” And if you’re an idiot and make it so a private can access it, and that is supposedly endangering lives — the private signed an oath and he’s guilty. I don’t think he’s as guilty as it seems like they are going to put him away for, but he’s guilty, he signed an oath. I look at the government and I go, “Who the fuck made it possible to let all this “important stuff” be so available?” And that’s the thing, it’s like stop blaming other people, look at yourself, it drives me nuts.

* * *

Peter Sarsgaard Talks About The NSA

Ron Bennington: The Democrats and Republicans got together and Obama signed a bill to make sure that people can’t come and protest government things. So we can’t show up and protest the Democratic Conventions or the Republican Conventions. If there were ever a case where Coke and Pepsi said “This is all the fucking shelf space. There won’t be any place for new colas.” Because I honestly think we are at the point where the people in Washington are just about keeping it, no matter what happens.

lovelace Peter Sarsgaard: Well yeah, they are circling the wagons tighter than ever. And it’s just like, wait a second. I agree that there is a balance. My dad and I were talking about this the other day, and my dad is like my touchstone for politics because we don’t agree. It’s totally great because I really do learn something from him sometimes. He said, “Don’t forget about National Security. We need our rights as individuals and all of that, but we’ve got to protect the National Security, especially at this time, it’s really dire.” And he said, and I think this is true, “The government just needs to communicate that to us.” Because look, it’s not like the bad guys didn’t know that we were going to try to monitor their calls and emails. I’m sure they were using the mail long ago, the old fashioned way. But, it’s like, just communicate that and say, “Ok, we’re going to be collecting.” — they just did that, the other day. They said, “This is what we’re doing, we’re collecting all of this, just to be very clear about it,” and then we can all go, “Ok, thumbs up, collect it.” And we do that with everything, if you check out a book from the library the government knows what book you checked out from the library.

Ron Bennington: But, is it our fault — I mean, did they treat us like babies because we act like babies, and I mean the citizens, do we act like, “oh we want to do what we want, but we also want to be kept safe.” Go fight the wars but we don’t want to see those guys when they get back.

Peter Sarsgaard: Also, it’s boring to a lot of people to know about what’s going on with their government. They’d rather do other stuff. They also have a lot of other shit going on in their lives. You think of the average single mother, like Sharon Stone plays in this film, they are still out there and they’re like cooking dinner and taking the kids to school. They don’t have time to know what the hell is going on with the government and they are learning it in five seconds from some dumb show. It’s difficult to get the most important information to people, because most people want to space out, so it’s tough to be a citizen and also to space out.

* * *

Ron Bennington: “Blue Jasmine” is out in New York and LA, doing great, great business. And “Lovelace” opens in select cities Friday, August 9th, for more information go to lovelacemovie.com. See you next time.

Peter Sarsgaard: Thanks, Peace.

==============================================