00:00To be clear, goth was a thing. It just wasn't very popular.
00:04I want to be careful there. I don't want to claim to be, like, the first.
00:08Hey, Harper's Bazaar. I'm Winona Ryder.
00:11I'm going to be breaking down some of the characters that I've had the honor of playing.
00:17Live people ignore the strange and unusual. I myself am strange and unusual.
00:25So this is Lydia Dietz, my character from Beetlejuice. I think we shot it in 87 and it
00:32came out in 88. I went to the sound stages to meet Tim Burton. This guy walked in, who I thought was
00:40from the art department, and we were just talking for a while about, like, Edward Gorey and a lot of
00:46movies and about half hour into it, I asked him, I was like, do you know, like, when this Tim
00:55Burton guy is going to show up? And he's like, oh, that's me. And I was sort of blown away.
01:00I had an image in my mind of what a director is. Usually they're a lot older and they're a lot
01:07more sort of traditional, at least at that time. There were some things so casual and sort of
01:13intimate about it. Like, I just felt so comfortable with him. By the end, he told me he wanted me to
01:20do it, which was very exciting. The style came very, very naturally to me. It was a little bit
01:29more extreme of how I dressed. I wore a lot of black. I still do. My whole life is a dark room.
01:37One big, dark room. It was a real game changer for me when it came out, because even though my
01:47character is this weird girl, she was sort of goth before goth. To be clear, goth was a thing. It just
01:54wasn't very popular. I want to be careful there. I don't want to claim to be, like, the first. But
02:00she was someone I really, really identified with. I remember the movie coming out and doing
02:08extremely well. And I was living in this town about 45 minutes north of San Francisco. I did
02:16well academically in school, but socially, not so well. And I really remember thinking
02:22Beetlejuice was going to change that because it's doing so well, but it didn't. People still
02:28call me weirdo and freak and stuff. But, you know, hey, to me, it's a badge of honor.
02:34There still is nothing like that movie. It's so singular. Every generation seems to be able
02:41to relate to some part of it. And what surprises me is that a lot of kids still come up to me
02:50and would say, oh, my God, are you the girl from Beetlejuice? There is this purity to Lydia. There
02:56is a reason why she sees the ghosts. There is something that people strangely identify with,
03:03even kids. I was always very moved by that. This is Veronica Sawyer in Heathers, which
03:12is, I think, a masterpiece, a very, very dark comedy that I made right after Beetlejuice,
03:19actually. I had been slipped the script by Michael McDowell, who wrote Beetlejuice,
03:24and was a friend. And it was such a brilliant script. It was sort of going around secretly. So
03:31to get slipped that early on was great. And I went in and I met, and they didn't think I was
03:37pretty enough. I was sort of the weird girl from Beetlejuice. It was very fair because on screen,
03:44I'd only played very weird characters. I went across the street to the Beverly Center,
03:52and I went to Macy's, and I had them do a makeover on me. And then I went back, and I was
03:58like, you don't have to pay me. I just want to say these words. I think they almost took me up on
04:04that. I don't think any of us were really paid. We probably just were paid scale. It was sort of
04:10stylized, and there were very intentional reasons for each of the heathers and the colors they wore.
04:19We picked blue for me. Blue is like a form of a bruise, and that she was sort of beating herself
04:26up emotionally. So it made a lot of sense. Veronica, you look like hell. Yeah, I just got back.
04:35It was sort of revolutionary in terms of like, I just never read anything like it. Very groundbreaking
04:41in a way. I really felt like teenagers were just being put into these boxes, and when you're a
04:52teenager, you don't feel anything less. In fact, you can feel it more. Things can feel like the end
05:00of the world, and things can be so vicious. And I really wanted to show that teenagers were a lot
05:08more complex in good ways and in terrible ways. And I think that that movie captured that. No one
05:17saw it when it came out, even though it got amazing reviews. It was a dark subject matter.
05:23I remember Christian Slater and I went on this sort of tour where we went to different places,
05:29and there were people protesting. Then it kind of became this cult classic that has become sort of a
05:37seminal film, certainly in that genre. To this day, if it comes on TV, I have to sit through it.
05:45It feels wrong to change the channel. Daniel Waters, who wrote it, has, I think, created an
05:52incredible, almost new language. And I think there's been a lot of movies that Heather's
05:58inspired. I have very, very fond memories of making that. It was a really special time.
06:05Some books are so familiar. Reading them is like being home again.
06:12Jill March, who I had the honor of playing in Little Women, that was the first time I took on
06:22a role that had been done, I think, at that point, three other times. I mean, once with Katherine
06:28Hepburn, once with Gene Allison. But the script was so good. The director, who I was so, so thrilled
06:37she agreed to do it, because I begged her, Gillian Armstrong, was so great that it didn't feel like
06:45a remake. It was a spec script. It was just something that Robin Sweicorn had adapted,
06:52and I just fell in love with it. I could be more reasonable than to marry you.
06:59We'd kill each other. The wardrobe was incredibly accurate. We went to a lot of warehouses where
07:06they have a lot of those actual dresses that have been preserved. This was during the Civil War, so
07:13people were very, very poor. We had to present that. So I think I literally have two or three
07:21outfits. Very thoughtful and very intentional, and the collaboration with everybody involved
07:29just made it really, really special and honored the time and honored the story. It was such a joy
07:37to work with all of the actors. Everyone was so excited to be there. I forged some really,
07:44really close friendships. I really felt like that movie just worked, and it touched on
07:52a lot of things that I feel like had been underrepresented in books and film. Boys got
07:59the great Holden Caulfield, and they got Lord of the Flies. But women, it was usually you're a child
08:06or you're a young woman, and no one had really captured that in between time in the way that
08:11I feel that that piece did. Susanna, four days ago, you chased a bottle of aspirin with a bottle
08:21of vodka. I had a headache. Girl Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen, that was an incredible role,
08:30an incredible opportunity. I read the book when it was still in galleys form because my father
08:39and mother are writers, so they have all these connections. So I actually read the book before
08:45it came out and just fell in love with Susanna. The story is sort of more of a chapter in this
08:55woman's life. This girl is going through a rough time and suddenly finds herself locked in a mental
09:02hospital. You know, she was a complicated person, and she was brave enough to write about it in a
09:08very honest way. So what is this borderline business you mentioned on the phone? Oh, look, um, I don't
09:16think that's useful to Susanna. I mean, not... What borderline business? The style was very accurate.
09:25Ariana Phillips was the costume designer. We had some pictures of Susanna. I really was struck by
09:32that striped shirt, and I wanted to repeat that a lot because I think you have a different outfit
09:40every day when you're in that situation. I just wanted everything to be as accurate and believable
09:47as possible. It took a long time to get it set up. Having that other role of a producer as well
10:04was new to me. I realized, like, how difficult that can be when you just cannot compromise because
10:14it's such a specific story. I had other opportunities to make it with different directors,
10:21but it just has to be someone who really gets it. You know, I found that person with Jim Mangold.
10:27It was an incredible cast. I mean, Angelina was just a powerhouse, obviously. I feel like all of
10:35our scenes together were intense. And Clea Duvall and Elizabeth Moss and Brittany Murphy, who I was
10:44very close to, a lot of people approached me about how much that movie meant to them. Certainly for
10:51women, you know, there's always been the narrative that the women, you know, are hysterical and need
10:57to be put away. People go through hard times all the time, and it doesn't necessarily mean they're
11:04crazy. Will, are you here? Okay, good, good, good, good. Joyce Byers. She is a character that I'm
11:18literally on my 10th year playing her. Absolute first for me to play a character for that long.
11:26It was a huge to say yes to, like, one episode. Like, they only gave me the pilot episode.
11:34I didn't, at the time, know what streaming was. It was terrifying in that regard. At the time,
11:41Tim and I were talking about the Beetlejuice sequel, and there have been moments over the
11:47last, like, 15 years that we thought it was going to happen. But again, like, that's a
11:53thing. Like, it had to be perfect with everybody in order for it to happen. But I remember at my
12:01first meeting with the Duffer brothers, I said, as long as if Beetlejuice 2 happens, you'll let
12:09me go do that. And they agreed. Luckily, it worked out. That was my one condition. Joyce has always
12:16been a struggling single mom. I've repeated a lot of the clothes. A lot of the clothes were, like,
12:25my mom and dad's, the jeans. It's always important to me to represent, like, what this character
12:33could afford to buy. My favorite part about playing Joyce is getting to watch these kids grow up.
12:41They started at the same age I was when I started, which was really interesting. And
12:46because it was taking place in 83, 84, which is when I started at that age, there was something
12:54really sweet about that. It's almost emotional. I mean, these kids have essentially grown up
13:00in public. When I was growing up, there was no internet, no social media. If you got photographed,
13:08it was like someone had to randomly happen to have a camera on them. It was just very,
13:12very different. I will miss Ben, Charlie, Joe, Noah, Sadie, Maya, obviously Dayton, and Caleb.
13:21I feel like I learned so much from them. Thanks so much for watching, and be sure to check out
13:28my Harper's Bazaar cover.
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