Renée Zellweger on Judy Garland: "The Materials of Her Legacy Were Surrounding Us All the Time" | TIFF 2019 - video Dailymotion

Hollywood Journal

Renée Zellweger stars as Judy Garland in Rupert Goold's 'Judy,' along with Finn Wittrock. The cast and director joined to discuss the film at TIFF 2019.

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00:00who is the least likely to flub a line well we know who that's not the girls

00:08who play the feather girls we had these rehearsal sessions and they were telling

00:10the story about clang clang clang with the trolley and that the person who was

00:14singing the song in the show forgot the words to clang clang clang with the trolley

00:19ding ding ding with the bell piss piss piss when the pistons

00:26it's a pretty good thing that just improvises them at the moment

00:30that's colourable

00:31so our movie judy is about the one only judy garland it's mostly about a set of concerts

00:45she gives extraordinary set of concerts she gives in london towards the very end of her life

00:49but it also touches on the beginning of her career with wizard of oz

00:53it felt like a collaborative experience from the beginning and it was all of us together

00:58and it felt like it was it was a rubric called it mining for treasure and it felt like it

01:05was perpetually in motion it was always moving and we were always digging and looking for

01:10things and and and the the materials of her legacy were surrounding us all the time there

01:16was her music and her voice and the audio recordings and we were looking at video footage all the

01:21time and reading the books and and biographies and the autobiographies of the people who knew her

01:27best her family um you know uh and and suddenly it sort of came i don't know the presence of this

01:35person felt very much alive around us and in all of its manifestations and how she looked at these

01:42different times in her life and her clothing and again like you said her her physical language both

01:48uh in performance and not and it just became familiar it became familiar with the repeated

01:55exposure to all of the materials and you know you also never stopped uh in between takes and on set

02:01i i know finn you said that she stayed in character and you didn't actually see renee zelweger until later

02:07on to the process can you tell right now actually yeah hi i'm finn hi it's me here um yeah it was very

02:14cool to be part of the process um and to see to see you inhabit her but also it didn't feel um like

02:24a struggle ever or like renee was never like i'm gonna go into my dark corner and become judy and i'll

02:30i'll see you in an hour you know it was like we were always kind of immersed in it and we were always

02:34kind of finding it together and and and i felt very welcomed you know it could have been i could have

02:40been some cog in the the tour de forest performance but i didn't feel like that i felt like we were

02:46making a movie um as a as a group and that was that's what i think kind of makes the movie more than

02:52just uh you know like a your your average biopic which is like i was born here and i grew up here and

02:59then it was like we're like honing in very very intensely on this one chapter of her life

03:06and uh to kind of be able to shed all of the other stuff and know that the rest of life has happened

03:13and have that as as your research but then be able to like really fine tune the moments of this exact

03:19time in her life and to be a part of that was i think a very unique thing that was well said and

03:24this is also not an average biopic because you know it's one thing to step in the shoes of judy garland

03:29but to sing somewhere over the rainbow is also a really ambitious move how do you what did you do how

03:35did you do that and pull it off in the way that you did all that was rupert because if i could

03:40have gotten out of it i would have um he uh he explained it really beautifully about performance

03:47and the connection that judy had with her audience and and how how he he felt like that this story in

03:53this moment illuminates a lot about the cost of performance and what that relationship that judy had

04:01specifically with her audience was about what it meant to her and uh so i i understood and appreciated

04:08what it was that he was trying to capture and and that song in particular when he talks about it and

04:15he should because he speaks of it so beautifully about how it speaks to all of us in a different way and

04:21and and how we have nostalgic feelings from childhood attached to that song and the meaning of it and

04:28and the hopefulness in it and how throughout judy's life it came to mean something and represent

04:33something different as she weathered life's challenges and struggles and to me that moment

04:40is sort of like the culmination of her experiences until that point and when you consider what's happening

04:47in her life at that time and that she still maintains that hope it's just of a different color

04:53here you know hearing those words and that music again in that context to me is just so deeply moving

05:03and that she still has ownership of it but in a different way and then you come to understand the

05:08circumstances of her life in that period and you feel that song differently too you feel that wow there's

05:16this this this undying hopefulness that has just transformed in a way and become bigger because in

05:23spite of all this she continues to carry on

Renée Zellweger on Judy Garland: "The Materials of Her Legacy Were Surrounding Us All the Time" | TIFF 2019

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