Jennifer Lopez, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Awkwafina and Renée Zellweger joined for The Hollywood Reporter's annual Actress Roundtable.
00:00Renee, I want to talk about playing Judy because obviously part of her story was sort of the way she was treated by the public and the media at a certain point in her career. How did you sort of get into the headspace of relating to her at that point in her life?
00:19Well, I guess going back to what Jennifer said, you know, where does that story come from? You know, and you again, you get to the place where you resign yourself to needing to be the determinant of your own, I guess, I don't know, legacy, whatever that might be, how your children or your nieces and nephews think of you going forward, you know, from based on what it is that they might read.
00:47But knowing that there's so much more to a story than what's written and understanding and looking at what was written about her at the time of her passing and the years leading up to it in the last chapter of her life, it seemed so unfair to me because it was, of course, salacious because that's what's so exciting to read about.
01:10And that news travels more quickly, doesn't it?
01:13Where they say a lie will travel around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on.
01:20And I thought, I'd like to understand this better.
01:23I'd like to understand why that chapter is blanketed in tragedy and why she was accused of things, making such bad choices,
01:31and how she ended up in a place where she was facing so many challenges.
01:36Was there a certain point in the process where you felt like, I really, I have it, like when you put on the hair and the outfit and the makeup,
01:44or was it much earlier than that where you felt like, I've really got who she is?
01:48No, that didn't happen.
01:51It didn't happen.
01:52It was in motion.
01:54It was a process that was in constant motion, just little experiments.
02:00We were trying things every day, and it didn't feel like making a film.
02:04It felt like this celebration of her because everybody came to set and was motivated by the same affection or adoration for her,
02:17and it was an expression of that.
02:19So we were all cooperatively trying things, and there was always new.
02:22Someone would find a recording, or we'd read something in a book, and we were always sharing and sort of adjusting according to what came along,
02:31making choices on the day and just sort of conjuring her essence as truthfully as we could based on, you know,
02:38those things, that treasure we were mining for every day.
02:42You know, a couple filmmakers have come out sort of against Marvel films recently.
02:52Scorsese said a couple things about that.
02:54Curious what you think about Marvel films being called the theme parks of movies and things like that.
03:00It seems like it's a chicken and egg conversation because of what you're talking about in terms of content
03:05and how we've changed how we sort of take in different, you know, cinematic experiences or what used to be cinematic experiences.
03:14The place of movies, the place and the importance of cinema has also shifted a little bit.
03:21You know, we used to all watch the same things because the movie came to the theaters,
03:25and it was in the theaters for a couple months, and then we went several times, and then everybody was talking about it.
03:31We all had the same heroes, and so it set up a particular business model.
03:34And that was the paradigm for so many decades.
03:37It's kind of weird when suddenly the only things that sort of fit the modern financial paradigm are these bigger films.
03:44In terms of, you know, people who are eager to invest to go and make a film,
03:49that's a proven, tried and true in the current atmosphere where people don't run to the cinema two and three times to see a movie as readily as they did.
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