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My Week With Marilyn

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : In 1956 England, Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) lands a job as a production assistant on the set of "The Prince and the Showgirl," starring Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams). Marilyn is also honeymooning with her new husband, playwright Arthur Miller, but the combined pressure of work and the demands of the Hollywood hangers-on is driving her to exhaustion. When Miller departs for Paris, Colin seizes the opportunity, to give Marilyn respite during a week in the idyllic British countryside.

Opens Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 39 min.

 

Press Conference with Actress Michelle Williams

 

 

(Q) : I wanted to ask about the opening musical number which you did so well. How difficult was it to learn the choreography and then to learn how to perform it as Marilyn?

(Michelle Williams) : I'm not a singer or a dancer. I haven't been on a stage doing both of those since I was ten years old, and in some ways, because of that I felt like when I was able to put the nerves aside I really felt a tremendous outpouring of joy. I felt like a little girl who's dreams came true for the first time and I was able to tap into what I imagine made Marilyn Monroe so luminous in those singing and dancing numbers. What I experienced is that when you're in that state you're critical mind has to turn off.

There's no room for it because you're remembering steps and lyrics. It's sort of like learning to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time. And maybe that's what makes those performances of hers so magical, that she's not thinking. So, they took, like everything else in this movie for me, just a tremendous amount of preparation and the willingness to start at the very beginning, to not know what to do, to make mistakes along the way and to not be hard on myself for those and to sort of realize that they're a part of the process.

(Q) : A lot was made about method acting in this particular movie. Can you talk about your thoughts on method acting?

(Michelle Williams) : I suppose, yeah, whatever works. For me, for this, I'd never done anything that had ever required, like you were saying, so much sort of technical know how. This was the first attempt that I had made, really the first time that I had actually, admittedly started from the outside in because I knew that I was going to have a very, very long way to go. Where I, Michelle, have wound up after thirty one years physically is very different than Marilyn.

So, for the first time I started externally which was a switch up to me. Similar to Marilyn, I suppose, I'm not trained. I sort of popped into classes now and then. I read books. I read a lot of books and at thirty one have made some kind of amalgamation, some sort of hodgepodge of my own personal experience, what I know works for me in the moment, what I've learned from other actors, what I've picked up from books. I certainly don't know what I'd call it, but at the time the method was or the people who were driving the method were actually live in the room and how exciting would that have been, to be directed in class by [Elia] Kazan, to have [Lee] Strasberg by your side.

Now, we sort of get secondhand information. It's like the soup of the soup. It's been sort of passed on. Similarly, literally, whatever works. I'm not beyond doing rain dances. And I'm still experimenting. I'm still finding out what works for me, and I think that's the reason that it keeps me acting, that it keeps me excited. I'm still learning and those answers change and new information comes in all the time that transforms my idea of how I'm going to do what I'm going to do.

(Q) : Have you drawn any inspiration from Marilyn Monroe as an actress yourself, and also, how have you viewed her as a woman from a very different time with very different expectations of women?

(Michelle Williams) : Has she influenced? She hasn't, to be honest. I had a picture of her in my bedroom when I was growing up, and so I've always had some sort of – I don't know – response to her, but only because of her image. I wasn't aware of her movies. When I had that picture in my bedroom I hadn't really seen any work that she had done. Although, at that time I was very interested in the method.

God knows why, but at twelve that's what I was reading about, reading about Montgomery Clift. They were like my heartthrobs. I was reading about James Dean and Montgomery Clift or [Marlon] Brando and thus Marilyn, but I didn't know her body of work. Really, I only came to it as a result of taking on this film. What was the second question? How do I feel about her –

(Q) : As a woman in terms of the different expectations she might've had during that time?

\(Michelle Williams) : I wish that she could experience what I've been able to which is to work outside of a studio system, to not be bound to playing the same role, to not be a contract player, to not basically have to be on salary and have to take what's given to you. I wish that could experience choice and independence and exert her sort of creative will like I feel very lucky to have been able to.

(Q) : Michelle, you just said you hadn't seen any of her films when you were younger, but I'm sure at this point you've probably seen all of her films. Which one of the Monroe films is your favorite and can you give a reason why you like it the best?

(Michelle Williams) : I wish I could say 'Prince and the Showgirl.' 'Some Like It Hot.' How can you not? And I also am pretty fond of 'The Misfits' maybe because it was a short, maybe sort of her only short although I think she had problems with the role. But it was still a shot a serious part.

(Q) : I think certainly when we saw the film we just thought what a risk to take on playing this icon who has probably been represented dozens if not a hundred times in movies and TV shows, usually by bad impersonators. Can you take us thorough a little bit of your discovery of Marilyn? How you approached the character and who you sort of discovered Marilyn to be in the process?

(Michelle Williams) : Boy, let's see. Well, first, like you said, because the sort of previous representations of her were of more of that ilk it felt like maybe there was room. That was kind of the first thing that made me think, 'Okay this is- maybe I can explore this.' And Simon, and it was a decision made in the safety of my own home. And I didn't really consider sort of larger implications of it. And it was a very, very slow process.

It started with- it all started at home. It all started with watching movies, listening to interviews, pouring over books. And it started- it was just something that I put on in my living room. Sort of try and mimic a walk or figure out what it is, how exactly it is that she's holding her mouth. The first sort of big discovery that I stumbled on was that Marilyn Monroe herself, Marilyn Monroe was a character that she played.

And that the image that you're most familiar with there was a person underneath there. And that was the first big discovery that, that was sort of, that was carefully honed but it was artifice. And it was honed to where you couldn't tell that it was artifice. It felt so real. But it was something that she'd studied and perfected and crafted. So once I discovered that that was a layer and then finding out what that layer was and then getting underneath it. So it was a long and ungainly process.

(Q) : In a way it seems it's almost like a multiple role because you're playing someone who's playing a role who's playing a role. Did you think of it in those terms? Almost like you were playing here characters instead of one?

(Michelle Williams) : I don't know if we ever talked about it like that.

(Q) : Simon Curtis said you were talking about the private Marilyn, the public Marilyn, and then the Marilyn in the prints and the shows.

(Michelle Williams) : Yeah, in some way it's not, when you think of them separately, you want to think of them together because they need to adhere. So I know that there are sort of three different aspects. But I think that it's a little- I don't know how much it helps me to think of them as three sort of separate people because they are, of course, connected.

(Q) : And can you talk a little bit about your scenes with Kenneth Branagh in the film and how you guys developed the relationship of Monroe and Olivier? Was there any effort to mirror on the set of this movie the relationship that they had on the set of 'The Prince and the Showgirl'? Did you guys keep a distance from each other? What was that relationship like?

(Michelle Williams) : I think that the only distance that we might have kept was because we were both so absorbed in our process. We sat next to each other in the hair and makeup chair and it was like command central number one and command central number two. We both were kind of married to our computers. Headphones in our ears and constantly watching, listening, absorbing and then going out and doing. So the only kind of separation occurred is a part of trying to capture somebody who was. And that that requires a certain amount of technical attention.

(Q) : I wanted to compliment you on your singing and what you did to train. It's a hard thing to do singing, in general, and then to do it in someone else's voice.

(Michelle Williams) : Well, like I said, Marilyn Monroe was a creation. And that creation took a lot of personal work and she also had, you know, it was really- teachers. Trainers were sort of more common then. Professionals that would sort of help make these stars and help develop these talents. So I was, as she was, very lucky on this movie to be surrounded and supported by great people.

So I had a wonderful man, David Crane, who worked with me every day for a couple of weeks and taught me about- I'm not a singer. I have not sang since I was ten years old or something. So he taught me about breathing and about how to deliver emotion on lines instead of just words. So I had him and then in my ears I listened to- I still, it comes up on my iPod all the time, all the Marilyn Monroe. I listened to her. And she was very influenced by Ella Fitzgerald and so I listened to a lot of that.

(Q) : Eddie Redmanyne said one of the great things with the whole production was the sense that you shot in the studio that 'The Prince and the Showgirl' was shot in.
(Michelle Williams) : My dressing room. My dressing room was Marilyn's actual dressing room when she was making 'The Prince and the Showgirl'.

(Q) : There is a difference in celebrity culture today versus in the 1950's. The film seems to some extent to comment on that. And could you say what you feel the biggest difference is in celebrity culture today versus then.

(Michelle Williams) : The Internet. It's just that it's just the acceleration and proliferation of information. It's always existed and it just has more forms to take.

 

End.