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Charlize Theron and Jason Reitman weigh in on parenthood, and their new film ‘Tully’
Los Angeles — Director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody, the same team that brought us the comedies “Juno” (2007) and “Young Adult” (2011), are back together with a new comedy-drama, “Tully.”
The movie, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, stars award-winning actress Charlize Theron as Marlo, a mom of three. It follows her friendship with her babysitter, Tully (Mackenzie Davis).
It also reunites Reitman and Theron who did “Young Adult” together.
We last met Reitman, 40, for his TV show, “Casual,” while we last talked to Theron, 42, for her movie “Gringo.”
Both talk about why this movie is special to them, their reunion, and the challenges of parenthood, among others. Below are excerpts of our separate conversations with the talented Canadian-American director and the amazing South African-American actress:
Charlize Theron (Marlo)
On what surprised her or resonated with her after reading the script:
It came to me through Jason Reitman. I just ran into him and he said I have our next project. I love working with him so much that I literally said okay. He said it was the story of a mom having her third kid and that was it. Then I knew there would be something interesting there. But I would be honest, I wasn’t like oh, that sounds amazing. I was like okay. Then when I read it, Diablo did something with the material. She really presented it on the page as something that wasn’t familiar. That is what resonated with me. It felt really honest and really truthful.
I related not just through my own experiences but through my other friends who had kids and what they experienced. I thought it was funny and I thought it was a story that wasn’t just for parents. That’s what I liked about it too. It feels like a standalone movie, and not just for a specific audience. It feels like something that anybody can enjoy, because there’s a lot of comedy and a lot of that hardship and pain.
On motherhood and patience
I lose it all the time. I really mean it. My mornings are crazy because my oldest now takes the bus to school, very independent. But it means that I have to get two kids ready before ten to seven. So every morning at 5:45 that alarm goes off and I just want to hang myself. There’s nothing to it. It’s sweatpants, a sweatshirt and Birkenstocks. Sometimes, I don’t even get time to brush my teeth.
Then I am just getting them ready, trying to get breakfast and lunchboxes. Every morning is like we are going to miss the bus! Every morning, a block away from the bus, I say to them I think we missed the bus.
But I also love it. At 7:30am, I am done with all my drop-offs and I live for it. I love it. I love that I go to bed at 8:45 and I am exhausted. I wake up with my children and I get to hang out with them in the morning. It really is what my life is now. I love it.
On what she does
My children go to school and I have those hours. I really live my life. I get to go to the office and I get to work. I get to develop projects. I feel like that’s me. This morning, they had a little moment of where are you going, and they were sad. I am like, I am going to work. They were like no, don’t go. I was like nope, mom is going to work. That’s what I get to do.
I think for me, when I was growing up, that was something that left a mark on me, watching my mom wake up in the morning, going to work and being this trailblazer. That always stuck with me as a young girl.
So I want my kids to have that too and I am doing that. I try to find a balance. I realize that when I am working too much and then I try to pull back. I think like every single parent out there, or any parent out there, you are just always trying to find the balance.
On how her relationship with her mom changed when she became one herself
It’s strange, because I always hear people talk about that and I was like, that doesn’t make any sense, like I don’t get that. But it does change because the relationship between grandmother and grandchildren are just so different that it influences your relationship with your mom.
Prior to having kids, there is still an element of feeling that my mom sometimes, not necessarily treated me, but I still felt like an 18-year-old girl with her. I could tell that she was disappointed in choices and things. That doesn’t happen now anymore, because she looks at me as a parent. She sees me raising these two little munchkins and so far, she doesn’t think I am fucking it up. So, it’s definitely changed. Then we don’t talk enough about that relationship, grandparent and grandchildren. That relationship is so powerful and I am so happy my kids have that.
On how she sees herself and how she describes herself
I don’t know if I sit and think about that too much. I mean now that I hear the question I am like, I don’t know if I think it out necessarily per se, I think I just live it. I think I live my authentic self and I don’t really compartmentalize what exactly that is. Maybe I should.
When I was very young, it became very clear through some tragedies in my life that life is really short. Nobody, at the end of the day when I am on my death bed, however or whenever it happens, I am only going to have myself to hold accountable for the life that I lead. So I just go by that.
I always make decisions not on what I think other people think or it should be, I don’t think happiness for me comes from that. I think now that I am a parent, that always comes up in the foreground, like is this a good decision for us as a family?
But I have always been a person who wakes up in the morning, and not that I remember saying this or anything, but has an attitude that this could be over today. My beliefs are that this is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. So I want to make the most out of it.
All of that, and super sexy.
Jason Reitman (director-writer)
On his inspiration for the movie
It’s interesting, and this all goes back to Diablo’s script. I feel like 10 years ago, I met Diablo Cody and what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was meeting my storytelling life partner.
Every five years now, she writes a script that speaks to everything we’re mutually feeling. We’re around the same age. We grew up in different places, had different childhoods but we’re around the same age and for whatever reason, there’s this odd connective tissue that marries our life experiences.
So while at first blush this movie is certainly about motherhood, what it’s really about is that moment where you have to say goodbye to your younger self. That’s something that anyone can understand, man or woman, old, young, parent, non-parent. That’s where I drew my inspiration from.
On Charlize as an actress
[There is] fearlessness in everything she does, a desire to be authentic and real in every scene that she approaches and that would be the only way to make this kind of movie.
What’s so lovely about Diablo’s writing is it’s incredibly nuanced. There are no heroes. There are no villains. There are people with all their faults. With each script, they become even more complicated and more nuanced. What that requires from actors is actors who are willing to never judge their characters. And that’s tricky.
It’s tricky to do in a movie where you’re a mom who’s not always being portrayed as the kind of moms we see on screen. It’s tricky when you’re a woman playing a wife in a quiet marriage and it’s tricky when you’re playing a woman who is having this what at seems at first, adversarial relationship with this young beautiful night nanny who just shows up in your house.
What I admire so much about Charlize is that her constant search is a search for truth, never judging, never winking to the audience, never letting us know that she’s in on the joke somehow but rather just digging in as deep as she can and disappearing.
On creating the parenting moments onscreen and being a parent himself
Certainly from the beginning, Charlize and I had a lot of conversations about what kind of little moments we can portray on screen that we hadn’t seen before. We posed that question to our crew and our cast and asked them to come to us with any ideas that they had.
The baby on the dryer where she’s trying to get the baby to fall asleep, I’d never heard that one before. Certainly the phone falling on the face, on the baby, three different mothers brought that up. That was new to me. We wanted to make a movie that went past the simply, oh you don’t sleep at night. It’s so much more than that and we were just trying to find those details.
It was funny because my daughter’s 11 years old now and I didn’t realize I was kind of 10 years past this moment. Even the diaper genie I had in my brain is not the diaper genie that’s available on the market. The diaper genie has made huge evolutions in the market since.
On exploring motherhood in his movies
Parenthood is a great location for a film. I don’t think it’s actually the story. The theme that you see throughout “Juno,” “Young Adult” and this movie is this idea of growing up. “Juno” is about growing up too fast. “Young Adult” is about growing up too late. And “Tully” is about the moment when you become a parent.
You have to acknowledge that you’ve become a different person and leave room for your child to begin his or her journey. So I don’t think I’m as attracted to stories about parenthood as much as I am attracted to that theme, that feeling of being displaced on your own timeline, of not knowing where you are supposed to be in the arc of your life. That’s something that interests me and I think that’s throughout all the films. — LA, GMA News
