Dream Wired
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop
No Result
View All Result
Dream Wired
No Result
View All Result
Home Movie

Da’Vine Joy Randolph on Her ‘The Holdovers’ Role – The Hollywood Reporter

rmtsa by rmtsa
December 29, 2023
in Movie
0
Da’Vine Joy Randolph on Her ‘The Holdovers’ Role – The Hollywood Reporter
74
SHARES
1.2k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


You might also like

Mattel Drops ‘Clueless’ Anniversary Barbie

Why Bold & Beautiful Fans Think Luna Might Not Be Dead

Amazon’s Jake Gyllenhaal Sequel Movie Loses Guy Ritchie

Da’Vine Joy Randolph has played a plethora of unforgettable parts across her 10-year, steadily rising career on the stage and screen. She first burst to attention in 2012 with a Tony-nominated debut in Ghost: The Musical on Broadway; she later won plaudits with deviously funny supporting roles in High Fidelity, The Lost City and Only Murders in the Building; and her turn in The Idol was widely considered the most unambiguously excellent element of the otherwise divisive HBO drama. But for her performance in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, she says she was forced to change gears and radically slow down.

“This character is so different from me,” Randolph explains. “I’m the kind of person who’s everywhere all at once — I think and speak fast. But this woman has a very methodical rhythm to her, and she’s going through a moment of grief and personal devastation.”

Set in 1970, The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly history teacher (played by Paul Giamatti) at a preppy New England boarding school, forced to chaperone a troubled student (Dominic Sessa) who has nowhere to go during Christmas break. Stuck with the teacher and the kid is Randolph’s Mary Lamb, who runs the school cafeteria and is grieving the loss of her son, recently killed in Vietnam.

“I knew I had to find and use a number of skills in order to disrupt my normal patterns and fall into the place where she lives in her body,” Randolph says of her approach to inhabiting the character.

Randolph with Dominic Sessa and Paul Giamatti in Focus Features’ The Holdovers.

Randolph with Dominic Sessa (left) and Paul Giamatti in Focus Features’ ‘The Holdovers.’

Seacia Pavao/FOCUS FEATURES

Her first task was to put time and research into mastering her character’s period-specific Black Boston accent. “People from Boston do not mess around,” she says. “I wasn’t just going to wing that dialect.” She also asked Payne if she could actually cook on set, rather than simulate her character’s work in the kitchen throughout the film (“I love to cook, and it just helped to anchor me into her world”). The director also believed that if the year were 1970, her character undoubtedly would have been an avid smoker. So Randolph, who had never smoked in her life, set about mastering the expressive power of casually wielding and savoring a cigarette — a task as involved as learning to convincingly sword fight on camera, she says.

“I watched a lot of Bette Davis movies to get the casual rhythms and cadence of smoking — to know when to pull when the other person is talking and how to do it with naturalism while I’m talking,” she says. “There are a lot of interesting details in how the style of smoking relates to what the smoker is going through emotionally in that moment — it was a whole learned practice.” 

Most of Randolph’s scenes are opposite Giamatti, and early on they realized they “really lucked out” because they had received the same formal training (MFAs from the Yale School of Drama). “It was like we had this shorthand, where lots of things didn’t even need to be said, so we could deepen everything even more, which was very exciting,” she says.

The intimate, somewhat unspoken bond that forms between the characters — against the odds and despite their radically different circumstances in life — is central to the film’s culminating themes.

“These are three people who have all been othered in one way or another, and no one has ever really stopped to listen to them,” Randolph says. “Due to this circumstance of being stuck together at the neutral ground of the school, they’re each able to let their defenses down — and these three broken people are able to help one another. I just loved this idea that you don’t have to be perfect or have everything together to make a positive impact on someone. You just have to have empathy — and you build community where you can find it.” 

This story first appeared in a December standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.



Source link

Tags: DaVineHoldoversHollywoodJoyRandolphReporterRole
Share30Tweet19
rmtsa

rmtsa

Recommended For You

Mattel Drops ‘Clueless’ Anniversary Barbie

by rmtsa
July 11, 2025
0
Mattel Drops ‘Clueless’ Anniversary Barbie

Mattel is celebrating the 30th anniversary of cult teen comedy Clueless this year with a special product collaboration including Barbie dolls, Polly Pocket toys, and more merchandise.Now available...

Read more

Why Bold & Beautiful Fans Think Luna Might Not Be Dead

by rmtsa
July 11, 2025
0
Why Bold & Beautiful Fans Think Luna Might Not Be Dead

Wondering whether Luna’s shocking fate on The Bold and the Beautiful really means she’s dead or just marks the beginning of another twist? Her apparent death, a dramatic...

Read more

Amazon’s Jake Gyllenhaal Sequel Movie Loses Guy Ritchie

by rmtsa
July 10, 2025
0
Amazon’s Jake Gyllenhaal Sequel Movie Loses Guy Ritchie

Guy Ritchie has exited as the director for Amazon MGM Studios‘ sequel movie, Road House 2. Jake Gyllenhaal is set to return after starring in Amazon’s 2024 remake...

Read more

Hi r/movies. Laura Murphy here. Director of the new comedy-thriller F*** MARRY KILL- which is now streaming everywhere and stars Lucy Hale & Virginia Gardner. I’ve also directed GirlCode, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, Cursed Friends. Ask me anything!

by rmtsa
July 10, 2025
0
Hi r/movies. Laura Murphy here. Director of the new comedy-thriller F*** MARRY KILL- which is now streaming everywhere and stars Lucy Hale & Virginia Gardner. I’ve also directed GirlCode, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, Cursed Friends. Ask me anything!

Hi reddit, I'm Laura Murphy, director of F*** Marry Kill, now streaming everywhere (and recently released on Hulu). Here to answer your questions. Here's the trailer: Synopsis: Thrust...

Read more

THE MORNING SHOW Season 4 Teaser Is All Reflections, Power Plays, and Deepfakes — GeekTyrant

by rmtsa
July 10, 2025
0
THE MORNING SHOW Season 4 Teaser Is All Reflections, Power Plays, and Deepfakes — GeekTyrant

Apple TV+ just dropped the teaser for The Morning Show Season 4, and it features the return of Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, and offers shadowy reflections, and...

Read more
Next Post
Ana Quincoces Denies Convo About Todd’s Finances With Adriana

Ana Quincoces Denies Convo About Todd's Finances With Adriana

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Browse by Category

  • Celebrity
  • Comics
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • Music
  • TV
  • Uncategorized

CATEGORIES

  • Celebrity
  • Comics
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • Music
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
No Result
View All Result

Recent News

  • Mattel Drops ‘Clueless’ Anniversary Barbie
  • ‘Superman’ Heading to $21M+ Previews, Record for James Gunn, More
  • Clipse, Larry June, Boldy James and More

Copyright © 2023 DramaWired.
DramaWired is a content aggregator and not responsible for the content of external sites.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop

Copyright © 2023 DramaWired.
DramaWired is a content aggregator and not responsible for the content of external sites.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In