Entering May December, Charles Melton was best known as a TV star on the soapy teen drama Riverdale as former football player Reggie Mantle. Next to his castmates Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, he was virtually an unknown talent in the film world. But with Todd Haynes’ latest melodrama, Melton has broken out as an awards-worthy film star in his own right, already winning the Gotham and securing the Indie Spirit nom for supporting performance, and earning his first Golden Globe nomination as of Monday morning.
Melton plays Joe, the husband of Julianne Moore’s Gracie, in Samy Burch’s script, which is adapted loosely from the real-life story of Mary Kay Letourneau. Gracie and Joe became romantically involved when the former was an adult and the latter was 13 years old, and had children together not long after. Years later, when Joe is now in his thirties and the married couple’s three children are either in college or about to graduate high school, an actress, played by Natalie Portman, comes to town to study Gracie in order to play her in an upcoming film about her splashy marriage.
It would be easy for Melton to get lost beside the master class performances coming from two of the greatest actresses of all time sparring at the top of their game, and yet he holds his own, bringing remarkable depth, range, and complexity to an obviously incredibly conflicted character. We caught up with the newly-appointed Golden Globe nominee to talk about his experience working with Haynes, Moore, and Portman (and his nickname for that trio), as well as his understanding of this character and whether he sees the film as comedy or drama.
Congratulations on your Golden Globe nomination.
CHARLES MELTON Thank you so much. It’s so surreal. I can’t stop smiling.
Where were you when you heard the news this morning?
MELTON I was in bed when I got a phone call. My manager, my whole team called me, and my sister was on the call. I just felt so much gratitude and immediately thought about the May December family and those 23 days that we spent in Savannah, Georgia, and how all the recognition that May December has been getting is just so incredible.
I want to hear about your first impression, upon reading the script, of this character’s psychology, and how that impression evolves over the course of preparing and then filming and then seeing the film. Does that impression change a lot?
MELTON [Screenwriter] Samy Burch’s script, there’s just so much in between the text, and it’s so vast, in exploring these complex characters, and the complexity of who Joe is and what he represents, and just how he’s had to navigate his life really being influenced by having a kid at such a young age, and public perception, with tabloid culture, and just really leading up to him being an empty nester. There’s so many things to look at and understand. That really was exciting for me: understanding repression and loneliness, and how certain emotions can live in the body, and how that would translate in storytelling. It really just came down to prepping a lot, leading up to those short 23 days, those best 23 days, and just really just putting it in Todd’s hands. I really couldn’t have done it without Todd. The brilliance of who he is as a filmmaker, his genius, just really allowed me to let go on set and just really exist with Joe.
The film was submitted as a comedy. It’s very funny, but it’s also about some serious stuff. Do you see it as a comedy or a drama? And did reading it and filming it feel like a comedy or drama?
MELTON I think filming it, it didn’t feel — with Samy’s script, and the direction of Todd, it didn’t feel funny, it’s a pretty complex kind of script. And I think the only thing we can do, as artists, when making a project, for me as an actor, is to tell the character’s story. We have really no control of how the audience is going to receive what they see. And the beautiful thing about Todd, one of the many beautiful things, is that he displays this table of food for the audience, and you get to pick and choose what you want to take from it. To see the audience respond in laughter, I find that it’s sometimes easier to laugh than to cry. And discomfort can be an interesting thing to watch.
I want to touch on some of the most difficult scenes to film — one of my favorites is when you’re confronting Julianne Moore’s character when she’s in bed. Did Julianne, or Natalie, offer you any interesting lessons on set?
MELTON I like to call Todd, Julie, and Natalie “The Trifecta of Excellence,” where everything around them is just elevated by proxy to who they are as artists, and, really, human beings. Todd has created such an environment, and has his vision and his point of view, and it really allowed all of us to just show up and let go and tell our characters’ stories. And Natalie and Julie, as masters of the craft as they are, as these legends, they are even better human beings. We had so much [fun] in between takes and filming. I felt so empowered, just being with Julie and Natalie, and being guided by Todd. Going back to your question about the scene when Joe first confronts Gracie, it’s the first time Joe is acknowledging just the question [of the morality of his and Gracie’s past and present]. And it’s such a powerful moment, because as the audience, we’re asking these questions, and we’re seeing Joe navigate that scene, that moment, for the first time in his story throughout the film.
This is a movie that leaves a lot of questions unanswered and ambiguous. Do you feel like you changed your mind about the characters in any way by the end? Were there discoveries you made about them along the way?
MELTON There were many discoveries throughout this process. And I heard Julie say something so profound about Todd’s filmmaking: “The movie ends on an inhale, and the exhale is up for the audience.” Credit to Julie, she said that, and I was just like, “That is so true.” So it’s really up to the audience to come to their own terms.
