Jessica Chastain on How ‘Scenes From a Marriage’ Tested Her Friendship With Oscar Isaac
Fall Preview
“Every day I was ripping myself open,” says Jessica Chastain, explaining why this remake of Ingmar Bergman’s groundbreaking 1973 Swedish miniseries, Scenes From a Marriage, about a troubled marriage was, emotionally, the most difficult experience of her career.
The intimate five-episode adaptation from writer-director Hagai Levi (The Affair, In Treatment) — filmed in riveting 20-minute takes — changes the story by making unsatisfied wife/mother/tech executive Mira the one who wants to leave. He also scripted her academic husband, Jonathan (Oscar Isaac), as an ex–Orthodox Jew, like himself, and more sensitive than the chauvinistic spouse Erland Josephson played opposite Liv Ullmann in the original. Here, Chastain sets the stage.
(Credit: HBO)
You and Oscar also played a couple in the 2014 film A Most Violent Year. How did you prep for this series?
Jessica Chastain: We’ve been friends a long time. I was trying to see him in a different way. I got a book, like All About Us, with questions like, “What’s your favorite memory of the wedding?” I filled it in as Mira, Oscar as Jonathan. I even changed Oscar’s name in my phone to Jonathan.
Why is Mira unhappy?
She’s been trying to live by the gender roles she thinks society dictated: The wife and mother can’t be dirty with her husband. When we meet her, she’s a muted version of herself.
(Credit: TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection)
That seems reflected in her wardrobe.
I wanted her to be lost in the background of the house, almost like she was invisible, because her husband wasn’t really seeing her and she wasn’t acknowledging her own needs and desires. I said, “Can you give me a costume that helps me disappear?”
Shooting the end of Episode 4, which we won’t spoil, must have been a harrowing experience.
The first time we read it in rehearsal, I looked at Oscar and said, “Are we going to be friends after this?” I’ve never done anything like that — the humiliation. We were emotionally and physically hurting each other. Even talking about it, I get angry. It felt real.
Does life get better for Mira?
At the end, it’s a love story without ownership, possession, gender roles, or a mask. I wanted to show that happiness can come from being an independent woman. And Oscar is still my friend!
Scenes From a Marriage, Series Premiere, Sunday, September 12, 9/8c, HBO
This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s 2021 Fall Preview issue. For more inside scoop on the new fall TV season, pick up the issue, on newsstands Thursday, August 26.
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Tried to watch it. so boring
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Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jewish and/or identify as Jewish: Ezra Miller, Zac Efron, David Corenswet, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Tiffany Haddish, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Andrew Garfield, Winona Ryder, Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.
Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised. Robert Downey, Jr., Sean Penn, and Ed Skrein were also born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. Armie Hammer, Chris Pine, Emily Ratajkowski, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, and Finn Wolfhard are part Jewish.
Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism: Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
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