Vanity Fair: How did you end up in this role?Samantha Morton: I got a phone call saying, "So, Christopher Nolan would like to meet you. " And I cried
Vanity Fair: How did you end up in this role?
Samantha Morton: I got a phone call saying, “So, Christopher Nolan would like to meet you. ” And I cried a little bit because it was, “Really? Me?” I didn’t know anything about the project. I was just blown away to meet him and [producer] Emma [Thomas] and to be in their space. And then I read the script and fell in love with the part, and then hoped that my interpretation would be enough that he would want me to do the part.
Circe is such an iconic character. What was the approach that you pitched to him?
First of all, I didn’t know that I was going to be reading The Odyssey. I hadn’t read the book at school. I didn’t study the classics. So for me, it was just a character in a script, and my interpretation of this character was what it was. Once I was given the role, I did a bit of a deep dive into Circe and found it quite extraordinary. I very, very quickly pulled away because I didn’t want to be burdened by that responsibility. It’s there, but forget about it because I’m there to make this movie.
If you’re approaching her as a character, how did you relate to her?
I don’t overanalyze. I don’t put my characters in psych therapy ever. But the one thing I did take away from it, and what I discovered as I was playing her, was that she felt so familiar. She felt so contemporary. She felt like my mom. She felt like my sister. She felt like my daughter. She felt like my friends. She felt like she could be anybody’s mother, sister, daughter, grandma, lover, great aunt. She just felt very, very of every woman and all women, and that she carried the pain of all women throughout history.
Can you tell me a little bit about the location where you shot your scenes? I assume they created Circe’s home from scratch.
I arrived on set, I was like, “Where did you find this place? This is incredible.” And they were like, “No, this is a set.” I was floored. I’ve been on a lot of movie sets, and that says a lot if I thought it was a real building. And I did have my glasses on, so I wasn’t being stupid. Scotland for me is a very special place, because my foster parents live in Scotland. I think that the environment I was in helped feed that as well, that I felt so at home. I felt that the ground beneath my feet was so familiar, and that my ancestors had been there.
That’s fascinating, because this character has such ownership over her space.
I was thinking about women in history that have been vilified—midwives or herbalists or mothers or wise women. And so to me, that connection to the earth and her respect for nature, it all tied in so beautifully with the fact that I knew my surroundings so well.
