Carey Mul­li­gan: ​‘Women have been hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions for millennia’

“I’ve nev­er been in a film peo­ple might actu­al­ly see before,” Carey Mul­li­gan says with a know­ing grin. It’s not quite true, giv­en that she burst onto the scene a decade ago when her role as a lovestruck teenage girl in An Edu­ca­tion gar­nered a Best Actress Oscar nom­i­na­tion, but it’s a joke not with­out merit.

In the years since, Mul­li­gan has opt­ed for a rare selec­tiv­i­ty with her roles, choos­ing to work most­ly on small­er, arty titles. She’s racked up an impres­sive CV, with high­lights such as the glow­er­ing songstress Jean in the Coen Broth­ers’ Inside Llewyn Davis and messy moth­er Jeanette in Paul Dano’s Wildlife. Her role as Cassie Thomas in Promis­ing Young Woman fits along­side her reper­toire of com­plex female char­ac­ters while offer­ing audi­ences a chance to see her in a whole new light.

LWLies: A lot of the roles you’ve played are women that are deal­ing in some way with the bull­shit of the patri­archy. Would you say that’s a fair assessment?

Mul­li­gan: Yeah, I guess so – I mean, it’s not like I pick up a script and think, ​‘Ah, I real­ly hope I can attack the man with this one,’ but I guess those prob­a­bly are the parts that are inter­est­ing. There seems to have been an improve­ment, but in the 15 years I’ve been doing this, there have been a lot of point­less female char­ac­ters. And I haven’t worked a huge amount. I’ve not been mak­ing four films a year, so I’ve wait­ed for the parts that have had some­thing to say. I guess, in ret­ro­spect, a lot of them are kick­ing back a lit­tle bit.

There’s a sense that you’re quite selec­tive about the parts. What are you look­ing for when you’re read­ing a script?

I’m try­ing to not do the same thing twice. I’m try­ing to do some­thing that feels new and chal­leng­ing. I’ve talked about this before, but back when I went to Sun­dance with An Edu­ca­tion, I thought that I was going to get fired from the act­ing world, and then that film went down well and it com­plete­ly changed my career. I had a lunch with my agent, who’s been my agent since I was 18, and she said: ​‘You’re in a moment now to be quite choosy, which is a rare thing, and you’re lucky to be in it, so try not to say yes to any­thing unless you can’t bear the idea of any­one else doing it.’

So that’s been my lit­mus test for every­thing since then. If I can imag­ine some­one else doing it, and going to the cin­e­ma and see­ing anoth­er actress play­ing the role and that sit­ting well with me, then I say no. So when I read Promis­ing Young Woman I was like [gasps] ​‘First of all, I can’t believe you want me to do this,’ and sec­ond­ly, ​‘It would kill me to see any­one else play­ing this part.’

It feels as though this was a chance for you to do some­thing new in terms of of the role’s com­ic ele­ments – that doesn’t seem to be some­thing you’ve done before.

No. I nev­er get offered come­dies! I sup­pose I’ve leant towards dra­ma, and peo­ple don’t want to offer you some­thing if they haven’t seen you do it before. I remem­ber the first four days of film­ing was just the scenes in the café with Bo, and he said, ​‘I’m mak­ing a rom-com, I don’t know what the rest of you are doing.’ He’d come in and be all cheer­ful and crack­ing jokes, after the rest of us had spent the day before try­ing to break down Alfred Moli­na. But work­ing with Bo, and Jen­nifer [Coolidge] and Lav­erne [Cox], who are all such bril­liant come­di­ans, and I remem­ber turn­ing to Emer­ald and say­ing, ​‘I can’t remem­ber laugh­ing like this.’ Obvi­ous­ly there are films where I’ve had a great time on set, but this was try­ing to get through a sin­gle take with­out los­ing it.

What did you and Emer­ald dis­cuss the first time you met?

We were intro­duced at a mutu­al friend’s house, and then she sent the script to my agent, and after I’d read it, we met again. From the begin­ning, she said she wasn’t inter­est­ed in mak­ing some sort of sad art­house indie with a woman in a grey sweater star­ing out of the win­dow cry­ing. If we only make pieces of the­atre that are chal­leng­ing and depress­ing, it would be easy for us to think we’d done the work and dealt with it. Like, this is a chal­leng­ing film, but it’s also so delight­ful and fun. We want­ed to use hair, make-up and cos­tumes as an armour: the con­struct that it often is, or can be. It cer­tain­ly is for me. She gave me a Spo­ti­fy playlist, which had Brit­ney Spears’ ​‘Tox­ic’ on it twice, in two dif­fer­ent forms, which gave me an indi­ca­tion of where we were going. I saw her visu­al ref­er­ences, and we chat­ted, and with­in about five min­utes I said: ​‘I want to do this by the way, just so you know. I real­ly want to do this.’

At Sun­dance you men­tioned that when you first read the script you had no idea how to approach the role. How did you find a way in?

Most of it was chat­ting with Emer­ald, but I think the eas­i­est thing to start with for me was that, at the heart of the sto­ry, there are these two best friends. I thought about my best friend from grow­ing up, and how we were insep­a­ra­ble and did every­thing togeth­er – prac­ti­cal­ly sis­ters. So I start­ed from that point and under­stood that real love. I was doing an inter­view with Frances McDor­mand yes­ter­day for anoth­er mag­a­zine, and she was talk­ing about Three Bill­boards [Out­side Ebbing, Mis­souri] and she said, ​‘I always felt it wasn’t a revenge movie, it was a jus­tice movie.’ I think this is sim­i­lar. It’s about a wrong that’s been done and has to be right­ed. And Cassie has found a skewed, dan­ger­ous method of cop­ing with it for years, but then sud­den­ly is con­front­ed by the inci­dent again and has to find a way to put things right. All the actors that joined us helped to inform the tone in such an inter­est­ing way, because the film is real­ly a series of two-han­ders. So it was Bo [Burn­ham] and I for a lot of it, but then, like, a day with Con­nie Brit­ton, a day with Alfred Moli­na, two days with Ali­son Brie. So I nev­er went in know­ing exact­ly what I was going to do – every­thing just evolved as we went along.

Even though Promis­ing Young Woman is a black com­e­dy, there’s a lot of deeply sad moments with­in it which real­ly struck me.

Yes, def­i­nite­ly. And that’s the truth of the mat­ter. At the end of the day, when a woman takes on a man, often­times it doesn’t go well. And we can play with tone and form and roman­tic tropes, but the film always comes back to the hard facts.

You’ve said in the past you’re attract­ed to roles which allow women to be a bit messier or unlik­able. Do you think audi­ences are becom­ing more com­fort­able see­ing women who they might not nec­es­sar­i­ly like?

I don’t know. I think there’s a lot that needs to be undone in a way – there’s been so much ingrained in us for such a long time about the way we view women on screen, about the way they look, how they act, and as a soci­ety we’ve become very used to a cer­tain rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women. It’s the real grey areas that I find inter­est­ing. Play­ing a vil­lain is super fun, but not maybe the most inter­est­ing way of explor­ing things – I’m much more inter­est­ed in the women who are just sort of step­ping out of the bound­aries of what is deemed to be acceptable.

I think audi­ences and crit­ics have a much hard­er time with that than they do with some­one who’s like a mur­der­er, or an out-and-out ter­ri­ble per­son. A woman who’s hav­ing a tricky time, or maybe just not putting her best foot for­ward for a minute, try­ing her hard­est but mak­ing mis­takes, that seems to be more prob­lem­at­ic. But I hope it’s mov­ing in the right direc­tion. Cassie is def­i­nite­ly mak­ing a bunch of mis­takes in this film.

Oh, def­i­nite­ly. There’s nev­er a sense she’s doing the right thing.

No! It’s not a good plan, don’t try this at home.

The film real­ly tack­les the idea of the ​“nice guy” who claims to be dif­fer­ent in some way but still hurts women. Do you think the ​“nice guy” is a myth?

Like Bo said at Sun­dance, if we just lock up the rapists and ter­ri­ble men, we haven’t tack­led the wider issue. Of course these men deserve to go through the crim­i­nal sys­tem and be dealt with appro­pri­ate­ly, but it’s so much wider than that. I read about the Wein­stein tri­al and I can bare­ly get through an arti­cle, because it’s just so hor­ren­dous. I think it’s aston­ish­ing that these sur­vivors are speak­ing out in the same room as him. It’s mind-blow­ing­ly coura­geous. But there is so much more to it than just these ter­ri­ble peo­ple. Part of what Emer­ald and I dis­cussed in our first meet­ing was that this film is much more about the part we’ve all had to play in this. Ali­son Brie’s char­ac­ter has made jokes about it, and gos­siped about it. I think we’ve all dimin­ished someone’s expe­ri­ence like that at some point. I like that this isn’t a con­dem­na­tion of men, it’s an invi­ta­tion to look at all of our behaviour.

And, of course, plen­ty of the things we see in the film we’ve seen before, in rom-coms and bro come­dies, from the male perspective.

Exact­ly. And these women are always the butt of the joke. I think that’s why we can under­cut some of the con­tro­ver­sy about the sub­ject mat­ter here. There’s been a wast­ed woman that’s been tak­en advan­tage of in so many films, and no one’s bat­ted an eye.

At points it almost feels like the women Cassie con­fronts face a harsh­er pun­ish­ment than the men.

Well, Emer­ald talks some­times about Cassie being a sort of aveng­ing angel – she will grant for­give­ness, or vengeance, depend­ing on the way the per­son she’s con­fronting reacts. She’s look­ing for some acknowl­edge­ment that what hap­pened was wrong. There are female char­ac­ters with­in the film who are sup­port­ive of her, but Cassie’s built up such a wall – she won’t let them in. She’s become very good at putting on a dif­fer­ent face.

Do you ever get frus­trat­ed by the fact we’re still hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions about trust­ing women’s expe­ri­ence and allow­ing them to tell their own stories?

Yeah. I’ve only become more aware of it, par­tic­u­lar­ly since hav­ing kids. I have a daugh­ter, and, y’know, obvi­ous­ly she won’t see it until she’s 30, but I do feel like this is a film I want both her and my son to see. Women have been hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions for mil­len­nia, but we haven’t seen this on-screen until recent­ly. Films, par­tic­u­lar­ly in our teens and late teens, are so for­ma­tive and teach us so much about the world. We haven’t had these films to learn from, so we’ve just seen the world through a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent lens.

How do you think we can do bet­ter as a soci­ety when it comes to tack­ling the issues in this film?

Being in the role that I’m in as an actor, I’ve always been inter­est­ed in telling female sto­ries, and I’ve always sought out female direc­tors, and I do feel like the choic­es you make in your work are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of how you feel. Choos­ing this project, it feels very, very per­son­al now. And I’m thrilled it divides peo­ple and it caus­es con­ver­sa­tion. I’d much rather that than nev­er think­ing about it again. But I don’t know if I have a state­ment about it. It cer­tain­ly affect­ed me, read­ing sto­ries of women who sur­vived sex­u­al assault, and it’s stayed with me, and I hope to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing female voic­es. But beyond that, I want it to be a con­ver­sa­tion starter. Or a fight starter, maybe.

Promis­ing Young Woman is released dig­i­tal­ly in the UK on 16 April.