That suddenly changes that physical dynamic, and it changes the status in the room completely. The note that Emerald gave me was, “Don’t speed up the dialogue, but make those movements fast. Where’s this going to go? Is he going to hit her, or is he going to jump on her?Īnd then, of course, he ends up on his knees with his head in her lap, asking for her forgiveness. I knew she wanted me to stand up at some point, and she wanted to take advantage of the difference in size between Carey and I. So, when she’s sitting on the sofa, and I’m standing over her, it’s quite a threatening relationship. That was all Emerald. Two people talking in a room, you’re going to be sitting down at some point opposite each other, sitting looking at each other. How did you break down the scene physically? But just the act of doing it, I suddenly thought, this is rare!Īnd it’s a joy to pop into movies where you’re not carrying the responsibility of the film, but you’re part of something that you know in your bones is going to be - I just knew it was something special.Ĭassie goes to his house thinking, I imagine, that she’s going to have to convince Jordan that he was wrong - and then she finds a complete wreckage of a person. Not that his apology, or his acknowledgement of his complicity, makes things any easier for her. I can’t think of a scene where a man - a male character - has begged for a woman’s forgiveness for a whole way of life. When I read the script, I was shocked and intrigued, and it made me laugh - it scared me! But the scene itself struck me very hard. When I read the lines when Jordan says, “Have you come here to hurt me?” And she says, “Do you want me to hurt you?” And he says, “Yeah, I think I do.” When I read that I just went, what the fuck! Well, my admiration for both of them is enormous. She knows that I’m a bit of a goofball on set, and I’m making jokes and trying to make the cameramen laugh. We didn’t have to do any sort of protocol or prep. I’ve got a better understanding of how she likes to work: I know that Carey likes to gather herself before a take, and she likes to kind of get into a quiet zone. I suppose indirectly - I think Emerald and Carey had the sense that because we knew each other as chums and colleagues, it would make the scene easier or would add something to it. You played Carey Mulligan’s character’s father in “An Education.” Is that how you came to play Jordan? In his only interview about “Promising Young Woman,” Molina discussed working with Fennell and Mulligan, how “Promising Young Woman” and “An Education” complement one another and why his first reading Fennell’s screenplay made him say, “What the fuck?!?” In the movie’s final chapter, after Cassie has been murdered by Al, he receives evidence Cassie has sent him of Nina’s rape - and a letter for him to get to the police in case she’s disappeared. “The doctors called it a psychotic episode,” Jordan tells her in his tastefully decorated, but now filthy, living room. He ends up begging Cassie for forgiveness - and perhaps to her surprise, she gives it to him. (Spoiler alert! Don’t read further if you haven’t seen “Promising Young Woman.”)īut if Cassie has geared herself up for a fight with the attorney in their key scene together, what she finds when she arrives at his house shocks her: Jordan has been broken by the unscrupulous nature of his job, and is barely able to live with his guilt. In aggregate, “Promising Young Woman” makes an argument about the mechanisms that support rape culture - and Jordan embodies the shark-ish defense lawyer who intimidates victims. The film’s casting is precise, and if the actors playing the movie’s rapacious bros (Bo Burnham, Adam Brody, Max Greenfield and Chris Lowell) turn the mensch-y images of pasts roles on their heads, Molina’s lawyer character has different layers: He played Mulligan’s father in her 2009 breakout, “An Education,” another film that had predation and power dynamics on its mind. Cassie’s odyssey reunites her with the people she sees as complicit in Nina’s destruction - the school administrator (Connie Britton) who favored Nina’s rapist, Al Monroe their former friend (Alison Brie), who didn’t believe Nina had been raped and Al’s lawyer, Jordan ( Alfred Molina), who, as part of his job, “threatened and bullied” Nina until she dropped the case.
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