It’s been 28 years since Marianne Jean-Baptiste burst onto the international film scene in Mike Leigh‘s Secrets and Lies.
The British actress was barely out of drama school when she got cast in the 1996 comedic drama playing Hortense, a Black middle-class professional who was adopted as a baby and, after the death of her parents, decides to track down her birth mother. Hortense discovers Cynthia, [Brenda Blethyn] a working-class white woman and barely functional alcoholic with a very dysfunctional family. The contrast between Blethyn’s Cynthia, all twitching nerves, emotionally raw and vulnerable, and the calm, restrained, often bemused performance of Jean-Baptiste as Hortense forms the emotional core of the film.
Secrets and Lies premiered in Cannes, where it won the Palme d’Or en route to an awards season that would end with five Oscar nominations, including a best actress nom for Jean-Baptiste. Her career was officially launched. Over the next nearly three decades she would shine largely on the small screen, most prominently in her role as Vivian Johnson on the long-running CBS procedural Without a Trace (2002-2009), as FBI agent Bethany Mayfair in Blindspot (2015–2016) and as Gloria Morisseau, the mother to Stephan James’ military vet Walter Cruz in Amazon Prime’s Homecoming (2018).
It would take nearly three decades before Jean-Baptiste would re-unite with Leigh for Hard Truths. She plays Pansy, a depressed and angry woman who lashes out at the world around her, often in public, in turns both tragic and hilarious.
The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last month, where it generated major awards buzz, particularly for Jean-Baptiste. The actress spoke with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Hard Truth‘s U.K. bow at the London Film Festival on Monday.
If this isn’t too fanboy, I have to say I’ve really missed seeing you on the big screen, after so many years, and seeing you again in a Mike Leigh film. Why has it taken so long for you two to work together again?
Well, I moved to L.A. [after Secrets and Lies] and that separated us, and I guess it was just time. We were trying to figure out how to do it and this time, when he asked, I said yes. I can’t really say why this time it worked out but it did.
Mike Leigh famously builds up his characters and stories through long rehearsals and improvisations which he uses to write the shooting script. What was it like coming back to that method after so long away working in the machine of U.S. television production?
It was amazing to be able to work in that way again. Terrifying and exciting. I mean, I’ve done it for so long the other way so I yearned to get my teeth into something collaborative on a level that’s just not possible within the conventional way of making films. It was beautiful to be able to take the time to rehearse, to discover these characters. And yeah, just being older, made it different. The first time I worked with [Leigh], it was quite soon after leaving drama school, so I was already in that mindset of exploring and jumping into new things. [Hard Truths] was trying to get back to that, to get back to trusting somebody wholeheartedly in a process, and knowing that you’re going to be looked after.
What was Mike Leigh’s pitch to you for this project?
Mike Leigh’s pitch is always Mike Leigh, but for actors who know his work and are familiar with it, who have read up on his methods, you’re buying that experience. You’re buying into the three months or six months of rehearsals creating a character from their first memory to the age they are within the piece. You’re buying that process. You might go through that whole process and end up being in just a scene or two or your character may become the center of the story.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Mike Leigh at the world premiere of Hard Truths in Toronto.
Harold Feng/Getty Images
At what point did you know that your character, Pansy, would be the center of the story and that you’d be in almost every scene of the film?
Well, I live in Los Angeles, so [Mike] had said to me: ‘I’m not going to bring you over to London for how many months unless your character is going to be something quite solid.’ But I only really knew what the story would be and how big my role was when I saw the film in full for the first time. Because with Mike’s method, you don’t know anything about any of the scenes that you’re not in. Just before you start the filming process, in the final rehearsal process, which is on location, you get a kind of redacted document of your scenes: Pansy in the kitchen, Pansy goes to the grocery store, Pansy cleaning the sofa. But that’s all you get. You don’t know what any of the other characters are doing.
And what was that experience like for you, seeing the film for the first time?
It was a bit traumatic, actually, in all honesty. It was very, sort of triggering. It just sort of took me back to her painful journey in a way. I was watching it thinking: “Oh my God, somebody’s gonna hit her, they’re gonna hit her.” I knew that they don’t because I experienced it, I was there in those scenes. But I still had this irrational fear for her.
What was the key for you to understanding or unlocking the character of Pansy?
The thing about the Mike Leigh process is you create the character from their first memory to the age they’re going to play. And within that, all these experiences are embedded. There are all these disappointments, there’s all these sort of heartbreaks, there are all these feelings that she has, things that have taken place, fears that she has, which all culminate in who she ends up being. Then she is put in with Michele Austin as Chantelle, her sister, David Weber [who plays Pansy’s husband Curtley], and even her son [played by Tuwaine Barrett]. All of those ingredients add up to somebody who is not happy. From the film, you can see that the thing that really starts to crack at her is when she goes to see her mother’s grave, and that feeling of not being loved as much, of not being the favorite. There were quite a few things that built up to that moment.
Were any of the scenes enjoyable to play? The scenes of her raging at people on the street and at the grocery store are also quite funny. Pansy has a very sharp tongue and she knows how to wound people with her insults.
It’s a combination, isn’t it? Because I’ve got a great sense of humor. And Pansy is funny, but she’s not trying to make anyone laugh. Do you know what I mean? It’s not coming from joy. So, I did enjoy those scenes to a certain extent. It was more the shock of: ‘Oh my gosh, what is coming out of this brain [of mine]?’ Some of it was quite hilarious. In the car park scene, for example, that exchange was golden. But you’re so deep into character when you’re doing these things, you don’t necessarily get to enjoy them in the moment. It’s only when you come out of character, that you go: Wow.
I imagine being able to tap into your inner Pansy could be very useful, like when someone cuts you off in traffic…
I have to say, I’ve tried very hard in life not to be a Pansy. Do you know what I mean? So no, I think it would take a lot to take me there. I usually find those sorts of interactions a bit humorous. I’m always like: “Okay, you’re in such a hurry, go ahead,” you know?
What’s been the response of people to the character since you’ve been screening the film for audiences?
What’s been surprising is the amount of people who either have aunts, cousins, sisters, grandmothers, mothers or mothers-in-law where they say: “I’m related to that person. I know a Pansy.” The compassion for her has been quite overwhelming. Which I think is great.
This isn’t just a portrait of Pansy but of an entire community, one that’s rarely shown on screen, at least in this depth and complexity. How did Mike Leigh approach this community, given that it isn’t his background he’s depicting?
You’re talking about the Caribbean community?
Yes, the British Black Caribbean community.
Basically, it was a lot of research and a lot of listening to the actors. I think because of [Mike Leigh’s method] of working is probably one of the only ways that you could get that depth. It was Black Caribbean actors who sort of wrote from their own experience. You’ve got all these actors who know the culture and sat down and would be like: “No, this would happen on a Sunday. We’d go here. They’d do that. This is what this place would look like.” Mike was very collaborative in telling the story and in listening. He’s into characters as real people. So his attention to detail, wanting to get things right, was very important in how he told this story.
I’m wondering how common it is for you to be offered this type of role — that sort of central role in a major film that’s a complex character of your age, exploring complex issues?
If it was common, I would be doing it all the time. To answer your question, yeah, I would love to do films like this forever.
There’s a lot of talk about awards around this film, and particularly for you. How do you view that whole process?
It would be lovely, wouldn’t it? That would be lovely. You know the important thing is to try and get the film seen. Because films like this, these small little films, unless you’ve got a machine behind you, with billboards everywhere and loads of money for promotion, it’s easy for films like this to kind of like slip through and disappear. So if the awards talk brings attention to the movie, that’s great. To win something would be a bonus. It’s nice to be awarded for things.
What you said about these sorts of films struggling in the marketplace. What’s changed since Secrets and Lies?
Back then there was more of an environment with independent film companies. You had the Shooting Gallery. You had New Line, Fine Line. You had so many actual independent film companies that were about doing movies. Now, I’m not so sure that there are as many, and they’re competing with giants with lots of money and the films get swallowed up in the streaming world and so on. I think it’s changed quite a bit.
Your character in Secrets and Lies has this very positive, optimistic view of life, very different from Pansy. In this film, the positive view comes from Pansy’s sister. How do you view those two characters, their interactions, and their very different approaches to life?
I think what’s interesting is that in all families and in all relationships and situations, you can have two people that experience the same thing, but have two totally different points of view about it. It all comes from the script that they tell themselves, the narrative that they formed for themselves about whatever it was that happened. I think that that is central to the relationship between Chantelle and Pansy. Pansy is just sort of wedded to this script that she wasn’t loved, that she didn’t get the same things as Chantelle did. And Chantelle is a bit like: “Well, you’ve always been a bit strange, you know?” And there’s a little bit of truth to that, do you know what I mean?
For Chantelle, just living life, knowing that she was absolutely loved, lets her have patience with people who are flawed. That kind of molded her. But her sister was molded in the opposite way. She couldn’t have fun. She didn’t take the leaving of her father as well as her sister did. It’s an interesting thing to witness and the film touches on that but it doesn’t go into much detail, which I think is great. You just get little bits of detail that come up to the surface.
What I find very compelling is the idea that we’re looking into these people’s lives, and we’re only getting hints and glimpses and not and then leaving without actually understanding the full story.
Yeah, I think that it’s important, because you know at that woman that you bump into at the grocery store that’s raging, you don’t look at her and go: “Oh, she might be suffering with depression,” you know what I mean? You just receive what’s been given to you. I think the important thing about this film is it gives you a bit of pause. So the next Pansy I bump into, maybe I realized there could be a be a lot of shit going on in there, and maybe I should give her a bit of grace.
Bleecker Street will release Hard Truths for an award-qualification run on December 6 and go out nationwide with the film in the U.S. on January 10.
