Actress & Writer Zoe Kazan on Her Career on Stage and Screen

AMANPOUR: Our next guest has filmmaking in her blood. She’s the daughter of two screenwriters and the granddaughter of two-time Oscar-winning Director Elia Kazan. Zoe Kazan shines in front of and behind the camera. She’s best known for her role in The Big Sick. Here’s a clip.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you judging Pakistan’s Next Top Model?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know how we have arranged marriage in my culture?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I’m so stupid. Can you imagine a world in which we end up together?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don’t know.

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AMANPOUR: This year, the actress and writer starred in the latest Coen Brothers Extravaganza The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and she wrote the film Wildlife, a three-year passion project with her partner Paul Dano. She recently sat down with our Alicia Menendez saying that she wants to tiptoe into her grandfather’s footsteps next as a director.

ALICIA MENENDEZ, CONTRIBUTOR: Thank you so much for joining us.

ZOE KAZAN, SCREENWRITER: Thanks for having me.

MENENDEZ: Your new film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival, won Best Screenplay there. How would you describe the project?

KAZAN: Gosh. I mean it’s a Coen Brothers movie. I mean like Fargo and Big Lebowski. Your viewers probably know who they are. And it’s an anthology Western film. Its sort of six stories told like they’re chapters in a book. They’re only thematically joined and joined by their setting which is the Old West. And I play a kind of a woman going west in one of those chapters.

MENENDEZ: And it was originally conceived as a six-part series. So it was actually —

KAZAN: It wasn’t. This is a misconception.

MENENDEZ: Good. Tell me what I learned wrong on the Internet.

KAZAN: No, truly. I think there’s a — I think because it’s such an odd format, it’s like — it’s one movie but it’s six stories. People really didn’t know what to make of it until when it was first reported, it was reported as a mini-series. But it was never that, it was always the very strange form that it is which is like a movie in chapters.

MENENDEZ: So tell me about your chapter.

KAZAN: I play a woman named Alice Longabaugh. She is going west with her brother who is a very controlling person and she sort of never had to have a mind of her own. And then something bad happens and she’s cast on her own and sort of having to figure out how to survive.

MENENDEZ: Let’s take a look at the film.

KAZAN: Great

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ALICE LONGABAUGH: My brother and I are setting off in the morning for Oregon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oregon? Oh, you have people out there? Are you —

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just scoop from her plate, Mrs. Holiday. Grandma Turner’s point down.

A. LONGABAUGH: No, I’m to be married or at least I’m maybe to Gilbert’s associate.

GILBERT LONGABAUGH: Who is well fixed up there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are not certain whether you’re going to be married? Has the gentleman not proposed?

A. LONGABAUGH: He — well, he —

G. LONGABAUGH: He will propose. And once they meet each other, I’m sure Alice will pass muster with matters a good one. I’m joining him in a business opportunity and has declared himself ready to marry when he finds a suitable match. And I was going to be very sociable and attractive when he has a mind to be.

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MENENDEZ: That face reminds me of every woman who has ever been told to smile.

KAZAN: Yes, I think you’re right. I’m trying.

MENENDEZ: Was there a history there? Do you consider this a feminist character?

KAZAN: Oh my gosh. I don’t know. I think — I will say I’ve never been on a set that felt more gender-neutral than the Coen Brothers’ set. It really felt like truly gender didn’t matter there at all which is extraordinarily unusual in any workplace, let alone on a movie set. Even though I was the only woman in my chapter and there are very few women in the piece, I found that to be true. And I think they write women really well. You can sort of see like that they’re coming at things from a humanist standpoint. And I am certainly trying to bring empathy to every role I play. I don’t think that she’s a person who has any idea about anything that could even be remotely construed as feminism. You know, it’s the late mid-1800s and first-way feminism hasn’t come around yet.

MENENDEZ: I guess what struck me is that this is a character who is very much hemmed in by her circumstances. And then as you said something bad happens and in some ways, it liberates her.

KAZAN: Yes, I think of her like a little bird, like a pet bird inside of a cage and then the cage door opens and she really doesn’t know how to get — how to go out of that open door. So she’s sort of like figuring it out and feeling the wind in her feathers and sort of like creeping towards that open doorway. And it’s an interesting journey to watch someone take. She’s a very timid person. I don’t think we see timid people at the center of movies that often. And she is just sort of very — in the very early stages of figuring out that she has a mind and a will of her own.

MENENDEZ: You gravitated towards roles like this before.

KAZAN: Yes.

MENENDEZ: Roles women who are finding their place in the world. You’re also writing those roles into existence for other people. You currently have a film out Wildlife that you co-wrote with your partner. First, tell me what the film is about.

KAZAN: Wildlife, which I wrote with my boyfriend Paul Dano and he directed, is based on a novel by Richard Ford about a family in 1960 in Montana and it’s sort of a coming of age story for the whole family. And the mother who’s played by Carey Mulligan has always sort of provided the mother role for her family, the wife and mother role. And her husband who’s played by Jake Gyllenhaal hasn’t really held up his end of the bargain in terms of like the 1960s ideal of a man in terms of providing for his family. And he feels disappointed in himself and sort of can’t pick himself back up. And you watch their marriage kind of fall apart through the eyes of their teenage son.

MENENDEZ: Paul was really committed to this film, to the story.

KAZAN: Yes, he was.

MENENDEZ: But he really needed you to get it done.

KAZAN: I guess so. Paul loved the book and I think he felt really drawn to it and felt it’s a kind of like autobiographical pull towards it. I think it reminded him of his family in many different ways. But yes, he had never written anything before and I have written for plays and I wrote this movie Ruby Sparks that we’ve made the actors in together in 2012. So I knew a little bit more about how to do it than he did. And yes, helps him — we wrote — we ended up writing it together.

MENENDEZ: You really put the structure on it.

KAZAN: Yes. I mean it’s hard to say. You know one of the beautiful things about how — we worked on it for three years together. One of the beautiful things about working together on something for so long is that it’s hard for me to even say now what he wrote and what I wrote and what comes from the book. And when Richard Ford who wrote the novel saw the movie, he actually complimented Paul on something that came straight from the book. He was like, “I love that line.” And we’re like, “Oh, yes.” So I feel like that’s probably a sign of a fruitful collaboration.

MENENDEZ: Tell me a little bit more about the character written for Carey Mulligan, the mother.

KAZAN: Yes.

MENENDEZ: She’s complicated.

KAZAN: Yes. She plays a character called Jeanette, Jeanette Brinson. She’s in her mid-30s and she had a child very young. And she’s sort of — Carey, she was describing her as someone who is suddenly having regret about her life, like suddenly with her choices and realizing that her life has calcified around men and feeling maybe like she likes made different choices for herself. She’s not very well equipped in terms of her tools to individuate. So she’s a little — she’s sort of flailing around a little bit. She’s making some maybe like poor choices or questionable choices for herself and her son bears witness to that.

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JEANETTE BRINSON: Well, how do you like this particular gown?

PAUL BRINSON: It’s nice.

BRINSON: I used to dress like a sultan when I was younger. I’d stand behind the bull chutes of the Rodeo and hope some cowboy would approve of me. It made my father very mad. They called us chute beauties. Isn’t that an impressive thing to know about your mother, that she was a chute beauty?

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MENENDEZ: You had a Q&A where essentially an audience member stood up and complained that that character was not likable. And it made me wonder why audiences so often demand that a female character, in particular, be likable.

KAZAN: Yes, I find it strange. I mean look, I find it strange I have to say but sympathetic or likable is a rubric that we judge characters by it all. Like is Hamlet likable? I don’t know. Is he sympathetic? Maybe. I think one of the things about drama is that you can’t make dramas about people who are behaving correctly. Like if everyone is doing everything right, then you need like a plane crash to happen or something to make any drama at all. I do think that there is a greater onus on women than on men to seem likable on screen. I think that is true in our culture as well. I mean look at what happened during the 2016 election and the fact that Hillary Clinton was considered unlikable and Donald Trump was considered likable seems very strange to me. Even in a political way, just considering what their personalities seem to be. I think we just have very different standards for women and for men. This audience member took umbrage at the fact that she is exposing her child to some unsavory business. But Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Jerry, abandons his wife and child and leaves them entirely and sort of abdicates his parental responsibilities entirely. So the fact that he wasn’t holding him to task for that but was holding her to task for her parenting choices seemed a little odd to me. Although not odd within the context of our society.

MENENDEZ: What has been behind the camera taught you about being in front of the camera?

KAZAN: Oh, my God, so much. So much. You know, one thing it’s taught me is to say yes when the director gives you a note. Usually, they’re giving you a note for a reason. I used to be a very — I used to like lead with my opinions on set much more aggressively than I do now because I’ve learned like oh sometimes, it’s not about you. Sometimes they’re giving you the note because your scene part — to bring out a color in your scene partner or because they really need — because of what the camera’s doing for you to pace it up. You know, things like that. And then also just, you know, I think as an actor often when you’re going into audition rooms, you can take it really personally when you’re rejected.

MENENDEZ: Yes.

KAZAN: And being on the other side of the table, it’s really taught me that often it has nothing to do with your talent. It has something to do with like who you are as a person, the essence that you bring to the table. Sometimes people — like people can be the best actor in the world and they’re just the wrong animal for the part. It’s a really ineffable thing, it’s not logical. And that has taken — it’s helped me take a little the pressure off of myself.

MENENDEZ: It strikes me that you have a lot to say and yet you are a notoriously private person.

KAZAN: Yes.

MENENDEZ: Where is the line for you?

KAZAN: Oh, man, it’s a really good question. And I feel that — well, I feel this push and pull between the writing and acting side all the time where I feel like as a writer, I want to really like express something deeply private and personal. And I sort of don’t see another reason to write if you’re not writing from a very deep place. But as an actor, I think when you know too much about the actor, it sort of interferes with your ability to see them as a different person. And so I find myself in a way like trying to protect some part of myself in order to keep it private, in order to retain the ability to transform myself, I feel like I’m constantly negotiating where that line is. And every other day I’m like I’m going to quit Twitter. Yes, as most people on Twitter I think. I know I would be much happier actually.

MENENDEZ: Which title do you want to add next?

KAZAN: That’s to direct. I think I haven’t done that yet. I’m watching Paul put this movie together and being part of that of making Wildlife was an incredible learning experience for me. I was in the editing room with him like you know three days a week, two days a week for most of their process. And just, you know, I love to be in the editing room. Just that alone made me want to make my own movie someday but not yet.

MENENDEZ: Why not yet?

KAZAN: Because I have a baby. I have a three-month-old baby. I’ve got to do that for a little bit before I can then. Like, you know, it’s a lot of work. We wrote wildlife for three years together and then it took another two years to get it made. So, you know, it was a lot of pushing the rock up a hill.

MENENDEZ: You birthed a lot of creative projects and a baby.

KAZAN: Yes, indeed, all at once. It’s been a very strange fall.

MENENDEZ: Ambitious.

KAZAN: Yes. We didn’t plan it that way. It just happened that way.

MENENDEZ: Thank you so much.

KAZAN: Thank you. Thanks for having me.