Actress Jessica Lange remains one of the finest actresses of our time. On the big screen she broke King Kong's heart, teased Tootsie, fought Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, and did the horizontal dance on a kitchen table with Jack Nicholson in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
She recently starred in The Vow with Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams, and will be in an upcoming film adaptation of The Big Valley in the classic Barbara Stanwyk role.
After seeing Lange on Broadway, American Horror Story series creator Ryan Murphy wrote the role of neighbor Constance for her in the first season. She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress as well as the Dorian Award from the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association for Television Performance of the Year, among other accolades.
This multiple winner of Academy Awards and Golden Globes returned to Horror Story in the second season (American Horror Story: Asylum), playing Sister Jude.
Lange talked nun to Nunn about her role in the show and the future of season three.
Windy City Times: Hi, Ms. Lange.
Jessica Lange: Windy City Times … is that Chicago?
WCT: It is in Chicago, yes. We're a LGBT newspaper. You have tons of gay fans.
Jessica Lange: Some of my dearest friends in the world for a long, long time are gay men.
WCT: You have been heavily involved in AIDS work, even traveling to the Congo and Russia as a goodwill ambassador so I thought that would be the case.
Jessica Lange: I've worked a lot, especially in the beginning with different AIDS organizations.
WCT: It must be interesting to work with Ryan Murphy and all of the LGBT factors in the show.
Jessica Lange: Well, yes, I think he deals with all of that in I think a very interesting way. There's always a character or two characters that enter in, and it's also interesting that he places them in specific times, like this idea that in the world of psychiatry back in the '60s homosexuality was dealt with as a mental condition, a mental illness that could be cured. He approaches things, I think, with great relevance, and I do appreciate that a lot.
WCT: "Horror Story" has opened up a new audience to your work. What do you think of that?
Jessica Lange: Well, I don't follow that side of it too much. I understand that there's a demographic that otherwise probably wouldn't know my work. I'm always surprised when young people don't know certain actors or are not familiar with certain films. Even people who are working in Hollywood, which is really alarming, are not aware of certain filmmakers if it's more than 20 years ago or 25 years ago, or maybe even 15 years ago.
So I understand that this has given me a whole new exposure that probably I wouldn't have had otherwise, because the kind of films that I do [are] mostly small, independent movies, and [they have] a very limited audience. So this is a greater audience probably than I've had for a long, long time, and it's also the demographic is much younger, so that's all good, I guess. I don't know ultimately what that means but, yes, I'm glad people are looking at the work. I'm very grateful for that.
WCT: How has your career evolved from leading ladies to more character parts?
Jessica Lange: I think, obviously, your days as leading lady are limited. You have that one little window of time from mid-twenties to maybe mid-forties. I'm trying to think of the last leading lady I played, it might have been Blue Sky or something. I must have been [in my] early 40s so, yes, where you played the romantic lead that comes to an end at a certain point.
I suppose then you could define the parts that come your way as characters; you become a character actor. But I always felt that way from the beginning, except maybe for Tootsie, which was actually so well-written that it didn't fall into that category, I mean, I was never playing just the girlfriend or the wife. So ... I was always a character actress, even though I suppose combined with that was the element of being a leading lady that feels like a throwback to another era of filmmaking.
I just did a film this spring, I guess that will come out a year from now or something, based on Emile Zola's novel, Therese Raquin, which is what James M. Cain based Postman Always Rings Twice on in 1980; [in] that I played the character of Cora. In 2012, I played the mother of the son that is murdered by the young couple. So it was a full circle, because it's the same story, basically: James Cain based his story on the Zola novel so, you see, it does come back around. Yes, I suppose in some way, yes, we've all become character actors at a certain point.
WCT: Have there been times on the show when Ryan has sent something your way that was just too much for you?
Jessica Lange: There are times when I've said, "I think this is too much," but that's not been too often because they tend to write for me less action and more kind of psychological [issues]. I wouldn't really know how to do a lot of the really intense action scenes so I have a few of those, but not many.
I think there was a leap of faith on my part just thinking, "Well, if I'm going to do this I'm going to do this." And I think as an actor you have to have trust, you have to believe that somebody is taking care of you or watching your back, because with a part like this especially and where we're going with it, I can't pull any punches, I can't do it halfway, especially when you're dealing with madness and this descent into madness.
I really felt like, "Okay, I'm going to embrace this 100 percent and, hopefully, somebody will look out for me and not let me completely humiliate myself.
WCT: How do you switch from a character like Big Edie in Grey Gardens to Sister Jude?
Jessica Lange: It depends. I work differently on all of them, but recently, I've been trying to work in a very immediate fashion so that I'm relying much more now on just pure imagination that comes up in a moment, and I just follow that through rather than trying to plan anything or design anything.
With fictional characters it really is you rise and fall on the strength of your imagination, I think. With somebody like Big Edie, of course, I had a wealth of resource material to draw from. But the thing that I've been working on more and more lately is finding the character through the voice, and sometimes I would work on finding it through the emotional core, which is still the main element I work in, but the external instead of finding it through movement or body or whatever, now I try to find it through voice. And it's been very interesting, because with Big Edie every day I'd come to the set I would listen to her voice, I would put on the DVD of Grey Gardens and not look at the image but just hear the voice, and as soon as I found that voice I could drop into the character.
Now, with Sister Jude this year I've also found a voice that as soon as it's there and present I feel like I think into the character. And I've done something with the voice as it's gone along that it's been changing as we go down this rabbit hole. So that's the process, I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but that's kind of how I find that I'm working now, I mean, strictly through the imagination and then looking for the character, trying to find the character mostly through the voice.
WCT: Did you know Jude would go from being the villain to the hero beforehand?
Jessica Lange: Really, no, because this thing kind of has a life of its own. It's like a river; it moves one direction and then it continues that way and then it shifts direction. I think Ryan has these things roughly plotted out of where things are going to go, but I don't always know ahead of time. I have to say I kind of understood that we would be dealing with this kind of descent into hell, but I did not know really that Jude would rise to the top of this in a way, so no. I actually think that it's made me a better actor, in a way, because [I'm not] able to go into something predetermined.
WCT: Is there a certain actor you liked working with on the show?
Jessica Lange: I think the acting has been really amazing this year. A lot of the actors came back from last year, and it's wonderful. One of my favorite actors that I worked with in these episodes last year and this year is Frances Conroy. There's just something in her, I don't know there's somethingwhen we're on screen together something happens.
I think one of my favorite scenes that I've played this year is the scene from, I guess it was episode seven in the diner when she's come for me as the Angel of Death and, I don't know, there's almost a connection that you can't really describe. But certain actors I think just find something when they're working together, and that's how I felt in these scenes with Frannie. But every actor that I've worked with on thisJames [Cromwell], Sarah [Paulson], Lily [Rabe] and Ian [McShane]it's just a pleasure to work with them. And even actors who come in for just a day's work have been amazing and have really brought something and make your work better.
WCT: Will you be on season three?
Jessica Lange: We haven't really talked about it too much, and all that stuff is still under discussion. I think I will try it again, depending on what the story is and who the character is and all of that, so we'll see what happens.
New episodes of American Horror Story: Asylum return Wednesdays on FX in 2013 on Wed., Jan. 2.