How is it that you're in a movie with Meryl Streep, yet you two didn't actually share any screen time?
I didn't really realize it until the day that we were doing the last scene. It was like, I'm an extra in this scene. Probably the most exciting day in retrospect was just the read-through. Just waiting to see what she was going to do and how she was going to do it, and she was really having fun. I was like, She's sort of joking it up, but there's obviously a method to her madness.
Is there any woman as powerful as Meryl is in this?
My mother. (Laughs) More powerful.
Had you seen the original?
No. Still haven't.
Why not?
It goes back to theater, and I'm from the theater. You reinterpret or you interpret plays all the time that have been done over and over. When I read this, and I'm glad that I hadn't seen the film, I said, "Wow." It was all new and fresh to me.
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It was just fascinating. I was like, Could this happen? ... We all get brainwashed. We are all led in a certain direction. Malcolm X said, You started off hating the Germans and loving the Russians. Five years later, you were loving the Germans and hating the Russians. How did that happen? Someone told you something. You didn't go to Russia or Germany. So somehow you were, in some sense brainwashed or programmed. So it happens in subtle ways.
Do you think you could ever be brainwashed?
Yes, and I was by my mother. She brainwashed me. She trained me well. She did a good job.
