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[title]Making good, Larson has all but owned this season’s awards talk with her nuanced turn in Room, a harrowing tale of captivity in which a mother and her small child endure seven years of captivity in a soundproof suburban shed. We sat down with the actor, poised and thoughtful in the midst of a swirling Oscar campaign, to explore the depth she delved into in order to convincingly convey the character.
How old is your character, Joy, supposed to be when she is kidnapped and imprisoned?
“Lenny [Abrahamson] spent a lot of time tacking the backstory down. But I could never really decide, because I found both to be so depressing: she was either a senior in high school or maybe just starting college.”
Both are devastating. What else can you tell me about the character then?
“I imagine that her parents were still together – maybe she was one of the few she knew who had parents still together, and that was a point of pride for her. They were her rock. She’s an only child. Maybe Joy had been at the cusp of developing the sort of can’t-wait-to-get-out-of-here dreams of whatever she wanted to do next.”
We learn enough about her – good student, outgoing, athletic – that it becomes a sad mystery how she first fell into the trap.
“The thing that I kept coming back to during my research was that a lot of girls would say in hindsight, after dealing with trauma, that they felt like they couldn’t say no. It was a disjointed thing of girls feeling like they were screaming and saying something back, but in fact, they weren’t.”
It’s interesting how universal Room feels, above and beyond the horrible specifics of being abducted. It’s more about feeling trapped, then breaking into the unexpected.
“Yeah, if it didn’t have that, this wasn’t going to be right for me. Those girls that we’ve seen in the news – they become this weird anomaly or a spectacle. We feel obligated to try to get to know them. We want to watch the [CBS News] 60 Minutes special. But this movie would be an opportunity to tell something deeper.”
Young Jacob Tremblay is extraordinary in the film.
“We became so close – eight hours a day for so many months – that I only knew how to speak to Jacob. He became the person I was safe with, the one who got me. I became afraid of communicating with my peers. It helped.”
Outside of your roles, how closely did you work with Jacob on his acting?
“I was the closest person, so I could fix his hair, remind him of the shadow, ask him to do it again. Kids don’t think of those things. Because I had that level of trust and I knew what Lenny wanted, I could help him get the performance that he wanted. Before I was even cast I told him, ‘I’ve worked with kids on Short Term 12, so trust me, you’re going to need someone on your team.’”
How did you relax after a long day’s shooting in the room?
“The main thing I did was go to karaoke every night. I would do ‘Burn’ by Usher, Mariah Carey, an Aaliyah song, Spice Girls.”
I see an acting school taking shape.
“Exactly! It was something to look forward to. It was silly and ridiculous, a good way to shake it up.”