Take it as a green flag if your partner has a crush on Rosemarie DeWitt. Although the veteran actress ran the gamut playing characters in films like "Rachel Getting Married" and "La La Land," and shows ranging from "Mad Men" to "Black Mirror" to "The Boys," she says that "When people tell me that their husbands like my work, I think, 'Oh, you must really love your wife.'" Because, as she explained to me, "I think I'm trying to play you. I want to be the character, but I want to be somebody that you go, 'Yeah, I do that.'"
In her latest film, Disney's "Out of My Mind," DeWitt channels that "Yeah, I do that" energy as Diane, the overextended "nag parent" of a daughter with cerebral palsy, played by British actress Phoebe-Rae Taylor, as the family navigates the challenges of living with a disability and surviving middle school. DeWitt said during our recent "Salon Talks" conversation how she channeled her own parenting experiences for the role, including what she's learned from her daughters about handling when "people say really hurtful things."
DeWitt also opened up about getting "kind of gross" for "Smile 2," returning to "And Just Like That…" as Aidan's straight-shooting ex-wife, and why she says she's not "the poster child for real women."
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
This movie is so beautiful and graceful and funny. For those who haven't read the book or don't know the story, tell me a little bit about your character in this world.
I play the mom of a whip smart, beautiful young teenager with cerebral palsy. In the movie, the character of Melody is in a wheelchair and she can't speak. She has nonverbal CP, and we eventually are able to purchase a medi-talker device, and she kind of finds her voice.
I thought I was going in playing a mom who advocates for her daughter and is like a mama bear. I was, but I came away from the movie going, "Oh, for the mother journey, it's about learning to trust your kids, learning to listen to them, knowing that they're fully formed people even though their frontal lobe isn't fully formed." They're going to spend most of their time on this earth as adults, and we're just there for a little bit to do this.
The parents are imperfect. You see Melody's frustration with that, and you also just see the humanity of being a parent. What's it like approaching a character like that?
No, not by a long shot, and neither are any of us, especially on our worst day. I always get happy when my kids do get to see movies and they're like, "You're not that bad, Mom." I'm like, "Yay."
They're deeply flawed, which are my favorite characters to play, otherwise there's no meat on the bone. Melody is the real heroine of the story. She's the heartbeat, she knows what she wants, she knows that you can't bubble wrap the world. She's going to get knocked around, she's going to get pushed aside. A lot of our movie is about the terrible reality of being a person with a disability.
Phoebe-Rae Taylor, who plays the role, talks about it a lot. She educated us a lot on the film, like, "I go to the movie theater and the only place for me to sit is in the way, way back corner where the wheelchair can fit." Walking through New York City, I'm like, "She can't eat at any of these restaurants. There's no ramps." Or if you speak with a device or you have a speech impediment from cerebral palsy, people just don't wait. Someone asks a question and then it takes a couple of breaths and then they just move on, because we can't slow down to hear them.
Then we're the ones who miss out when we don't wait, because Phoebe was the one who had everybody in stitches every day. She's fully verbal and articulate and a beautiful, gorgeous speaker, but it sometimes takes a minute for the muscles of your mouth to start working. And I would've missed out on a dear friend.
How did you two work together to establish that mother-daughter rapport and that prickliness?
Some of it was the generosity of her parents because they were there on set, as any child actor's parents are. They would pull me aside and be like, "So let me tell you how I help her out in the bathroom." The generosity of sharing all the ins and outs, they let me tag along. And Phoebe was so incredibly brave; she was so generous, explaining things to me along the way. I think that level of vulnerability helped us get there. Then in the script, I'm the nag parent, and Luke Kirby gets to be the fun one, so that nature starts to feed it.
How has this changed you? You are a mom of daughters and I've watched you in interviews talk about the things that people say to you and your daughters because they're different than you.
With this character of Melody too, I think it requires a lot more fierceness than I come into the world with.
Sometimes people say really hurtful things to my kids. It's not intentional. It's just out of curiosity usually, but it's their lived experience. Recently we were in a hair salon, getting braiding for my daughter. My eldest daughter is African-American, my little one is Mexican-American, and her complexion is a little bit closer to mine. The woman behind the counter assumed I was the mother of my youngest, but not my oldest. So she's like, "Oh, is that her friend?" I saw my older daughter be like, first of all, why do you need to know? I was like, "No, these are both of my daughters."
I got out into the car and I was like, "God, you know what I wish I said?" And Gracie was like, "Mind your business." I was raised to be a good girl, a people pleaser, so I'm finding that response. That's not my knee-jerk. I usually swallow some stuff, but on their behalf I won't do it. That's what's growing me.
In this story, it's about letting your kids do it for themselves when they need to. It's when to step out and not fight their battles.
There's a very different version of that in "Smile 2." You have this incredible rapport with the actress playing your daughter in it. How did you create a different kind of a mom?
Thank God on that one, the very first day of my shooting was the very last scene I had in the movie with [Naomi Scott], which was this big crazy operatic fight scene that gets kind of gross.
Naomi is a really likable, wonderful human being, so I was glad it was the first day because it was before I knew her. It's horror, so you get to play icy cold. There's no feeling in horror that's wrong. You either use it or you don't use it. Where other genres are more nuanced, sometimes the bigger swings play better in horror. It was fun to not know her, so I wasn't worried about her at all as I was screaming and spitting in her face. Three or four weeks later, I would've been like, "Oh, I'm sorry. Are you OK?"
You are a veteran of horror. I saw something you said recently that struck me, questioning if horror is good for women. There's a level of exploitation for those of us who grew up with those final girl movies in the '80s like you and I did. How do you reconcile that? It can be the most empowering genre and it can also be the most exploitive.
It's a fine line and I grapple with it all the time. A lot of people go to horror for entertainment value, and sometimes I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that's what we do. We're in entertainment." I love a movie like "Out of My Mind." I love when there's a real reason behind it all.
But then I think a lot of it "Smile 2" is dealing a lot with our culture. Whenever we can see ourselves with this phone-obsessed, image-obsessed, it makes us think about things. I looked at it that way. And Naomi is the most empowered actress. She's a force of nature and she was right to sing and dance and show all her colors. The director, Parker [Finn], would get annoyed with me when I would look at him and be like, "I think she's cried enough for today." Because it's hard to watch what women have to do for someone's entertainment.
Women have to suffer for other people's entertainment, or suffer in general. You were canvassing over the summer. How are you doing now, post-election? And how are you talking to your daughters?
I'm not great. I mean, I'm fine, we're fine. I say "not great," meaning I just did a big disconnect that Tuesday night. I saw where it was going and then I was like, "I need to be present with my kids." And "If I can read one more news article, if I can do one more thing that makes us safe," wasn't working. I was just like, "OK, I'm actually just going to turn my gaze and be present."
It is hard. They're young enough where I don't think they have that existential fear that a lot of teens and people in their 20s have about, "What do I even dream of when a world is on fire?" They're not there. But my oldest daughter said, "If things change hands and the future president brings slavery back, will you pretend I'm a slave but let me do whatever I want?"
It's not like they watch anything, but they can feel the danger of the rhetoric that it doesn't mean good things for lots of people. So I don't know. I just meet them. I'm like, "Right now, we're all safe." Today, in the moment, are we safe? Are we OK? I don't know if that will always be true. I don't know what's in the tea leaves. Things could go really bad. I hope they don't. I hope I'm wrong. I hope things get better for everybody, and we're good. I'm happy to be wrong.
Raising daughters, and for you, raising daughters into women of color.
Which I'm not equipped for. I need a lot of helpers. They have a lot of role models that aren't me, as any child does. We all went to school and found that teacher, that coach. There's Lisa Damour. She's this brilliant child psychologist and she talks about being the walls of the pool. Kids don't want to know you're there. They need to come over and grab it for a while and they need to swim over. So that's my job.
That's very good parenting. Speaking of parenting, you and your husband [actor Ron Livingston] were both on an iconic episode of "Sex and the City" and you did not meet your husband until years later.
Yeah, on a not iconic series, I might add.
Did you have opinions about Berger? You're in the Post-It episode.
This is the full disclosure, and it's embarrassing to say, but I was such a broke theater actor in New York that I didn't have cable. I don't even think my TV was hooked up. I missed "Sex and the City" in its entirety. I played Fern in my one scene. He wasn't even on my radar because I didn't see it until much, much, much, much later. Actually, we had been dating for a year or two, and I was in a hotel room here and I called him and I was like, "Oh my God, I'm watching 'Sex and the City.' You're so cute as Berger." But we were already trying to get pregnant by the time I saw him.
But I did feel women's anger at him. When we were dating, people would stop him, especially in New York City, and be like, "You broke up with her on a Post-It." Now, I've heard people joke, "That would've been preferable to the ghosting. At least you responded." Now you don't even get a Post-it.
You started your career in theater. I've watched interviews from 15 years ago where people were asking you about aging in Hollywood. How does that background on the stage equip a person to get by in Hollywood?
I can only speak from my perspective. For me, [having a theater background] was really good. Not that I'm immune to all the stuff; none of it's fun, but I remember coming out to LA after a breakup in New York, which is what kind of propelled it. I'm like, "I just need to get out of Dodge for a minute. The New York Theater community's tiny." I was seeing the allegiance to beauty out there was different than being a theater actor, and women were coming in with the short skirts and all the things. I was just like, "I don't know. I'm just going to give it a whack." I didn't ever feel like I was a part of that. It was nice to go out older.
It's not that I didn't experience "Love me, pick me, choose me," but I felt like I did that more here with the casting directors that just only wanted to see you if you went to NYU grad or Yale grad or Juilliard. That's a different thing than when you go out there and here it was a little bit about credentials.
Ron one time said to me, "Somebody got a role that I wanted." I was like, "God, they're not even good." He goes, "Oh, you don't have to be good. You think you have to be good. You don't really have to be good." It's just different.
You said something to me before we started talking that I want to share with other women. I told you that my husband is in love with you, and you said you've heard it before. What is it about you that makes husbands love you?
When you said it, I was like, "Oh, you probably have a good guy." When people tell me that their husbands like my work, I think, "Oh, you must really love your wife." Because I think I'm trying to play you. You know what I mean?
I'm not trying to play the idea of a woman. It was always hard, especially when my process was less collaborative, when maybe directors didn't care what I thought about the role, to play male fantasy parts or the idea of women. That does happen, you're always trying to flesh out the script and mine it. But I'm not trying to play somebody that women can't see themselves in. I want to be the character, but I want to be somebody that you go, "Yeah, I do that."
It's a realness. If your husband loves you, they probably love their wife.
Yeah. I think they just like a real woman. Not that I'm the poster child for real women.
I want to go full circle with "Sex and the City" because now you've had this microphone drop role last season on "And Just Like That…"
And I come back this season.
You are one of the few people who ever tells Carrie what's what, and I've waited 25 years for that. Are you and Natasha going to team up?
I don't know where it's all going to go, but we get to explore real stuff. That's what I was grateful for. This season with Aidan and Carrie and my character and the family, we get to explore things that real families are struggling with, and so that propels Carrie into the world of harder conversation. Not that she's not always in, but this one is like, "Oh, yeah, this is what it's about."
I can't wait to see it, but in the meantime, we can watch you in this beautiful Disney film. You don't have to be a mom to love it. You don't have to be a kid to love it.
Just be a human being who wants to see people treated with dignity, and who wants to see each other in our full humanity.
