The Tender Bar is a well-crafted coming-of age story. What do you hope people take from it? It’s such a delicate story told with so much restraint, and so much ease. It’s done with such a light touch. There’s nothing that’s ever drilled into the audience’s head about what you’re supposed to feel. I think every person will have a slightly different and completely personal experience. There is this very lovely reveal that this thing that you’re searching for in order to take the next step forward in your life, to become the person you want to become, that you feel is the missing piece, you learn through a set of circumstances that you already have everything you need to do what you’re hoping to do. J.R.’s mother has a fierce love for him, but what else drives her? She has this wonderful willfulness and optimism. She says early in the film, “Tomorrow is another day.” That’s something she says to J.R. all the time. It’s like a refrain for him and for her. She wants to keep marching forward and she wants things to get better. What was the most challenging part of playing J.R.’s mom, going back to the ’70s, the Long Island accent, or…? Every challenge was something I welcomed and loved. So much of the time and place of the story, it’s very nostalgic. I feel like so many movies that I love were made in the ’70s. Two actors (Tye Sheridan and Daniel Ranieri) play J.R., but I get to act with both. I get to span all those years. That was such a wonderful challenge because again, I think, it was done with such a light hand, and we weren’t using prosthetics to show the passage of time. Something that I really feel the movie does is show that so much can be accomplished with so little. Ben shaves and my hair changes a bit, but it’s really not about those physical changes as much as it is the spirit of these people as they’re going through this time, and that the weight of the world is just a little bit heavier as they’ve gone through that many more years. And so, being able to play that with a light touch, without hammering any of that over the audience’s head, you just are where you are, and suddenly you realize, “OK, this amount of time has passed and here we are with this family. It’s the same souls but they’ve weathered what they’ve weathered.” I love that feeling of the movie. I feel like there’s a wonderful trust given to the audience. I think George trusts his actors, he trusts his crew, and I believe very firmly that he trusts his audience. He knows that his audience is coming to the movie with incredible intelligence and open-mindedness and openheartedness. There’s no repetition and, “Oh, in case you missed this, let me just bring this point home again.” It’s all just handed over so delicately, and I love that kind of filmmaking and trust. I love it as an actor, but I also love it as an audience member, when I can feel the director’s trust in me to have whatever experience I’m going to have watching the movie. What is George Clooney like as a director? Such an incredible leader. He creates this world both in the film and on the set that is so secure and confident that everyone knows their footing. You know that the ground beneath you is safe because George has built the foundation. Ben Affleck plays your character’s brother in this and becomes a substitute father for J.R. What do you think he brought to the role of Uncle Charlie? Ben is incredible. He’s wildly curious and open and present. As a scene partner, there is this feeling with him that he’s so right there in the moment. Whatever that moment is, he is just so acutely present. There’s just nothing more wonderful when you’re acting with someone to feel that, because then you can make these incredible discoveries because you don’t know how it’s going to go. There’s no agenda, there’s no plan. The runway is just open and you’re with this person in this moment. I felt that so strongly with him. He’s so surprising and brilliant. And he has an incredibly, incredibly massive heart. So I loved having that relationship with him. Those two characters have this wild family situation. I feel like they’re the two in the family, who even though a lot of the times it’s probably unspoken and is just a look across the chaotic dinner table, they are tethered to one another. I think he’s her anchor in a lot of ways. You talked about feeling safe doing The Tender Bar, but you’ve also talked about feeling safe when you worked with Nicole Kidman in The Undoing. Is feeling safe important to you in a project? I think yes, but that’s because I think we have to feel safe to take the greatest risks, and to me the jobs that are always the most thrilling to do are the ones where I feel like I can take the biggest risks. Safe is such a massive word, especially right now. But I think that that’s probably what I’m speaking to, is I don’t want to make safe choices as an actor. You can make the highest-risk choices when you know that there is a certain amount of safety and also of feeling seen, whether it’s in your scene partner or your director or ideally all of the above. You just finished the 10th season of American Horror Story. What is it like to reach that milestone? Double digits; I can’t believe it. It’s such a wonderful job because it’s not like being on another show for 10 seasons where you’re playing the same role; each season is its own thing. It became the gift that kept on giving because I got to come back and come back and come back. Your mother is actress Jill Clayburgh, and your dad is playwright David Rabe. Was it destiny that you were going to act? Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Destiny is such a big word. Now it feels that I certainly can’t imagine having made any other choice. There were certain times in my life where I did feel this magnetic pull towards this thing that I was actually probably fighting against choosing for a certain time, because it’s what my parents had done, and I was determined to pave my own path. My parents were so encouraging of that. I think they never wanted me to feel in any way like there was a funnel into the family business. They overcompensated to make sure that I did not ever feel that way. I was a dancer for a long time, and when I look back on what I really loved about dancing, I do think in a lot of ways it was the same things that I really love about acting. So it was like an indirect path to get to acting. Your next project is The First Lady in which you play Lorena Hickock, who had a really close relationship with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. It’s such an incredible relationship. That was reuniting with Susanne Bier, who I did The Undoing with. She really is one of the most wonderful directors that I’ve worked with. The relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickock, I’m really excited for people to see in the show. But there’s so much because it’s MichelleObama, BettyFord and Eleanor Roosevelt. I was in the section about Eleanor Roosevelt, played by GillianAnderson. And this relationship, I knew a bit about it in the back of my mind. But once I did a deep dive, there’s so much. It’s quite a well-documented relationship. When I talk to people about it, they are like, “Oh, yes, yes, yes, she was a journalist. And were they together? What was the deal there?” So I’m really excited for people to see that part of the story and experience that part of the story. It’s based on this relationship that existed and was incredibly significant. Lorena was an amazing, amazing woman, a fascinating woman, and the relationship that they had, and what they meant to each other, and the risks that they took for their relationship are really incredible. I loved telling that part of the story. There is some question as to whether they had a physical relationship or were just close friends, so it’ll be interesting to see. Yeah, that’s one of the things that is so interesting. Exactly what you’re saying is one of the things that’s been so interesting, because that was my personal sense of it. I was like, “What were they and what weren’t they? What was it exactly?” In talking to people, it’s a lot of those conversations too, so I’m excited to get to talk about it a lot more. The last 18 months haven’t been easy ones. You had two kids at home; what’s this time period been like for you? It’s such a hard thing to put this time period into words because I think we’ve all been cellularly changed by this time. I have been so grateful to be able to be with my family, to have this time with my partner [actor HamishLinklater], with my children. I don’t think that time can be spoken of in terms of silver linings; it’s not that. It’s just I feel so grateful that those were my circumstances, that I was able to be at home with these people that I love so much. And then I have been so grateful to be able to continue to do what I love. After the initial period, I was able to go back to work. I’m trying to count the number of jobs that I’ve done during COVID, but it’s a handful. I’ve just been so grateful to be able to safely and consciously go back to work, to make things and to be creative. So having both those things in my life, I just feel an incredible amount of gratitude for.
