MovieBuzzers recently had the pleasure of attending roundtable interviews with the director, Tanya Wexler as well as two of the film’s stars, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy. Each were quite charming and spoke highly of each other as they discussed Hysteria as well as Gyllenhaal’s upcoming film Won’t Back Down with Viola Davis and Hugh Dancy‘s role as Will Graham in the upcoming NBC series, Hannibal.
You can also watch myself and Maria Garcia discuss the film here at 11min 43secs.
Believe it or not, nineteenth-century England is the perfect setting for Hysteria, a story surrounding the invention of the vibrator. Rooted in factual history, this fictionalization of the inventor is light-hearted and immensely entertaining. Director Tanya Wexler treads the delicate topic with ease and with delightful comedic timing. Read entire review
Tanya Wexler
Sitting at a large table with at least ten other film writers, director Tanya Wexler immediately puts everyone at ease when she has us go around the room and introduce ourselves. After the ball gets rolling, one of the first questions discusses her background in film, and as Tanya points out, there is an error on her IMDB page giving her an acting credit for the film Life Happens. “The internet is wrong, can you believe it?” This is a humbling point, as I’m sure many of us in the room had checked her IMDB page before today and taken it for fact.
Left to Right: Tanya Wexler (director) and Sean Bobbitt (director of photography) on set Photo by Liam Daniel, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Tanya is full of life and refers to herself as a “Hermione Granger” in that she can’t help but raise her hand in class. As she talks about getting the film made, she says, “Good ideas have their own currency.” She gushes about the casting of Maggie Gyllenhaal saying that one of the producers, Judy Cairo, who produced Crazy Heart, suggested sending it to Maggie, who Tanya calls a young Katherine Hepburn.
When asked about if the film would be different if directed by a man rather than a woman, she pointed out comments from an audience who saw the film. The audience members said they were more relaxed watching the film knowing it was directed by a woman. This struck me, as I will admit that as I was watching the film, I was a little bit worried in parts, but would have probably been more comfortable if I had knowledge of a female director beforehand.
Director Tanya Wexler on a silly and sexy therapy treatment
Maggie Gyllenhaal
With a yet-to-be-born baby in her belly, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal calmly enters the room and is immediately hit with a question about her attraction to roles of sexual women. She explains that sex in film is not often displayed in reality, but “in fantasy.” “When I see sex scenes in movies that are real, and feel like my own experience with sex, they are so much sexier.”
Gyllenhaal goes on to talk about how she was very impressed with the script. Saying that she normally gives notes, she only had one comment, she felt “the movie would be best served if Charlotte was as wild as possible.” Rather than portraying a “historically accurate depiction of a woman of that time…she should be as shocking as possible in the constraints of that time.” I know that when watching the film, I felt that Charlotte was somewhat daring, but it really works with the light-heartedness of the story.
When speaking about strong female roles, Gyllenhaal explains that there are “so few good movies being made these days, so when there’s a good one, everyone wants to do it.” She also feels that the roles are divvied up pretty evenly amongst those in her age group. It’s interesting hearing about roles as competition and as something that you truly have to audition or fight for.
Rupert Everett as Edmund St. John-Smythe, Hugh Dancy as Mortimer Granville and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Charlotte Dalrymple
Even though she has a few plays she’s working on (they are too early in development to divulge names) she comments that “it’s hard with one child, and I imagine even harder with two to do theater because you never get to put your kid to bed.” Also, she goes on to say that her favorite experiences have been with her husband (actor Peter Sarsgaard) and with that it makes it even harder “because neither of you can put your child to bed.” It’s these types of moments that most of us take for granted as they perform for us, we don’t think of what they are giving up.
In the differences between theater and film, she speaks of how in theater “if an element doesn’t work then you’re stuck doing the play for so many months, it’s much more difficult than a movie because if something doesn’t work, you just get through the scene” and move on. “With theater it has to be so exciting and excellent to get involved.”
The topic of children and family comes up again as a question is asked about how the intensity of the characters she plays has changed over the years. Gyllenhaal talks about Sherry Baby and how she was 25 and “slept in her clothes” and it was a fantastic experience, but that as she’s now in her 30s with a child, the choice to take a role is different. It’s not the substance of the roles, but more of the situation. “It’s not worth it to take my family to Romania to do something that’s O-K.” With her husband, “we both want to support each other to do things that are really great.”
Coming out this fall, she starring in Won’t Back Down opposite Vi0la Davis.
Two determined mothers, one a teacher, look to transform their children’s failing inner city school. Facing a powerful and entrenched bureaucracy, they risk everything to make a difference in the education and future of their children.
She describes her character as “a total firecracker.” She “decides to take on the whole [public school] system by herself, but then decides she needs a teacher in order to make a difference.” She goes on to say that “it’s a commercial movie, so in some ways it says it in a simple way, but I believe that’s fine. If you believe that something is wrong and that something needs to change, then you can have a massive effect on changing it.”
Hugh Dancy
Questions start right away about his role in this unusual comedy. He also is a bit of a clown, often making jokes or silly sarcastic comments that make everyone in the room giggle or laugh out loud. From topics ranging from his experience working with Maggie Gyllenhaal to what bars and drinks he likes around the world, he handles even the most delicate questions with the grace you would expect from an English gentleman.
Rubert Everett plays a wealthy friend of Hugh Dancy‘s character, and when Dancy speaks about him he reveals that he was exhausted by the time they started shooting with Everett, “but if you’re exhausted at the end of a movie, the exact person you would want to walk through the door, because his burst of outrageous energy, is Rupert. He’s very good company.”
He describes Maggie Gyllenhaal as being able to really look at a scene from the perspective of her character, “which gives her a real strength, a real integrity in what she’s doing. ” His other complement, “the degree at which she maintains her English accent is astonishing.”
When asked if there was anything funny that happened behind the scenes that he could share, his reaction of a prompt, “Uh, no” gets an immediate laugh from the room. He elaborates that there’s a lot of hard work and “Tanya ran a very happy set.” He does say that there’s “a very long gag reel in this movie because essentially every scene it was hard to keep a straight face, and you can imagine why.”
His input into the script consisted of comments about making the “relationship between him and Charlotte a bit more convincing, adding a little bit more friction to it.” He adds, “I tried to give him a bit more of a spark.”
Hugh Dancy as Mortimer Granville and Sheridan Smith as Molly
As Dancy talks about the movie industry, he admits that he goes to see the usual big movies that Hollywood “churns out” but that the mid-level films, the one’s in the “15 million dollar” range are the ones that have “the chance of being immortal.” When speaking about the “new wave really really talented, truly independent American filmmakers,” he mentions Sean Durkin who directed him in Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011. “There’s a whole generation of really interesting people coming up who in no doubt in 10 years time will be the main stream.”
Dancy stars in the upcoming NBC series, Hannibal, in which he plays
FBI profiler, Will Graham. He’s excited about the series because “it explores the psychology of evil on both sides of that coin, the hunters and the hunted.” When speaking about doing an episodic series rather than a movie, he says, “there’s a lot of great, great movies made every year that just don’t quite make it through cracks, or they do and nobody sees them.” He elaborates by saying, “the closest I’ve come to reading something of the same type of ambition that’s smart, that’s not trying to pander to the lowest common denominator is something like this series.”
Although the film does have serious elements to it, such as women’s suffrage, he goes on to say that the movie”tried to present some of the more preposterous elements of the outright Victorian doctors that were completely oblivious to what they’re doing, which is the best joke in the movie, and also the true of it.”
Hysteria is out in theaters now in limited release.
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