Mike Leigh’s ‘Hard Truths’ Required Marianne Jean-Baptiste To Create A Character With No Pre-Set Script, Story Or Dialogue

Reuniting with filmmaker Mike Leigh for Hard Truths three decades after her breakthrough in their collaboration Secrets and Lies, Marianne Jean-Baptiste embarked on an unconventional route with the director to create not just her character, but the film’s story and fully-formed world.

“The initial conversation is usually ‘Should we work together again? I don’t know what it’s going to be about. I don’t know what you’ll be playing in it, but we’ll have a great time,’” Jean-Baptiste explained during a panel for their new movie at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles event.

“He always asks that you come in with a list of people that you know, real people, and you go through that list and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller until you land on a few people,” she elaborated. “And then you start creating a whole new character inspired by little bits and pieces and characteristics of that person from their first memory to the age they’re going to be playing in the film. And all of the characters in the film are created in that way, by really just doing very, very in depth work on creating them.”

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What the exploratory process underlines, she added, is literally every person in the world has fascinating facets. “There’s something interesting about everyone,” she explained. “You don’t even have to know them that well. It could be somebody in your local bakery: you go in to get your bagel or whatever every morning, and there’s this woman and there’s just something about her, the way that she does everything so meticulously and you all go, ‘Okay, we’ll talk about that one.’ And then you go on to the next one.”

After characters and a storyline coalesce, the filmmaker and his actors fill in the world through improvisation, with Jean-Baptiste finding the tiniest details that inform her character, Pansy Deacon, whose quarrelsome, disagreeable attitude is thteatenting to alienate her loved ones.

“For example, I had to find the school in London that Pansy went to, I’d have to find the house so that you start building a parallel universe for those characters, but in finite detail,” said Jean-Baptiste. “So we created the school, the friends at school, their neighbors, their grandparents, aunts, uncles, mother. Even though you don’t see them in the film, they’re what make up the character and their experiences. So when you actually go to improvise, there’s so much information in your brain that you are able to do it.”

Filming proceeds without a script, with the actors trusting their instincts – as well as Leigh’s sense of the emerging big picture – after the immersive creative approach. “It’s almost like programming a robot to behave in a particular way,” the actress said. “And depending on what you put in or take out, you know there’s a 99.9% chance that they’re going to act in that way. But that’s mainly Mike’s job: to manage the performances, in a way. But all that’s going on in Pansy’s head when she’s doing things are her thoughts. I think the clever stuff comes with Mike having worked with all the other characters, knowing what’s going to set her off or what’s not. But I mean just life sets Pansy off.”

The Bleecker Street film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, is readying for a December 6 platform release before going wide in theaters January 10.

Check back Monday for the panel video.

The presenting sponsor for this year’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles is United for Business. Sponsors are Eyeptizer Eyewear, Final Draft + ScreenCraft, and partners are Four Seasons Maui, 11 Ravens and Robina Benson Design House.

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