It’s been nearly a decade since Kate Winslet starred in HBO’s adaptation of Mildred Pierce for which earned an Emmy win. She returns to HBO with the new limited series Mare of Easttown which debuts on April 18 on the premium cabler and will be available on HBO Max.
In the crime drama, Winslet plays the titular Mare Sheehan a small-town Pennsylvania detective in Delaware County (or as the locals say, “Delco”) who investigates a local murder as life crumbles around her. Mare of Easttown explores the dark side of a close community and offers an authentic examination of how family and past tragedies can define our present. It’s a different from playing a single mother struggling during the Great Depression with an overambitious daughter in Mildred Pierce — but it certainly brings similar energy. Winslet was joined at TCA by series creator, writer and showrunner Brad Ingelsby and director Craig Zobel to talk about the series and how authentic the show was to Delco.
Winslet first received episodes 1 and 2 at the end of 2018 when she was filming Ammonite but when she was trying to wrap her head around playing Mare, she admitted that it was one of the “biggest challenges she had been slapped with.”
“She’s nothing like me — that’s pretty scary in a great way if you’re an actor that likes to feel terrified and exposed,” said Winslet. “I just have never done anything like this and was excited to read something that gripped me right away. I really felt the sense of not only who she was but the world she lived in and comes from; that sense of community; being so entrenched in a society that you sort of forget who you are from time to time.”
Winslet added that there’s a sense of responsibility and burden that Mare carries that really intrigued her. “The story has so much heart in it and is rooted in truth,” she said. “It just really resonated with me.”
When asked if she would make a good detective she immediately answered, “I’d be a f*cking lousy detective…I’d be good at the coffee and the after-beers.”
She goes on to say that Mare is a million miles away from her in terms of what she does as a detective. “I don’t have the mental stamina required,” Winslet stated. However, she did connect with how Mare connects with her family and how she can admit that she has failed during her life and tries desperately to correct those errors.
In order to get into the headspace of Mare, Winslet spent several months training in Easttown (yes, it’s a real life place), but one of the biggest challenges was nailing down that Delco accent. Winslet is normally a whiz when it comes to accent but this one…not so much.
“This [accent] drove me crazy!” she exclaimed. “There are varying degrees of it…the thing that was hardest for me was to do it well enough that you shouldn’t hear the act of doing. I hate it when you can hear someone doing an accent. That was one of the things that is more important to me than anything — just making it disappear and blend in.”
The authenticity of the accent adds to character and the whole series which takes place in the town where Ingelsby grew up. “We said to HBO that we had to shoot it where it was actually set in the story,” he said. “I think just like the accent, the setting is so important…it adds a sense of richness and authenticity.”
“We definitely pursued as many locations and things that were very regionally specific,” added Zobel. “Delaware County and that area of southern Pennsylvania looks very unique in its own way and we wanted to makes sure we got as much of it in the frame as possible.”
Mare of Easttown also Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Angourie Rice, Evan Peters, Guy Pearce, Cailee Spaeny, David Denman, John Douglas Thompson, Patrick Murney, James McArdle, Sosie Bacon, Joe Tippett and Neal Huff. The series is an HBO co-production with wiip. Ingelsby, Zobel and Winslet also serve as executive producers alongside wiip’s Paul Lee and Mark Roybal, Gavin O’Connor and Mayhem Pictures’ Gordon Gray through Mayhem Pictures.
Source: Deadline
Category: Articles
The Hollywood Reporter: November 2015 Scans
Thanks to Annie, I have added scans of Kate from the November issue of The Hollywood Reporter last year to the gallery.
Gallery Links:
Kate Winslet has long spoken about dealing with mean kids at school and hopes to use her experience and fame to help young girls maintain a positive body image.
The 40-year-old actress, who rose to fame with Titanic and recently starred in the film Steve Jobs, was bullied as a child over her looks, namely her weight.
“I was teased for how I looked,” Winslet told CBS Sunday Morning in an interview set to air this weekend. “In part, yeah, because I was quite stocky as a child. And was very much teased for that.”
Winslet had also talked about her experience being bullied over her looks and weight before. In a 2006 interview with Parade, she revealed her classmates called her “Blubber.” She also told Marie Claire U.K. in 2009 she was “bullied for being chubby.” Earlier this year, she recalled during an appearance on Running Wild with Bear Grylls how she confronted one of her “particularly horrible” childhood bullies as an adult.
“She was working on a beauty counter in a department store,” Winslet said. “I went up to her and said, ‘I want to thank you for being such a bitch because it made me a lot stronger.'”
Now an Oscar-winning actress who graces the covers of magazines and stuns at award shows and celebrity events, Winslet is considered by many to be a prime example of Hollywood beauty. But she doesn’t want young girls to get the wrong idea about it.
“You know, we walk down red carpets. You know, it’s part of the job,” she told CBS Sunday Morning. “But I think I feel very strongly that it’s important to also say to young girls that we don’t look like that all the time.”
Kate Winslet Set for BAFTA Career Retrospective
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts said Tuesday that BAFTA-winning actress Kate Winslet will discuss her career at a special “BAFTA A Life in Pictures” event at the organization’s London headquarters next month.
The event will take place on Dec. 4.
The “BAFTA A Life in Pictures” series features onstage interviews with some of the film world’s leading talent. Among past speakers are Kenneth Branagh, Cate Blanchett, Todd Haynes, Ang Lee, Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson.
Winslet has received seven BAFTA nominations, winning twice. She was awarded her first BAFTA in 1996 for her supporting role in Sense and Sensibility and a second in 2009 for her leading role in The Reader. Winslet was named British Artist of the Year at the BAFTA Britannia Awards in Los Angeles in 2007.
Winslet began her film career in 1994, starring in Heavenly Creatures. In 1997, she starred in Titanic. Her BAFTA-nominated roles include Iris (2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2005) and Finding Neverland (2005).
Winslet will next be seen starring in The Dressmaker with Liam Hemsworth and Hugo Weaving.
Most of us have probably done it at one point in time: picked up a hairbrush or shampoo bottle and given an impromptu awards acceptance speech in the bathroom mirror. Kate Winslet knows this, and that’s precisely why the Oscar-winning actress chose the location where she keeps her Academy Award.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine in promotion of her new movie, “Steve Jobs,” Winslet discussed other significant roles throughout her career, including the one that won her the Best Actress statuette for 2008’s “The Reader.” And while Winslet told the magazine that she’s “super proud” of the honor, she admitted that she keeps it in her bathroom — not in an attempt at false modesty, like some celebs, but rather to share the wealth and feed her guests’ Oscar glory fantasies.
“The whole point is for everybody to pick it up and go, ‘I’d like to thank my son and my dad,'” Winslet explained, “—and you can always tell when someone has, because they’re in there a little bit longer after they flushed. They’ll come out looking slightly pink-cheeked. It’s hysterical.”
And while we’d probably get a little embarrassed, too, there’s no way we wouldn’t grab that little gold guy if we ever had the chance to visit Winslet’s house. We’re just glad the actress has a sense of humor about it — and lets her guests act out their dreams in (relative) private.
Oscar winner Kate Winslet won major cool points with her three kids when she signed on for Insurgent, and ET found out another cool thing about Kate: She’s vocal against body shaming.
“You only have one life,” Kate told ET. “I don’t want to spend my life worrying about how I look or what other people think.”
NEWS: Miles Teller Debuts Sexy, Shirtless Transformation for New Role
In the film, Kate plays Erudite faction leader Jeanine, who is hunting Divergents in the hopes of finding one who can unlock a mysterious box. The rebel group rallies around Tris (Shailene Woodley) when it becomes clear she’s the one Jeanine is after, in order to prevent her capture.
“People have been saying, ‘Gosh, you’re not known for doing these big franchise pieces and playing the baddie,’ and it’s like, ‘Isn’t that great!'” Kate told ET.
For Kate Winslet, one of the more exciting things about returning to play the coldblooded Jeanine in the second installment of the “Divergent” series is the fact that she wasn’t pregnant this time.
“It affects your ability to feel like you’re not actually disappearing,” said Winslet, 39. “I just didn’t feel very together at all, physically or mentally. I don’t have those great, strong, glowing pregnancies.”
“It was really wonderful to be in a position where I did have my brain back,” she said. Shailene Woodley noted that she was afraid to be too physical with Winslet during “Divergent,” but that the gloves came off this time.
In their work, Woodley and Winslet have developed a bond that goes beyond a co-star connection. Both got their first significant burst of fame at age 21, Winslet with “Titanic,” and Woodley with her role in “Divergent.”
Though Woodley credits Winslet with offering her helpful advice about the temporality of celebrity, Winslet said that Woodley’s steadfast goals are what will see her through trying times, even in an environment of heightened scrutiny and access.
“She has values that are very, very important to her and she lives by them 100 percent. That is very unusual. I don’t think I possessed to that extent,” said Winslet, who still avoids media, social and otherwise, as a rule.
“It’s how I’ve stayed sane. I don’t read reviews. I don’t read magazine articles that I’ve been in. I don’t allow magazines into the home. I just don’t,” she said.
Ultimately, Winslet’s work in the “Divergent” films is for her three kids, ages 14, 11 and 15 months.
“My children can’t see most of the films I’ve been in because I either die or take my clothes off,” said Winslet, laughing.
“At a certain point in one’s career, it’s really wonderful when your child turns around and goes ‘oh my god, mommy, you have to be in that film. My friends are going to die,'” she said animatedly.
She’s always surprised at just how opinionated her kids are about her career, sometimes cautioning her to avoid something that they feel she’s “done before.” Speaking of a secretive cameo that she was recently offered, Winslet said that when she told her 11-year-old son, his world came to a stop.
“I actually had to video his reaction because it was so profound,” she said.
