Kathleen Robertson – Chameleon of the Big and Small Screen
By: Todd Konrad
IFQ Magazine recently caught up with talented actress Kathleen Robertson on the heels of her successfully villainous turn in Tin Man, the critically-lauded revision of The Wizard of Oz that has become the Sci-Fi Channel’s highest-watched miniseries event as well as the number one cable miniseries of 2007. Ms. Robertson briefly discussed her experiences working on that particular project in addition to her dual roles as actor/producer on IFC’s hit comedy The Business, the challenges of working on high-budget versus low-budget projects, upcoming films to keep a look out for, and the virtues of being directed by both indie legend Gregg Araki and Oscar-winning actress Sally Field.
IFQ: First off, congratulations on your phenomenal success with Tin Man; how was your overall experience working on that project?
KR: Yeah, I think it did really better than anyone had ever imagined or hoped for. It was an incredible experience on so many different levels. First off, from reading the script and knowing that I was going to be apart of it, I’m a huge Wizard of Oz fan so to be involved in something that was connected to the original books was really exciting for me and it was very different than anything I had ever worked on before. I’ve never done anything technically like that; I guess the genre would be fantasy or science fiction. So that was something I’d never done before like working in front of a green screen, how intensive the wardrobe, hair, and makeup was, not including how out there and extreme the character was herself. So really every aspect of it was a new, exciting, and fun experience for me in every way.
IFQ: The costumes themselves were fantastic to look at if nothing else. They’re very extreme yet extravagant in design. I was curious if the costumes helped build your interpretation of the character if at all?
KR: Absolutely, from the time I would arrive on set in my jeans, t-shirt, and flip-flops and then two and a half hours later emerge completely transformed, it helped an immense amount. Angus Strathie, who did the costumes on Moulin Rouge, was the costume designer. Usually I’m very, very involved with choosing my character’s wardrobe and knowing exactly how I want the character to look and this is the color palette and the textures and these are the kinds of shoes she’d wear. I’m always really specific in knowing what I want but for this they had started a year prior to when we started filming. They started building all the sets, designing all the costumes, testing all of them, so when I was cast and arrived in Vancouver to start filming it wasn’t a typical sort of wardrobe situation where you look at racks and racks of clothes and say “oh, I like this” and “I don’t like this”. It was very much like “these are the six looks we’ve created and we’ve sketched them and designed them and everybody’s been involved in the creation of them”. So it was very much pre-decided for me the look for her but I was different too in having to go “ok, this is what it’s going to be and I have to make it feel authentic and make it feel right for me”. It was incredible.
IFQ: One of my favorite recent shows that I’ve kept up with is IFC’s The Business in which you play not only a lead role but also double as Executive Producer. How was that experience of handling those particular dual roles?
KR: Well it was funny in that given the nature of the show, it was very much art imitating life. I’m playing this character who is a producer, working with actors and other people and then in real life I was producing the show so it was kind of strange at times with everything bleeding together but it was fantastic. It was the first thing that I had ever produced and it was great; it was a ton of work but also a ton of fun.
IFQ: Moving to a logical next step, do you have any interest in continuing to produce new projects?
KR: Yeah definitely, I think it’s sort of a natural kind of progression; it happened very naturally and it felt like the right thing to do.
IFQ: Could you discuss a little bit your experiences working on bigger-budget, studio fare like Scary Movie versus more intimate, independent productions like XX/XY?
KR: Well, it really depends on each project, every movie feels so different and every television show feels so different when you’re doing it. You never know what you’re getting into like some of the best experiences I’ve ever had have been movies that literally had a million dollar budget and everybody’s eating Cheetos all day and running around without permits and trying not to get caught. You have twenty-one days to shoot a whole movie and sometimes you go into that thinking “ugh, this could potentially be really, really difficult” and it turns out to be the most incredible experience. XX/XY was very much one of those experiences, it was a tiny, little movie and we shot it in New York and you know, none of us were making any money; everybody was just doing it for the love of the script and it turned out really well. And then other times obviously when you’re working on bigger projects, something like Tin Man, where we spent something like three and a half months you have a ton of time which is great in some ways because you’ll have a big scene and you’ll have a whole day devoted to just that one scene or even two days to do a couple of pages. Some actors hate that because they hate the waiting around, the slow pace of it.
When you work on a smaller-budget movie the pace is just so different. When we shoot The Business it’s always so “quick, quick, quick, quick, quick” with changing clothes, and then we’re shooting, and we end up shooting ten pages a day. Whereas with Tin Man you’re shooting two pages a day so it’s very leisurely and you have the time in the morning to have breakfast and get ready and they light for two hours and then you rehearse so it’s a totally different energy on the set and the food’s always better on the bigger budget (laughs). Food’s usually better, clothes are usually better, you know all those obvious things. But yeah, I’ve definitely my share of both, I’ve worked on little, tiny things and I’ve worked on big, budget things. It’s kind of nice to be able to do both because you do something that’s small and fast and then the next time you’re ready to do something where you can take your time and it’s leisurely. Then after that, you go and do a tiny, little movie where you’re running around and it’s chaotic and the energy’s right there.
IFQ: I was taking another look at your bio and noticed that amongst the work you’ve done, you’ve been directed by both Gregg Araki and Sally Field. What was it like being directed by these two very divergent artists?
KR: Gregg is sort of the last of a dying breed; I think he’s one of the few remaining, true, auteur filmmakers. Every film he has ever done he has written, he’s edited and produced and directed. He really is kind of a one-man operation, he does everything. I mean he chooses what color nail polish you’re wearing, he chooses every item of clothing every character wears, he designs all the sets he’s so fun to work with because he has such a clear vision and going onto one of his sets very much feels like you’re watching an artist creating his painting. I remember my first day of working with him on Nowhere and we were shooting this scene in front of a busted fence and the busted fence was designed by the art decorators and it had some big saying on it like “God help me” and then you had this actor framed back to the right and Gregg’s just adjusting it like a painter would, watching through the view finder and moving the actor a couple of inches to the right and framing it back a little bit and checking it. He’s really talented and very, very, very specific about what he wants and you don’t do one of his films and change the dialogue (laughs) or improvise very much, this is the trip and this is the story. He’s just great to work with.
And then Sally (giggles) is the polar opposite, very much all of the things I’d hoped she would be. She was very warm and nurturing and supportive. My character in the film I did with her I was supposed to be from Tennessee. So I had a Southern accent and she has such a great ear she would come up to me and adjust my dialogue a little bit and give me all these little ideas, these Southern mannerisms and she was just so sweet. She wrote me this very beautiful letter when the movie was finished and then we kept in touch and she was just great. Very much passionate and knew exactly what she wanted but very open to ideas, and being an actor obviously, she had such an understanding of the process of what an actor wants and needs from a director.
IFQ: To conclude, could you briefly discuss any upcoming films you’re in that we should be on the look out for?
KR: Let me see, well I have a movie coming out called The Hill; it is sort of a Big Chill-style, ensemble, romantic dramedy. We shot it in Athens, Georgia and it’s really good; it was the movie I did right after we wrapped Tin Man. I went off and did this movie in Georgia and again it was that thing of wanting to do something totally different and it was a very small, independent movie. You know, no crazy costumes, no corsets, no leather (laughs) it was very much character-driven and it’s with a great group of actors and I play a small town school teacher who’s married and she goes to this wedding in Georgia and she’s stuck with this guy that was the love of her life and she hasn’t seen in five years. It’s really good, it has a really good script and then after that I have a movie called Static with Maury Chaiken which we shot in Toronto. Again it’s a totally different thing. A very technology-based sort of thriller that’s very fast-paced; I play a young med student who’s performing all these experiments with chips that can be implanted in the brain and it was fun too. So yeah, those are some things I have coming out and I also have a movie coming out called Player 5150 with Ethan Embry that we shot in Vegas and it’s about gambling and addiction.