What Maisie Knew: Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel

Although star names litter this cast, with Julianne Moore playing a rock star mom, Steve Coogan a workaholic dad and Alexander Skarsgard a gentle stepfather, it’s really all about Maisie. Played by Onata Aprile, Maisie is the center focus of McGehee and Siegel’s latest directorial collaboration. She’s caught between her parents Susanna (Moore) and Beale’s (Coogan) messy attempt to raise their 6-year-old daughter. In an attempt to receive further custody rights, Susanna marries bartender Lincoln (Skarsgard) and Beale, Maisie’s nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham). It’s a film that illuminates the child’s perspective, something that often goes unexplored when adult issues overshadow.

At Millennium Entertainment in LA, which is distributing the film, I had the treat to talk with the directors. In a conference room with a breathtaking view of the city behind us, we got to the bottom of working with such amazing actors like Skarsgard and Moore, managing a protagonist that’s primarily passive and creating a whole world around Maisie.

ATW: You’re telling the story from Maisie’s perspective, which is wonderful. How did you work with DP Giles Nuttgens, composer Nick Urata and then costume designer Stacey Battat to create her world?

S: It all started from the idea of the child’s perspective like you’re saying. Before we read the script, we were sort of allergic to the sound of it; we thought it would be maudlin. But we really liked the lightness of touch of the script, and we really strove to maintain that through the shooting and cutting. Everything with Giles, the quality of the light and with Kelly McGeehee [production designer], what the color palette of Maisie’s world would be.  More than the story of the plotting of the adults’ lives, it’s the story of the experience of the child. With Nick we talked a lot about the score needing to be Maisie’s voice in a way in opposition to Susanna’s world.

ATW: I love that Nick’s from Devotchka who also did the score for another child based film, Little Miss Sunshine! Maisie is very much about self-preservation. What separates preservation from selfishness? Many characters walk that fine line.

S: That’s a good question. No one’s asked us that question! It’s interesting to try and articulate it because that divide is embodied in the actors themselves to some degree. In a way their behavior, except for Julianne Moore’s character’s redemption at the end of the story, their behavior is generally bad. How do you find bad behavior completely unforgivable? Maybe it comes through the ability of an actor to convey some level of vulnerability and humanity while doing it.

ATW: Susanna and Beale’s behavior and failure at parents is often depicted as a consequence of their career choices. Do you think if Margo and Lincoln had more demanding jobs that Maisie wouldn’t be as easy to put first?

M: I think it’s not their career choice that makes them fail; it’s the way that they approach life or who they are that makes them fail. In our story Susanna hasn’t been working for 5 years; it’s not because she’s starting to record again that she’s a disaster as a parent. She’s just a self-involved person that doesn’t have the skills to really care about someone else. I would say the same about Beale. In a way he uses his career as an excuse almost to check out of a situation that he’s just not capable of dealing with emotionally. Whether Lincoln and Margo succeed better because they’re gainfully unemployed, No, I think they maybe have learned somehow what it means to have somebody rely on you. They’re both the victims of Susanna and Beale’s character just as Maisie is. The three of them share that.

ATW: You had such a wide range of experience in your cast from Moore to Joanna to Onata; Coogan who’s known for comedy and Skarsgard for television. How did you cater towards each actor differently?

S: All actors are different; all snowflakes. [both laughing]

ATW: That’s the loveliest way I’ve ever heard someone say that. I’m using it!

S: They are all very different people and were cast for different reasons. Julianne had read the script just prior to us reading it and had expressed interest. We were really taken with that idea because she does have that kind of strength and fierceness that isn’t without a certain level of humanity to it. Steve’s practically had a career playing unlikable people without, again, losing that. We liked the idea that he would bring humor too.

M: We also liked the idea of seeing him in an essentially dramatic role, which we don’t get to do that often.

S: He’s got great acting chops. We didn’t know Alexander’s work especially.

ATW: You’re not an avid True Blood watcher?!

S: We had seen True Blood, but he hadn’t done very many movies at that point. Scott actually remembered him from Zoolander, andwe went back and watched that little bit he does where he’s really funny.Buthe plays tough in True Blood and in a way that isn’t especially right for the character of Lincoln. As soon as we met with him, he’s so gentle and sweet and soft spoken. We loved the idea that he was going to be so big and her so little.

ATW: I loved the shots where she literally lines up with his waist.

S: [laughs] We really liked that too. Joanna was a real find because she hadn’t done anything in the US. We had seen a British miniseries she got a lot of acclaim for. We only got to Skype with her once before having to pull the trigger.

M: It was so terrifying.

S: She’s also just the loveliest person. She arrived just a couple of days before she had to shoot. Her first scene was the scene at the school where Lincoln comes to try and take Maisie and say ‘I’m her stepfather.’ You see Maisie holding onto Margo and not wanting to let go.

M: She literally hadn’t met Onata till she arrived on set. It was such a rush.

S: Onata had spent two weeks with Alexander at that point and just absolutely fell in love with Alex. She was climbing all over him and she always wanted to be with him. The irony of our scene was not lost on Onata. I think she turned to Scott and said ‘It would be so great if it were the opposite!’

ATW: What’s interesting about Maisie as a protagonist is that she does more take in her surroundings and just watches rather than taking action. What was the challenge of making a film where the protagonist is more an observer than an activist?

M: That’s a really insightful question. The script was structured that way, these elliptical scenes strung together. What’s driving the story plot wise is always in the background. What’s moving the plot events are Susanna and Beale’s break up and their re-marriages and a lot of it doesn’t even happen in the movie; it’s completely off screen. We didn’t know how challenging that would be to sustain the pace of the film and the emotional investment.

S: It changed at every stage. It changed maybe the most when we were cutting.

M: But keeping our finger on that: how much could we keep the camera on Maisie and her reactions while a lot of our emotional interest is in this background story. How much can we rely on this little 6-year-old’s face to help us tell that story? We didn’t know that I think until we were really in the editing room looking at our footage and connecting with her.

S: It took a little restructing of the script, figuring out what needed to be where and how those scenes would work together.

ATW: The script is also an adaptation of Henry James novel.  People have always been adapting novels but even more so now than ever because people are unoriginal I guess… [they laugh]. You’ve said before that when it comes to adaptation you really should first embrace the medium you’re working in, which in this case is cinema. How do you navigate that translation?

S: The book is updated in such a dramatic way. Using the book as a touchstone in a sense just seems sort of odd to us. Mrs. Wicks is a very important character in the book, the old governess you just see for a short little bit in our movie. We’ve read a couple of people saying ‘What a shame to lose Mrs. Wicks.’

M: We had the advantage in this case of reading the screenplay first, which I think for us as filmmakers was nicely liberating. We first fell in love with a modern story that worked and then the book was really helpful background. We didn’t have to struggle with that in this case. But I think maybe we’ve both learned something from that experience. It’s really the spirit of the book that you need to preserve, not the plot points; not the character relationships even. You have to identity what it is that you love about the book and make sure you don’t lose that. It’s not a book report; you’re really trying to invent something brand new.

ATW: One last question: a duo directing team is so rare! What has kept that relationship going?

M: Our relationship as writers is kind of the foundation of our working partnership. We always start out there even when it’s something we didn’t write. We first look at it as co-writers and really explore what it is on paper.

S: Even when we’re reading a script that isn’t our own, we sort of go at is as If we had written this how would we have written it? That is sort of the building block. We’ve been working together for more than 20 years now!