Claire Danes is revealing her initial thoughts about an ongoing and somewhat controversial trend among actors — experiencing extreme physical transformations to better embody a character or role.
“I don’t know if it’s ever been necessary for me to transform in such an extreme way,” Danes, 47, told fellow actor Richard Gadd while participating in Variety and CNN’s Actors on Actors series. “Some roles are more remote than others, and I do have to apply myself with a bit more rigor in putting them together. Those are the most rewarding, really — high risk, high-reward.”
She continued, “I resent them initially and then I’m so grateful and I find the most freedom within them. Sometimes it’s quite stressful to play somebody who is super familiar, who you overlap with.”
Gadd, 37, is currently experiencing his own personal physical transformation for his role as Ruben in Half Man, the writer-director-actor’s followup story to his Netflix hit, Baby Reindeer. Gadd reportedly gained 90 pounds to embody the hyper-masculine and toxic character.
“I like to try and change as much as I possibly can for a role,” Gadd said while appearing on Vanity Fair’s In Character video series. “I always wanted Ruben to be real. I never wanted him to have a sort of Hollywood six-pack.”
He added, “The show kind of sets out to explore why are men drawn to each other in such complicated and mutually empowering, yet mutually destructive ways. I thought, ‘Well, for something to be toxic, it has to be intoxicating first.”
While speaking to Danes, Gadd revealed the weight difference between his Half Man character Ruben Pallister and his Baby Reindeer character, Donny Dunn.
“Donny Dunn was like 68.8 kilograms [151 pounds]. Ruben at my heaviest was 110 [242 pounds]. I wanted it to be real, so a lot of it was putting a lot of fat on top of the muscles,” he explained. “It’s quite helpful, because as the character, you feel physically imposing, and Jamie Bell’s very petite. When I was acting with him, I could almost ingest him, I was so much bigger than him. It helped in that respect. I like that because — I don’t know about you. I hate feeling like myself on set.”
He continued, “They’ll put you in a shirt and you go to set and I’m like, ‘I still feel like myself.’ So how do I feel like a character in my body? I like to feel different. I wouldn’t say it’s Method or anything. I just like to feel the physicality, whether it’s frail or big.”
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Danes, for her part, is playing a grieving mother named Agatha Wiggs in the TV miniseries The Beast in Me. Gadd admitted to Danes that he learned the art of the “guttural sob” by watching Danes’ Romeo + Juliet performance.
“I’ll tell you a little fact. Back at school, to get us to learn Shakespeare, we watched Romeo + Juliet. I remember writing an essay on Romeo + Juliet,” he told Danes. “I remember so clearly an amazing bit you do in that where you wake up and Romeo’s dead, and you do this amazing guttural sob. I remember writing paragraphs about that sob and how impactful it was.”
“You saw my guttural sob, and you raised it,” Danes responded. “I remember that moment very distinctly. I was surprised by it. I remember the shock of the discovery and being startled by my response, which is what we hope for. It doesn’t always happen.”
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