Another interview from last weekend’s SXSW screenings!

Another movie blog that caught up with Chloë Sevigny at the SXSW 2010 Festival last weekend was CinemaBlend, from which the resulting article is now available for reading online. In the interview, Chloë talks in particularly great depth about working on Barry Munday and her character Jennifer Farley, but although some of it is stuff we’ve already read in previous SXSW interviews, there’s a lot of new insight here into the character and how Chloë portrayed her. She also relates working on a film to working on Big Love in an interesting way as well as talks about the downsides to working on a TV series.

Read the article in full at CinemaBlend.com; excerpts follow:

Chloe Sevigny has certainly made her mark on Hollywood, from controversial turns in Boys Don’t Cry and The Brown Bunny to her continuing role as polygamist wife Nicolette on HBO’s Big Love. One thing she hasn’t done much of is straight-up comedy, an oversight she is looking to correct with her role in Barry Munday. Sevigny appears as Jennifer Farley, the overly flirty, golden-child sister to Judy Greer’s Ginger. While she only spent a week or so shooting her part, Sevigny gives it her all, playing under-the-table footsie with Patrick Wilson’s Barry during an awkward family dinner, working a stripper pole as a dancer who may or may not be Jennifer, and selling the affection for Ginger that hides underneath their continuous sniping and name-calling. During the Barry Munday press junket at SXSW, Chloe sat down with us to talk about the challenges of making your mark with a little screen time, the differences between feature and series work, and why Judy Greer should star in every Hollywood movie.

[...] How did you approach the character once you’d decided to take the role?
I mean, she’s a supporting character, a small part in the film, but I just tried to figure out what her relationship with the other people was in the film, with her father and with Judy’s character. You just have fun with it and try to react how you think the character would react to the scenes.

How much freedom did you guys have as far as ad-libbing? Was it pretty straight off the script?
It was pretty straight. I think Patrick and Judy did a lot of that, but for most of us it was pretty straight off the script. Most of it was shot with pretty static wide shots, and it was pretty true.

Was there anything in the film or your performance that you thought worked better than you had anticipated?
Oh, I thought everything was terrible. I thought I was terrible. [laughs] I feel like I could have been bigger, I could have been broader. I tend to, in film, kind of play things smaller.

I thought that worked, though. Even when you were playing the broader moments, you still had the more subtle stuff going on as well.
I was really nervous, and I wish I had been more confident. When I watch my performance I can see I’m holding back. I wish I had been more at ease. I’ve been shooting Big Love for so long, this is the first film I’ve done in a while, so I was getting out of that comfort zone and I feel like I was a little shook up.

[...] Do you think you’ll want to do more series work after Big Love wraps up?
No, it’s too grueling. If we shot in New York I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but we shoot in Los Angeles, and I live in New York. It’s really hard to be uprooted for six months, and I miss home a lot. I’d prefer to go back to film.

How is it different preparing for a series role that’s day in, day out, as opposed to something like this where you have so little time involved?
I think it’s just a lot more pressure to make the scenes work when you’re doing a film, because when you’re doing a series you feel like, I have so many scenes, so many episodes, so if I don’t get it exactly right this time, I have another scene later. You feel less pressure. And of course I’ve been playing the character for so long, I feel very comfortable. There’s so much to feed on and so much backstory and so much true-life experience to draw upon from other people’s eyes. There’s just so much information about the character and the people who live these lifestyles, so much to draw on. I find it much more difficult to play a supporting part like in this film. It’s much more of a challenge to portray and to feel like you’re bringing something.