Meryl Streep: Quick Thoughts

What attracted you to the project?
I've admired Jonathan Demme as a director for a long time and I wanted to work with him. And I thought I was going to work with Denzel, but we have one scene where he sort of shoves me into some potted plants, but other than that, we were ships in the night. And Liev Schreiber is an actor I really admire, so I was attracted by the cast and the director, but the script is fantastic.

Can you tell us about your role in the film?
I play a loving mother and things go wrong, horrible wrong but it's not for lack of best intentions.

What are your character's aspirations?
This character is lit up by her ambition, and her belief, and her optimism, and her gung-ho, “Say, “yes," can-do feeling about what she feels is right for the country, and that involves a very capable, in fact brilliant candidate, which is her son.

What are your thoughts on Leiv Schreiber?
Liev is a very accomplished actor. He's extremely bright. And this was a really hard role, I mean, so was mine, but his was really hard because he never knew when he was being controlled by forces other than his own self-generated will. And it was a really interesting thing to see [this] sort of, this self wrestle down this other influence that came from an artificial source. I think he does an amazing job. You can really literally see the two forces at war behind his eyes and I think he's amazing in the part.

And Denzel?
Denzel, as a actor, brings such size and a sort of broken dignity to this role that I think a lot of the work that other actors huff and puff to do, he just sort of walks in with it. It's a great quality, it's star quality.