How Jessica Biel Found Empathy for Candy Montgomery in Hulu Series: ‘You’re Still Kind of With Her at the End’
01.06.2022 - 04:09
/ variety.com
Emily Longeretta In 1980, Texas homemaker Candy Montgomery was accused of murdering Betty Gore, the wife of the man she was involved with. It was a crime no one saw coming, and that was part of the reason Jessica Biel was drawn to play the role in Hulu’s limited series “Candy.”Starring opposite Melanie Lynskey and Pablo Schreiber, Biel completely transformed — wig, glasses and all — into the character.
She also worked double duty as an executive producer on the gory project. On this edition of the “Variety Awards Circuit Podcast,” we talk to “Candy” star and executive producer Jessica Biel about adapting the real-life true crime story.
After that, we chat with “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” star Adrien Brody about playing iconic Los Angeles Lakers coach Pat Riley. Listen below! Variety’s Emily Longeretta sat down with Biel to talk about starring and executive producing “Candy” and what brought her to the story:When you first picked up this script, why were you interested?The nonlinear storytelling, just the subtlety, the feeling of that suburban oppression, the mundanity of these people’s lives kind of flew off the page.
It was, at times, just stiflingly terrifying and also just normal, cool, nice, great and funny. It’s quite oddly funny until it’s not.Did you know about the case of Candy Montgomery?I had never heard of the story before, which did surprise me because I’m a huge true-crime fan.
I listen to a lot of podcasts; I’m kind of up to speed on true-crime stories. Once I really started diving into who she is and how this ending happened this way, I got really interested in why and how did this very normal woman — seemingly very normal, upstanding pillar of the community, good mother, good wife,
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