Todd Haynes Talks About The “Troubling And Fascinating” Dynamics of His Awards Contender ‘May December’ And Touches On New Gay Love Story With Joaquin Phoenix
25.11.2023 - 18:51
/ deadline.com
May December, the title of Todd Haynes’s latest drama, reflects the director’s dance card for the year: having opened in Cannes, the Netflix title has been a festival favorite ever since, and will likely hang in there until voting closes after Christmas. Its two star names, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, have been getting curious audiences through the doors, but what keeps the film playing in everyone’s minds is the moral maze of questions it poses.
Inspired by the real-life case of Mary Kay Letourneau, a Seattle teacher who went to prison for molesting a pupil and then, on release, married him, it stars Portman as Elizabeth Berry, an actress gearing up to play the part of Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Moore), a cheerful suburban mother with a checkered past, in an upcoming biopic. But just as important as these two A-listers is newcomer Charles Melton, a young model-turned-actor who plays Joe, Gracie’s husband and the father of their three children. Though the film is ostensibly the story of two headstrong women with more in common they care to admit, Haynes’s film gradually pivots to Joe and the growing realization that his relationship with Gracie is built on a lie…
DEADLINE: May December seems so much like a classic Todd Haynes movie, it was a surprise to discover that you didn’t actually write it yourself…
TODD HAYNES: No, it came fully intact out of the mind of Samy Burch. There was a bit of a buzz about this script. I didn’t know any of this at the time, but at the height of COVID, when everything was shut down, a lot of stuff was being circulated, speculatively, for when we would all get back to work. I was reading a lot of stuff that was coming to me — interesting books, or ideas from actors, or this or that. I