The Giver Movie Tie-In Edition
Published: July 1, 2014
Q: What attracted you to The Giver?
A: I read scripts all the time, and I have been in very tiny parts in one or two movies because I was always waiting for the right thing to come along to fully commit. When I read The Giver – first of all, I remembered reading the book, and I remember it deeply affecting me in school. But picturing the characters played by Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep, and these incredible actors who had already signed on to the project, it was absolutely an honor to be approached to play Rosemary.
Q: Well, describe Rosemary for us. It’s interesting because Rosemary in the book doesn’t play piano. When you were given the script, was she already a piano player, or did you put that in there? How did that work?
A: Rosemary is such an interesting character to me because she reminds me of an analogy for the modern-day artist: a lot of the time, you’ll have someone who is so fragile and so vunerable and so open, and that’s the reason why they are successfull at making art. But that can also be their downfall. Rosemary felt too much. She cared too much. She was exposed to too much, and she couldn’t handle it, and I think that we see that play out in modern-day society all the time.
When I read the script, Rosemary was playing piano. It’s so interesting that she gets to be a musician, because in my mind, that is exactly the kind of vunerable, sensitive human being who would be chosen to remember memories, and who might be so sensitive and vunerable that they end up getting completely pulled into it, and go into a downward spiral because of it.
Q: Memory is a very important part of this book. Your character exists in memories, and The Giver calls up different memories at different times. Do you have that experience in your own life? Are there certain memories that you take with you, that you really grab on to the way The Giver grabs on to the memory of Rosemary in difficult times?
A: I think for me, in what I do with songwriting, it’s all about celebrating memory. Almost every song of mine is in past tense, looking back. I very rarely write songs about what’s happening right now. Most of it is about something I’m looking back on that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time but I do now. Retrospect is a very important part of my songwriting process, so to be a part of a movie that so perfectly celebrates retrospect…it’s just the perfect match.
Q: Did you do anything to prepare for the role?
A: In order to prepare for the role of Rosemary, I figured out what memory I had in my own life that would make me want to make the choice that she made. And it’s a memory that always brings me to a place where I can’t really talk about it without crying. I knew with Rosemary, if she was going to make a choice she made in the end, which is a relly tragic choice to make, that I was probably going to be crying in a scene, and so I got a memory and figured out what I would have to expose myselft to, emotionally, in order to get to that place.
What I love is that Phillip [Noyce, the director] really brought to light different parts of Rosemary’s character that I didn’t get from reading the script. This is a very innocent free spirit, The Giver’s darling daughter, who was just sweet to her core. I think that was something that I really tried to bring to life: that she’s just such a soft, gentle person, and that in the end is why she wasn’t really tough enough to receive memories of loss and pain.
Q: Can you give us a few of your thoughts on the book? What about the book do you think affects kids so deeply?
A: I remember reading The Giver when I was in middle school, and it was so long ago that when I read the script, on page three it clicked with me – “Oh my God, I’ve read this before.” I had remembered elements of it. Emotion is such an important part of my life, and now I guess my job, because people wouldn’t listen to my songs if they weren’t heartbroken or deeply affected and hurt and jilted and sad and bitter and all those wonderful things that I write songs about. Emotion is such an important part of everything in my world. So the idea that people would be conditioned not to know what that even is – I can’t imagine that kind of world. I really can’t. Where there’s no such thing as falling in love. There’s no such a thing as wanting something you can’t have. There’s no such a thing as finding something to be so unique and one of a kind – and music, the idea that there wouldn’t be music in the world. All those things hit me so, so hard when I read that book, and reading it again, it all came flooding back.
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