Rachel Brosnahan on I’m Your Woman: ‘We’re going to the bad place for waking a sleeping baby’

Rachel Brosnahan says babies are nightmare scene partners and admits the cast of her latest film – I’m Your Woman – may be “all going to the bad place for waking a sleeping baby”.

The Marvellous Mrs Maisel star plays suburban housewife Jean who finds herself on the run with her baby after her criminal husband goes missing.

The 1970s inspired crime drama used twins called Justin and Jameson to play baby Harry, who Brosnahan says “had very different personalities”. She says attempting to strategise how and when they used each of them was challenging.

Brosnahan told Sky News: “Babies aren’t acting, they’re extremely unprofessional and they’re just living their lives… There were beautiful scenes that Julia and Jordan [creators of the film Julia Hart and Jordan Horowitz] wrote that that obviously fell apart the minute that it required the baby to interact with me or just smile or to laugh.

“And of course, on all of those days, they were crying and not having it. They fell asleep in the middle of a scene sometimes. And we are all going to the bad place for waking a sleeping baby. But on the other side of that, they created these magical moments that we couldn’t possibly have expected.”

In the movie, which was also directed by Julia Hart, Jean teams up with Teri (played by Marsha Stephanie Blake), the wife of her husband’s old friend, and the pair find themselves thrust into a criminal underworld.

Blake too was working closely with a young first-time actor, who played her son. She says his rookie status was actually an advantage.

She told Sky News: “You don’t want anyone who’s too polished, weirdly you want someone who can be a kid. He had a lot of questions, but he was always excited.

“He cried on his last day because he was so happy that he had done this thing and met all these people and he thought of us as his friends. He couldn’t believe that now he had to leave. And so, of course, he got us all crying.”

A female take on a typically male genre, both women say the chance to reclaim 1970s crime drama attracted them to their role.

Brosnahan explains: “It’s a really different story about motherhood than anything that I’ve ever seen and one that that acknowledges and celebrates a non-traditional path towards motherhood – a struggle towards motherhood and a non-Instagram, perfect relationship to a child.”

She also says the role was “excitingly different” to her previous role of Midge Maisel – who was also a suburban housewife.

“On the one hand, you have this confident and loud and proud character in Midge who has the energy of a hummingbird and moves at a million miles an hour.

“And then you have Jean who is who is quiet and still and very careful with her words and is coming from a place of deep insecurity and trauma and is going on this journey frame by frame from being this woman to transforming into this quiet woman’s action hero of sorts.”

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Blake, says not only did the movie put women at the centre of the story, but also previously ignored black characters.

She explained: “I grew up watching nothing but old-crime dramas with my dad. We had a black and white TV in Jamaica and we’d just watch them every Sunday. There were never any black people in those things and I didn’t give it a thought – I was a kid and I didn’t care.

“But actually, black people did exist in those times, so how come we never saw them? I love that Julia and Jordan chose to write a film where you see these characters come to the forefront of the story.”

I’m Your Woman is now showing in select UK cinemas and streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

(c) Sky News 2020: Rachel Brosnahan on I’m Your Woman: ‘We’re going to the bad place for waking a sleeping baby’