Interview: Leah Goldstein aka Leah Fay (Actress, “Edith”)

The following interview was conducted by Kevin Scott (Exclaim, Torontoist) for the purposes of this press kit. Please free to re-publish excerpts from this interview, but we please ask that the entire text not be re-published elsewhere.

Kevin Scott:
Have you acted before?

Leah Goldstein aka Leah Fay (LG):
I have never acted before. I’ve had a lot of experience performing, I’ve been performing in dance since I was 4. I grew up doing that, and went to school for contemporary dance and got into performance art. I had a brief encounter with high-school drama. I haven’t really done any serious acting though.

KS:
How did you get involved?

LG:
I became involved because my band July Talk was playing the Mongrel Media TIFF party down at the Brickworks last September, and we played a pretty wild show as July Talk shows tend to be; pretty spontaneous and chaotic. And so, at one point I got everyone to do a limbo in the audience with my microphone stand – I got up on a speaker at one point and I walked out into the crowd and pretended to pass out. I was lying on the floor – it was a fun one. It was definitely a fun one.

Brian and Pavan saw that show. Then we played another show at Adelaide Hall the next day and Pavan and Brian were introduced to me right before I went up on the stage and started talking about this film, saying I should be in it. I was like “buuuut.. I’m just a singer in a band. I don’t know anything about acting”. But I agreed to meet with them and read the script and became intrigued.

KS:
So what attracted you to the character of Edith?

LG:
What attracted me to Edith was that on the page, she’s pretty unlikeable, I think. And I think she’s self-doubt, and jealousy personified, and those are traits people don’t like identifying with. It’s like a really dark, deep-seeded truth to everyone that no one really likes acknowledging.

And so to read this script that’s essentially just that doubt and that fear coming into play over and over again through Edith’s life. It’s a really hard to sit through and read. And I just couldn’t picture this character in real life. I didn’t want to identify with her at all. So it seemed like it would be a very uncomfortable, huge challenge to try and act out this character on screen. Especially considering I just have no experience, but I really like being made uncomfortable and being challenged in that way. That’s why I decided it would be a valuable experience if nothing else.

KS:
Such a commitment though. Was it a tough decision?

LG:
I don’t really know much about how regular film sets work. But in terms of shooting an indie film in this way – in this really DIY kind of 16 hour day, no sleep, no rest for the wicked kind of approach – it’s pretty similar to being in a touring rock n roll band.

So I think it kind of lended itself well to that. July Talk had these three weeks off in around 8 months and it was like “should we finally have a rest? Or should we shoot a movie”. And it was like “Let’s shoot a movie. It’ll be fun.” and so we kind of had just done SXSW and toured down into the States and then got home and it just kind of felt like immediately going into a whole other whirlwind, full-time job.

KS:
Without any acting experience, how do you approach building a character? How was it working with Pavan and Brian building Edith?

LG:
We developed Edith by maintaining a certain level of trust. I think that Pavan and Brian from the beginning were kind of like “you’re allowed to take this character and make it you, and make it what you want”. And I didn’t really have any idea how I was going to do that. But I knew that I wouldn’t have to be pretending to be something I wasn’t.

I think that because this character is kind of a like a brain-child of theirs, and not mine – I often ended up asking Pavan “well how would you say this” – because that’s not something I would ever say. And so I kind of think that Edith is kind of this Frankenstein version of me and Brian and Pavan. They’re really fun guys to work with [laughs]. But they have such an interesting dynamic between them. They disagree about things and they kind of drive each other crazy. I think that that kind of comes out a little maybe, in Edith as well.

KS:
What was the rehearsal process like?

LG:
I would go over to Pavan’s house in the evenings and stay there for hours at a time. There was the script we’d go over, talking about intentions, trying to reference things from my life and my experiences that could come into play. I think that because everyone’s had self-doubt, and I’ve experienced self-doubt, it was just a matter of thinking about it without thinking about it too much.

Edith’s whole thing is that she is just confused and lacks some pretty vital traits like human decency and responsibility and it just doesn’t compute with her. And it was kind of this level of being really in tune with what I was doing and what this Edith character was doing but also kind of trying not to think about it too much. Acting in the scene where I’m with Clare, we’re on the street after Edith’s movie opening and there’s a big blow-out between them, that was a thing I could easily connect with. What would it be like if you had wronged your best friend. It makes you feel terrible and so it was easy to relate to the human parts of Edith, more so than the neurotic, insane, psycho parts of Edith.

KS:
And when you did start shooting, what was the shooting process like? Was it different than you thought it would be?

LG:
I guess I had no idea what it would be like. Everyone just has to kind of carry their own weight. Like I was quite literally carrying around a human sized bag of clothing for my 21 day wardrobe [laughs] or whatever it’s supposed to be. And shoot days were well-planned in terms of scheduling and things like that, but often two hour things turned into four hour things, and the four hour things turned into seven hour things and all of a sudden it’s two in the morning and everyone is kind of going crazy. I don’t know if I was expecting that, but I was ready for that.

KS:
Did you prefer acting in scenes that were more improvised or did you like the more scripted scenes more?

LG:
I definitely had more fun when things were more improvised because there was freedom in the character to be able to make your own. We would often just rehearse scenes. Pavan and Brian both kind of had an idea of which scenes needed to stay more on track based on chemistry between me and whoever I was working with in that scene. And just like, how important certain things got said.

And so, most of the film was “you have to cover this point, this point, and this point” and then we would just shoot it a few times more off the page, and just keep going and just let things go and then become more like this. And I really enjoyed working that way just because I really have no reference of how to do this. A lot of what came out had to do so much with whoever I was feeding off of. And so there were scenes with Nick for example where we would just shoot something that was supposed to be a minute and a half and it would take 12 minutes because he would just be taking the piss out of me and I would just be laughing.

KS:
Did you have set scenes? Or more just outlines of scenes?

LG:
Well, it’s just like “if this scene needs to portray that you and Nick are best friends and this is how you always act with eachother” – it was a lot easier to do that when I was just able to work off of Nick and his natural hilarity of being a very funny, funny dude.

KS:
What about the scene where Edith is on the Strombo show [ed. note: very popular, now-ended Canadian talk show]. What was that like? Were you excited? Nerve-racking?

LG:
It was really nerve-racking because it was one of the earlier shoot days first of all. Everyone was getting sick and obviously I’m a huge George Stromboloupolous fan since he was on Much Music back in the day. And obviously just respect him so much and he’s just so talented and has always done such amazing things. I just wasn’t really sure what was happening in terms of like “does he know that I’m playing a character? Has he heard of my band? What’s going to happen here, does the audience know I was playing this deluded character who was having a fantasy about this? It was very strange.

KS:
So you didn’t know what was going on?

LG:
No, not really I was just told “you have to go do this thing and it’s going to happen really quick and, just get in there”. And so, I knew that it wasn’t going to be on TV, which was helpful. I was talking to Pavan about it before and I wanted to go on and say “I’ve respected your work for so long, it’s really great to meet you”. Because that’s something that Leah would say, maybe not something that Edith would say. I wanted to compliment the shit out of him, but Pavan was like “No Leah, you’re either on his level, or you’re above him. You’re never below him, don’t look up to him at all, don’t kiss his ass, don’t compliment him. At the end of the shoot be like “hey are we still getting that drink later?” Do that sort of thing. UGH.

Anyways, so apparently Pavan was joking when he said all that stuff. I guess none of that stuff was in the film so I don’t really need to be talking about any of it. But yeah it was a pretty wild experience. It would be completely nerve-racking to go on George’s show as yourself. And to do it as someone else is completely mind-boggling and something I don’t wish on anyone.

It was like a scene we did where I went to an improv class as Edith and was just given these really wacky bizarre instructions in terms of like, whether to cooperate or whether not to cooperate. It wasn’t like “this is Leah, Leah is playing Edith” “This is what the movie is about, and this is what the character is like”. It was like “you’re Edith, the actors in this class have been given very little information about what is going on and you just have to go in and see what happens when your character participates in an improv class”.

But I got to go on the Strombo show and I got to meet Laura Jane Grace [of the band Against Me] and now we’re buds. The improv was painful but also really exciting. Like I was talking earlier about being happiest in uncomfortable situations. Those were two extremely uncomfortable situations that I feel like are completely character building. When you’re done with them you kind of know yourself better a little bit.

KS:
Did Strombo live up to your expectations?

LG:
Well he was very kind to me, and just such a gentleman even when I was basically shitting on him and talking down to him. And I haven’t been able to meet him since as my regular self. So hopefully one day I’ll be able to apologize.

KS:
You’ve seen the finished version of the film, did it turn out to be what you expected?

LG:
I had no expectations. I think it’s a thing that people who are in movies say all the time, which is it’s a really strange experience to watch yourself on camera. I don’t really know if I like it. I don’t know how I did. I have no idea whether it’s a good movie or not. I don’t know how to judge it.

KS:
Well, you’re in the whole movie – in every scene. It’s got to be hard to be objective about it and engaged with if its good or not. How do you think Edith changed from the version on the page, to the way she appears on the screen. Do you think there were any traits you emphasized from the page to the screen?

LG:
I think that I emphasized Edith’s spaciness, and I’m not even really sure that that’s something that was readable from the script, but in talking to Pavan about the finished film, he was like “you know there’s moments where she says these things and then she just looks off into space, and you don’t really know what’s going on in her mind” I think that she’s a little bit spacey and I think that I probably helped her space out a bit. I think it helps her seem less evil. Because you’re like ‘does she know she’s being a horrid bitch right now, or does she think this is a regular thing to do.”

I don’t know if people are like that in real life. I don’t know if someone would do the horrid things she does in real life, in reality. And whether she would be interesting or not. I think the most interesting thing about Edith is…I don’t know…do you like her?

KS:
I don’t know if I like her, but I think she’s an interesting character. I agree that you can see the humanity come through. I like the fact that she’s a little bit of an unlikeable protagonist. It makes for an interesting character. Do you want to continue acting in films?

LG:
I would try it again, I think, again, maybe. The right project, yeah.

KS:
How many takes did you do spitting in Adam’s face? Was that real spit? How did that feel?

LG:
Terrible! It was awful! I was also getting sick, or was really sick at the time. And so I told him to go home and have a bottle of vitamin C. I felt really bad about that.

KS:
Just one take then?

LG:
Ah no! Like 4 or 5. He would probably be able to tell you better than I would. That’s the thing though, like 10am – 1pm you’re spitting in Adam’s face, 3pm – 6pm you’re going to belittle Strombo on his show, then 8pm – 9pm you’re going to make out with a stranger. And then like, oh, after that you need to have a big blow out with your best friend in a cab. Those were the days. Those..were..the..days.