Florence Pugh & Molly Shannon Interview - A Good Person (2023)

Diane really doesn't know what to do. She feels very alone and doesn't really know how to handle her daughter's addiction to OxyContin and really needs help. So she reaches out to her ex and doesn't really want to, but she's just desperate. So we just, we really see them together fighting this fight to get her off the pills and to get her life back on track and it's a real, you know, they really have to have to work as a team, but it's a real roller coaster ride there for a while. I'd never had a character that was so well matched with how I could play someone, how she sounded, and also I had someone write a character for me knowing full well what I was capable of and knowing full well what he could get out of me and that was only reassuring and inspiring and I've never been in that position where someone's written something uniquely for me because they know me and you'd think that it would make it easier, if anything it makes it wonderfully more challenging because that person knows exactly what you're capable of. So I read it and was very proud of him, obviously, but just so excited to do pretty much every single scene in the script. I was such a fan of Florence already before I got to come and start the movie, but what I was just saying to my hair and makeup team was she's just so down to earth and funny and sweet and just, oh my gosh, she's so talented. So we did our first big scene yesterday and she's just, you know, she's just a fantastic girl. I always feel like it helps to get to know somebody first, one-on-one, before you do scenes with them, especially because I'm playing her mother and we have such an intimate relationship as mother-daughter, so she just makes that so easy. She's just an absolute joy. In terms of casting my mom, Alison has to come from a totally loved household, but also a scatty household. She's had a dad that left her when she was younger with nothing other than her mom and the house and her mom has also tried to deal and handle that as well, so casting Molly Shannon as the mom who's totally lovable but also hasn't got her ---- together was perfect casting. And just in terms of the different energies that both those two different characters then bring to set meant that Alison also could be those two different energies, which was really cool. Take the last train to Clarkston, and I'll meet you at the station. You can be there by 4.30, because I booked your reservation, don't be late. Oh, no, no, no. Alison's interest in music kind of withers as she withers, so at the beginning we see her completely confident and completely full of life and she's raring to go and ready to sing any song. And this kind of came from my perspective of music. I used to sing and create and write songs a whole lot more than I do now, and the less I did it because I focused on acting or I focused on, you know, really trying to succeed in this industry, I left that to the side, thinking that one day I'll come back to it. But the less I touched it, I had no confidence in picking up the guitar and singing in front of people, and whenever my anxiety, my, you know, moods, my depression kind of like ebb and flow, I know that something like that, something like writing a song becomes really terrifying because I know that I'm going to be honest with myself. And I really wanted that to be put into, you know, how do we visibly see this woman's confidence just decrease so much so that even when she's singing with Morgan, with Daniel down in his basement, she doesn't even really sing it, she kind of sings it in a jokey way. Our two characters, Daniel and Allison, are constantly going head to head, whether it be their ages going head to head, whether it be that they are needing friendship in this part of their lives, they are both coming to each other with a need for some sort of love and some sort of validation in moving on with their lives. And working with Morgan Freeman, with doing that, kind of matched both of our personalities perfectly. You know, he's a legend. Everybody has ultimate respect for him the moment he comes on set, and he commands space and he commands power, and that is exactly how Daniel has possibly led his life as well. In this movie, these people who never would have met are weaved together through this terrible tragedy that then turns out to be kind of a beautiful thing, and in spite of the deep sadness of the loss, beauty and light and, you know, revitalization comes from this tragedy. So, it's just a beautiful story.