CraveOnline: Kaitlyn Dever was so amazing in the movie also. Could you have given a performance like hers at her age?
Brie Larson: [Laughs] That’s kind of a weird question. I mean, I have no idea. I don’t know. I don’t know if I could do Short Term 12 tomorrow. I recognized a lot of myself in her because I was just as serious and prepared and oddly wise beyond my years at that age. I think that’s why the scenes worked really well and we just got along well and worked great on and off screen, because I relate to her and her reasons for being an actor. I think Katilyn’s a pretty special person so I don’t know. I would hate to say that I could do what she’s doing because I’m sure I could do it but in a different way.
There’s a scene where you’re sitting down in the shower, it’s just a 5-10 second shot but you put a wet towel over your face. I was wondering, is Grace trying to waterboard herself?
I think there is something really interesting in the exploration of breathing, of the times when we actually allow ourselves to breathe and how we breathe and hyperventilating and what that means. I don’t know exactly what she’s trying to do in that moment other than it’s a combination of trying to get oxygen in your body and breathe, and then also not being able to.
We talk about all the emotional moments of this film, but was humor an important way in?
Yeah, that’s another thing that you learn when you’re actually on the floor with these kids is that they’ve been through so much that the best thing that you can do is keep it light. You start to understand, and this goes on into my personal life now, a conflict arises and you can either make it a big sit down and you could feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, or you can just make a joke about it and you can use humor as this incredible boundary to talk about things that could be painful, but you spin it and look at it in a different way. That’s I think how it actually goes down on the floor, and then it also is very apparent I guess to the audience that it’s not about indulging in the sadness. It’s about seeing the hope, seeing the beauty, seeing the humor in the flaw.
That’s also what makes it great drama to me.
Yeah, because it’s not just beating you over the head with these horrific images. It’s just kind of laying things out for you.
What were the most emotional days?
I think in my mind the most emotional day was the day that ended with the scene where Marcus tries to hurt himself, just because I have an aversion to blood. I faint at the sight of it and it’s something that I really have a hard time with. So doing a scene like that over and over again and dealing with somebody who, even though I know he’s acting unconscious and he’s holding fake blood, it still all looks like it.
I was really good at separating myself from Grace and that world, but the blood really shook me so that was the one day that I left set without really speaking to anybody. I didn’t really remember driving home. My mind was just swirled. A few people from set called to make sure that I got home because they were concerned about my reaction to it.
Even that, it was a couple hours and then it’s done. You go home, make yourself some soup and it’s fine. You remember that it’s not real life. It was the same as when you have a nightmare and you wake up and you still can’t stop thinking about it because even though you know and can rationalize that it’s not real, it still felt real at the time.
They gave us a shirt with the octopus on it. The octopus is such a sad story in the film, can I even wear that shirt?
[Laughs] That’s the funny thing we joke about. We were giving out those shirts too before the film and people are like, “Cute, an octopus, it’s like a children’s story.” People don’t realize what it actually represents, but if you realize the octopus has all of its tentacles. So if you can see it’s a metaphor, this is like the rejuvenated octopus. Think of it that way. This is somebody who might’ve been abused and now is not.
Thank you, that really does make me feel a lot better.
I’m glad. I’m glad to do that.
