Setting the Scenes: Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac Dig Deeply Into a Couple in Crisis in HBO’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac are real “scene stealers” in HBO’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE, which debuts Sunday, Sept. 12, only on Crave. The five-episode limited series, written and directed by Hagai Levi (IN TREATMENT, THE AFFAIR), is an English-language remake of the 1973 Swedish mini-series of the same name by Ingmar Bergman. This new version updates the story to incorporate modern issues and situations, but the elemental intensity and intimacy remain the same. Playing a couple in crisis named Mira and Jonathan, Chastain and Isaac access every emotion in their acting toolkits. So, they were asked, in a project such as this, where every nuance, every pause, every interruption, carries so much subtext, do they feel that weight as actors? Is SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE heavy lifting, or is it merely powerful fuel for top-level actors? “For me, it feels much easier than doing something where it’s like, ‘Okay, can you show up here, and do two lines, and I’m gonna put it in this scene, or whatever’ – like, on a film,” Chastain explained. “This, to me, is a lot of rehearsal and work before we arrive. But once we’re acting, it doesn’t feel like heavy lifting at all. It feels like you’re not acting, and the reason I wanted to be in this industry was to feel that.” Chastain and Isaac spent a lot of time imagining Mira and Jonathan’s backstory, to help add emotional depth at crucial moments. They even kept a notebook where they wrote it all down. “When I first read the scripts, what I found harrowing was the situations – the character (Jonathan) was a bit of a mystery to me, I didn’t totally understand him, I didn’t really even relate to some of the ways he responds,” Isaac said. “But the situations themselves were presented in such a way that I would finish reading, and my heart would be racing. And that’s rare.” Isaac added that even all the prep work that he did with Chastain didn’t really feel like work in the traditional sense. “It wasn’t, ‘I gotta do all this work, so that I can try to make this s— work somehow,’ or, ‘I have to add all this stuff so that somehow these stupid lines make sense,’ ” he explained. “It was more about the curiosity and excitement of, okay, there’s a clue here, where do we go to let this thing breathe and live? The actual doing of it, like Jessica said, was like surfing.” Did Chastain and Isaac have any reservations about tackling a remake of such a famous work? “Well, I joined right before (production began), and when Oscar emailed me about it, I kind of just knew, listen, if the scripts don’t completely disrespect the original, I’m definitely doing it,” Chastain said. “Because we’ve known each other for such a long time, we’ve been friends for such a long time, we went to school together, and we have very similar ways of working. So Oscar was a huge reason why I jumped on – I would not normally jump on (so late). I think when I signed on, it was like three days later, we were in rehearsal.” Isaac admitted that he initially had “a little bit of trepidation – ‘oh, are people going to want to watch more, you know, married people in trouble?’ You make those calculations,” he said. “But I mentioned it to Jessica, because I was like, ‘Uh, you’re the person I’d want to do this with, it would make the most sense.’ And once we were rehearsing, Hagai’s take on it was so different, and took inspiration from (the original), sometimes took dialogue from it, but he let it filter through what interests him psychologically about relationships.” The end result is that SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE gives viewers lots to think about, relating to what society expects of romantic partners versus what they truly want. Both Chastain and Isaac acknowledged that it was hard for them to shake off Mira and Jonathan at the end of long shooting days. “I wish I were a better actress and I could,” Chastain said with a smile. “That’s the honest truth. Something like this, it went so deep. Even talking about it now, it affects me.” Isaac added, “I did take some cold showers. Probably my drinking increased. There were a few more Negronis happening nightly.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv