There are so many extreme closeups in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Rose Byrne asked director Mary Bronstein if she really wanted to be that close.
“I asked one time and I never asked again,” Byrne says. “That was her vision. That was the language of the camera. It becomes so close, it’s just a stillness required in some aspects. And any actor worth their salt has a great power of disassociation, so you have a balance of technical awareness and total suspension.”
Rose Byrne stars in 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You."
In the heartbreaking drama, Byrne plays a therapist who must deal with a pediatric feeding disorder affecting her daughter. While trying to cope while her husband is away, the ceiling in their home collapses, flooding the place. Mom and daughter are forced to move into a seedy motel, and soon the traumas become too much to bear. Like Jennifer Lawrence in “Die My Love” and Amy Adams in “Nightbitch,” she’s a woman on the edge and doesn’t know where to turn.
She thinks her boss (played by Conan O’Brien) might provide a shoulder to cry on, but he’s not taking any of her excuses. “He was her only guardrail … she’s experiencing burnout as a therapist and he’s not actively helping her,” Byrne says. “It’s a wonderful examination of therapy … and Conan was wonderful. He was nervous … he worked so hard. He added a quality to our chemistry that would not have been there if it had been a more typical casting choice.”
Bronstein, however, wanted to do something unexpected. She wanted to offset the dynamic. Casting a comedian in a very serious role was the answer.
That kind of surprise, Byrne says, helps separate “If I Had Legs” from other women-in-crisis films.
Conan O'Brien, left, takes a dramatic turn in "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You."
“There’s always a collective consciousness of (similar) movies,” Byrne says. “There were two Marilyn Monroe films and, last year, ‘Nightbitch’ was also about a wonderful woman unraveling. More is more. I love being part of a conversation that’s examining these things. I hope these films won’t all be lumped together but can really reflect on all the different ways that these experiences unfold.”
“If I Had Legs” also leans into Byrne’s comedic past.
“Comedy is harder than anything,” she says. “What I think is funny, someone else isn’t going to think is funny. We can all collectively agree what is sad. But I approach comedy the same way I approach drama.”
Working with Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig on “Bridesmaids” taught her plenty.
“Comedy has been a completely freeing experience creatively," she says. "I’m obsessed with it. So for me, I’m always trying to find humor…it comes from the same place and (Linda, her character) gets those moments. Mary and I immediately connected on how funny some of these weird situations are.”
To get through all the dark moments in “If I Had Legs,” Byrne was thrilled she had Delaney Quinn, who plays her daughter, as a scene partner.
“My performance is entirely informed by her,” Byrne says. “Acting is reacting, and it’s entirely because of Delaney that all those scenes unfolded like they did.”
Now, Byrne is in the heat of “awards season,” having already won several critics' prizes as Best Actress.
“I’ve been navigating a path as an actress for many years. It’s very hard to anticipate what will come, what you will be drawn to next and what won’t come your way,” she says. “I’ve sort of given up a little bit trying to do that. But this role has been such an extraordinary experience, I’ll probably have to do a silent film after this.”
A silent film in extreme closeup? That’s probably fine, too.
