Interview: How Zoey Deutch Built Her Singular Version of Jean Seberg for Richard Linklater’s ‘Nouvelle Vague’
A lot has changed for actress Zoey Deutch since the last time she starred in a Richard Linklater film. Since 2016’s Everybody Wants Some!, Deutch has established herself as all-encompassing, multitalented actress, starring in a variety of films ranging from Before I Fall, The Disaster Artist, Set It Up (opposite her Everybody co-star Glen Powell), Buffaloed (an underrated performance/film), The Outfit, and The Threesome from earlier this year, which she also produced. She also starred in the Ryan Murphy/Netflix vehicle The Politician, and last year, was Emily Webb in the Broadway revival of Our Town, where she received critical acclaim for her performance. The world is Deutch’s oyster, as she has made all the right choices so far in her young career, showcasing her versatility as a performer, while leaving audiences equally curious and excited to see what next role she’s going to transform into. The LA-based actress has had performing in her blood, being the daughter of actress Lea Thompson and director Howard Deutch, and the sister of actress Madelyn Deutch, and has been studying her craft since she was five years old, going to various acting schools in the greater Los Angeles area in her adolescence. For the first couple of years of her career, she had small roles on various television shows, and small parts in films like Beautiful Creatures. But it was Everybody Wants Some! where the world got to know her, her relationship with Linklater began, and where the kernel of an idea began to circulate for their latest collaboration, Nouvelle Vague.
In Linklater’s latest trip to the past, the director is exploring the creation of one of the most important films in The French New Wave of cinema, and in film history, in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. When the director tapped Deutch to play the iconic actress Jean Seberg, it was a daunting task to ask considering who Deutch would be partying, the importance of this performance to an all-time film, and that Deutch had to learn how to speak French since she didn’t know the language at all. But as one does, Deutch learned it quickly, studied everything there is to know about Seberg and this vital time in her career, and delivered some of the most detailed, layered work of her career. Our own Erik Anderson raved in his review out of the Cannes Film Festival from earlier this year about Deutch, calling her “remarkable,” and that her chemistry with Guillaume Marbeck’s Godard is “crackles as the real life behind the scenes tête à tête between the duo was legendary in terms of director/star clashes,” and I’d have to agree, it’s their work that makes the film so special.
In a recent conversation I had with Deutch at the Middleburg Film Festival, we spoke about how this is the first film she’s gone on the festival circuit for, what the Cannes premiere was like, and what it was like working with Linklater again. We also talked about her research process into becoming Jean Seberg, working with Marbeck in his very first film, if she’s considered stepping into the director’s chair, and what it’s been like recreating and learning so much about the French New Wave. Inquisitive and excited about the next chapter of her career, if Deutch continues to put in work like she did in Nouvelle Vague, we will all be the beneficiaries of seeing someone blossom into a premiere talent of her generation.
RM: So you have been around the world, literally, with this film. I guess the first thing I can ask you is, how are you feeling? You’ve been traveling everywhere with this wonderful film.
Zoey Deutch: Yeah. I mean, how am I feeling? I feel so lucky and grateful and just. This is the first time I’ve done something like this, this festival circuit, and it’s quite a unique experience. I feel like one of the things I’m proud of that I’ve established is a good balance of, no matter what I’m doing work-wise, I will always tack on something that’s important and personal to me. And even if it’s, I’m only in Middleburg for 14 hours, I’m going to go and take a 15-minute walk with my coffee and go sit down outside and enjoy it. And there are versions of that that are a little bit longer, when I get to be in a place more than 14 hours. But I always find a way to experience a place and have fun.
And I hadn’t been to Telluride before, which was so beautiful. I went on a bunch of hikes and saw… That festival is very unique, in that you actually get a chance to see other films. It was my first time at Cannes. It was like the most amazing, surreal, awesome movie version of what I thought Cannes would be like.
RM: And you’re recreating the festival in the film. Rick’s recreating it literally.
ZD: Yeah, exactly. No, he is. And so it was very meta to be in the theater that is in the film as well. But yeah, long answer short, I’m just having a blast. And I’m enjoying it and I’m meeting my heroes, all these great directors who I could only dream of working with, and getting to tell them that. How sick?
RM: When did Rick first approach you about this? Did I read it right? Did he approach you or hint at it during Everybody Wants Some! or shortly after that? Was it like, “Hey, I’ve maybe got this idea?” Cause we know he’s always got an idea, and some ideas he’s been wanting to do for decades or he is filming for decades.
ZD: Yeah. He’s very patient. And I think he’s of the mindset that you don’t force anything to happen. If it happens, it’s supposed to happen at that time. And he’s sort of had so much evidence to prove that that’s a method that really works for him. He waters all these different plants then sees what grows.
And this is something he’s been watering for 15-plus years. He mentioned… He had been working on it for years and had been wanting to make it for years when he said to me, when we were shooting Everybody Wants Some!!, “Hey, I’m making a film about the making of Breathless and I think I want you to play Jean Seberg.” That was over 10 years ago.
But to be totally honest, I didn’t really hear anything again for another five years, and then another two years. And then I thought maybe potentially it would be real. So I started learning French, because I didn’t speak a word of French. So I had to start learning so I could be ready to be lucky, if I was lucky enough to still be cast.
RM: I was going to ask you about your process for Jean. How was that? You’re able to just nail her essence and the original film perfectly. But there’s also the pressure of, you’re not only trying to learn this language, but you’re also trying at times to mimic this iconic performance, but also bring your own to it. So there’s a lot you’re balancing within learning the language and learning a character. What was it like to prepare and then create something new in this established film world?
ZD: The technical aspect was really fun, and also a different challenge for me because she was obviously… Or maybe not obviously for some people who don’t know, she’s from the Midwest. She’s from Iowa. She’s known as being a French icon, cinema icon, but she’s from Iowa. And when she made Breathless she was learning French, so she was not fluent yet. And she had a very, what is famous in France, a very, very famous American French accent.
And so the technical aspect, I was learning her very specific dialect of French, her American speaking voice, which had a little bit of Iowa, a little bit of a mid-Atlantic. And then her accent or voice that she used to play Patricia in Breathless.
So there were three different dialects that I was sort of narrowing in on, and obviously learning French because it wasn’t… You can learn phonetically how to speak these words and not know what you’re saying, that’s totally possible. But that rule doesn’t apply to listening to your other actors. So I actually did have to learn French, and I had to learn the entire… So that was a totally unique experience.
And then the other technical aspect of it was the physicality, and also there was the transformational part of it. I obviously cut all my hair off and I had fake teeth made, and there were other physical things that I did to feel closer in physicality to her.
But then there was the inner world that was so fun, because as an actor, when you create a character you’re starting with nothing, usually. That’s your job, you’re building a life. It’s memories, it’s dreams, its favorite color. What was the first time they felt shame? What was the first movie they watched? How do they sit in a chair? You’re building everything.
When you’re playing a real person, so much of that is done for you. So much of it is already in existence, and so you’re filling in the gaps of the things that you don’t know. Which was really fun, and I have my sort of normal process of… I work with my acting teacher and break down the character and the scenes, and a more sort of just logical way so that I can understand where I’m coming from. And then I work with a really wonderful movement coach, and we pick an animal and we pick colors and symbols and kind of create almost like a mood board. And that helped me sort of fill in the gaps of the character, for the parts of Jean that I didn’t know about. Yeah.
RM: When you’re doing the research on her, are there things that you found and discovered that moved you, or that you didn’t expect? Did it make you see her as a person differently, and did it change your process from what you read on the page in the script Rick gave you?
ZD: Yeah, definitely. I think understanding what she went through right before Breathless, making… The only two films that she had done prior to Breathless were with Otto Preminger, Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse. They were traumatizing experiences. I mean, she was literally burned. When she was shooting Saint Joan playing Joan of Arc, they didn’t do the special effects correctly. Her entire body, when they did it wrong and she actually was on fire, her skin was burning and they didn’t stop because he liked the way it looked. And he used that take in the film. She was forever scarred from that.
And he was ruthless and rigid and mean, and she was destroyed by the American press. And again, she had no foundation or support system. She was a teenager plucked from obscurity in Marshalltown, Iowa. And so the information that I got and gathered from what happened to her prior just gave me that much more empathy for her. And just, I don’t know how she got through it all.
RM: You are now the veteran in the film working with Rick, but you have your leading man here who is literally a first time actor. He was an extra, if I’m not mistaken, before this, and landed this role and is absolutely incredible in this. Could you talk a little bit about just working with Guillaume [Marbec])?
ZD: Yeah, totally. Well look, I have to say though, I felt like I was making a movie for the first time because I was so not on stable ground, I was doing something out of my comfort zone. I was doing a film in a foreign country with an entirely French cast and crew, in a language that I am really just learning. So I did not feel like I was like, “Hey guys, let me show you the ropes.” That was not how I was coming into it, you know?
RM: So completely opposite of Everybody Wants Some!. You’re not in South Texas anymore, you’re in the South of France.
ZD: Right? I definitely was shocked, so surprised at the level of confidence that Guillaume Marbeck had, in the most moving way. I mean, this man felt like… I felt like he had this spirit of Godard running through him. I kept trying to… I kept asking Michèle Halberstadt, our producer, “Are you sure this guy hasn’t been a movie star for the last 25 years and you just don’t know it?”
Because I guess… I’m very impressed by him as an actor. Deep… I mean very, he’s incredible in the film. But I’m equally maybe even a little bit more impressed by his off-camera etiquette of how he led the team as number one on the call sheet. That requires and takes a lot of time and experience and knowledge to step into that role, and he did it seamlessly. He was just wonderful.
And in the press side of it too, it’s like there’s acting, which is a whole thing for lack of a better way of describing it. But then there’s the stuff before and there’s the stuff after. And that’s usually the stuff that people can’t handle. I mean, you see it all the time. And it’s devastating, because some of the greatest artists in the world can’t deal with the before and after. And I was so moved to see him not only do so well at the acting part, but do so well at the before and after.
And I’m just his biggest fan and very, very excited to see where this takes him. I think he’s… If there’s one thing Rick has… I mean, one of the many things Rick has proven himself to be is he really knows how to pick them and find them. I mean, you look at the actors that he’s discovered, it’s a crazy track record. And I think Guillaume is no exception to that.
RM: What was so wonderful about the film was how Jean seemed to want to just murder Godard. It wasn’t a perfect collaboration but she was willing to jump right back in and keep working, given he’s making this very unconventional movie. It wasn’t all rainbows in making Breathless. And I think you and Guillaume conveyed that perfectly, but that goes back to incorporating Jean’s past to understand where she is at right now.
ZD: What do they say? Hate and love are pretty close.
RM: They’re very close. Yeah, no, but I think you find that balance in the film so well.
ZD: Thank you. I think one of the things I was acutely aware of is that she starts as a skeptic and ends as a skeptic. So where’s the journey and where’s the other stuff to mine in there? And Rick is such an amazing collaborator, and we were able to find a lot more to explore. But I think she’s very in the right to be as exasperated as she is. I mean, it was very avant-garde… yes, groundbreaking, but loose style of filmmaking that didn’t exist. So there was no guidance. And she just wanted to be good and do the right thing, and not be in a film that turned out to be a disaster like Saint Joan. So…
RM: What was your relationship with French cinema, the French New Wave before this? And after playing this role and being in this film, has that changed or are you finding yourself going back and diving into more of this era or eras post this time in cinema? Cause sometimes when I watch something it opens up something within where I’m like, “Okay, that person connected to that director,” and then you go on a rabbit hole of influences and inspirations. So for yourself, was it already kind of ingrained in there before? And did this film open something up that you’ve been exploring after making Nouvelle Vague?
ZD: I like to say I’m bad at everything until you give me a job and I have to do it. Like, until I get a job and I have to do it. So for example, you could try to teach me how to drive stick shift in a car a million times and I wouldn’t get it. But you’re like… This happened on a movie. They were like, “You need to drive this.” I was doing Zombieland 2 and they were like, “You need to drive this ice cream truck and do a stunt. It’s a stick shift.” And literally five minutes I learned it, and I was like, “Oh, I can learn stick.”
It’s a strange problem in my brain where I’m really motivated, because I love my job and I care so much about my job, that when it’s channeled and funneled through a character I’m motivated on a level, that, me as Zoey, I’m not.
So that I only give that example as it applied to obscure French cinema. Not just New Wave, but the deep cuts. Because I think part of me felt like it was the cool club that I wasn’t invited to. And of course I had seen Breathless and 400 Blows, but I think I just didn’t feel like I was a part of the club. I didn’t go to film school or write about cinema. So who am I to be a part of this club?
And the beauty of this job is you get to not only take a crash course but take this AP crash course.
RM: A New Wave cinema course.
ZD: Yeah, with the greatest teachers. It’s really one of the greatest gifts of this job. So like I said, I had a very sort of basic understanding of New Wave cinema, and this opened my eyes to a whole new world. And I love it, and I fell so deeply in love with New Wave. Rick gave me so many recommendations. And I tried to focus on what came before 1959, the things that inspired Godard.
RM: In the time since Everybody Wants Some!! and this, you’ve become a producer, working on various other projects. And you’ve grown, Rick’s obviously grown in this time. And this is such a deeply personal project for him, and you know him better. And I feel like one day we’re going to see you behind that camera as well. But I could see you doing something like this in terms of something from Rick’s past, because Slacker is such an important film in the 1990s to what Breathless is. If you had the chance to make a Nouvelle Vague style of film from Rick’s past…
ZD: You mean like a making-of?
RM: Yeah. Which one would you want to tackle?
ZD: I mean, I think it would have to be…I mean, it would be impossible, but the one that I’m the most, “How the hell did he…” In the way that I feel like Breathless was such a revolutionary film, Boyhood was just… “How did you do that?” You know?
RM: Have you asked him that before?
ZD: Of course, I asked. By the way, I asked that man just basic, “How are you as prolific as you are?” And I’ve been there and I’ve seen it, and I can’t quite compute how he does it. But yeah, Boyhood is the one where I’m just so, yeah, moved by it.
RM: Lastly, as you go forward, what are you looking for in projects? Projects to produce, projects to act in, potentially even direct? What do you hope to continue to make with the freedom of choices that you have?
ZD: Well I’m definitely not ready to direct, but never say never. I’m really just focused on hoping to get to work with these directors who I love so much, and admire and want to learn from. It’s really… It’s director-focused for me right now. And I feel so inspired in my life and so grateful for a new chapter, and ready to see what comes next.
RM: I can’t wait to see it, too. Thank you so much for your time, Zoey.
ZD: Thank you Ryan for your great questions.
Nouvelle Vague is currently in select theaters and will be on Netflix November 14.
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