Michele Austin on Feeling Safe to Explore the Complexities of Black Storytelling in Mike Leigh’s ‘Hard Truths’

When Hard Truths made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival in September, the film’s rapturous response inspired a deep well of emotion for one of its stars, Michele Austin.

“It was a real woof moment,” Austin recalled in her interview with AwardsWatch. “It was so emotional and wonderful, the reaction to it.”

Heightening the experience for Austin and the creative team, which includes filmmaker Mike Leigh and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, in their first collaboration since 1996’s Oscar-nominated Secrets & Lies, was the initially chilly reception the film received on the fall festival circuit. Hard Truths was rejected by the Cannes and Venice film festivals, confounding critics and raising interesting questions in the wake of the film’s success in this awards season. The National Board of Review listed it as one of the year’s ten best independent films. Jean-Baptiste has received accolades from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the British Independent Film Awards.

Austin agreed when I posited that the festivals’ discomfort with Hard Truths may stem from its more nuanced approach to Black storytelling. “I think there is a certain desire only to see [Black] people in certain, issue-based situations. I want to see Black people falling in love, having a problem with gambling, surviving cancer, or all the things that we know happen that are not racial or historical issues. There are spaces for that, but I feel like we’ve done a lot of that now, and there’s space for other things.”

Hard Truths strives to carve out a space with its story of a contemporary Black family living in London. Pansy (Jean-Baptiste) is at the center, a woman with a seemingly endless capacity for being frustrated by the slightest inconvenience. She lashes out at any and everyone, from strangers in the supermarket checkout line to her own family, including her polar-opposite sister Chantelle, played by Austin. On the surface, Pansy is misanthropic for misanthropy’s sake, but the film reveals that her fury comes from her dissatisfaction with her own life and the lingering grief from the passing of her mother, Pearl. 

The film explores the complexities of Black mental health in a way few mainstream or independent films attempt. What makes matters even more intriguing is that Mike Leigh is a white man. At a moment when we are actively grappling with authentic storytelling and empowering filmmakers of all identities, one could question if Leigh was the right conduit for such a specific and challenging story.

Austin believes that Leigh’s collaborative storytelling approach makes him uniquely gifted to shepherd this story. “He doesn’t do fake,” she explains. “He’s interested in real people, real stories. That’s what excites him. You know that you are working with somebody who is rigorous and collaborative.”

Leigh is known for his improvisational development style, where he works with his actors to craft character identities and histories that fill in the details of Leigh’s general outline for the film. For Hard Truths, Austin and the rest of the cast worked closely across different departments, from production design to costumes, to develop the family’s identity, down to the type of hot pepper sauce in Chantelle’s kitchen. The level of detail allowed for a flourishing creative environment that was less about enacting a singular vision than bringing a collective one to the screen.

“I felt very safe,” Austin said. “Because you’re having a conversation about what these people would do, where would they go, and it’s rooted in truth.”

Austin initially shared a list of over 100 people with Leigh to inspire Chantelle. They eventually whittled down the list to five, with Leigh asking detailed questions about each person to decide what he wanted to explore through Chantelle. In the rehearsal process, Austin molded each person’s internal and external traits into the character that would eventually become Chantelle.

“What was particularly exciting for us especially was that these characters were specifically Black, British Caribbean,” Austin said of crafting them. “They come from a particular bit of London, and they’re of a particular class, and that has a particular texture and tone.” 

Leigh’s filmmaking style allowed Austin to bring various nuances of the British Black experience to her character and the film. “What’s wonderful to me, as a Black British actor, is bringing certain things that we know about, [like] code-switching, when you go in and out of the vernacular. Sometimes you sound like a Londoner, and sometimes you just drop a patois word, and then you go back into it because that’s what people do.”

The final version of Chantelle that Austin honed through Leigh’s rigorous improvisational approach and the people in her own life is the antithesis of Pansy. She is warm and gracious and lacks distaste or distrust of her fellow person. She spends her days laughing while doing clients’ hair at the salon, not shouting out everyone on the supermarket checkout line.

“Chantelle doesn’t hate people,” Austin explained about her character. “The character is based on people I’ve known for a long time who don’t have the capacity to hate people. They don’t despise. They might not like something or find something silly or frivolous, or they might not understand it, but they don’t hate. That’s Chantelle’s thing. She’s not unkind in that way.”

Chantelle’s positive demeanor naturally creates friction and tension between her and Pansy. Part of that tension is their differing relationships with their mother, Pearl, who recently passed away in the film. As the youngest of the sisters, Chantelle’s relationship with Pearl was, as Austin described, “easy.” The sense that Chantelle was the “easiest to be around” of the two sisters, possibly even their mother’s favorite, allowed her to come to a reconciliation about Pearl’s death. Pansy, meanwhile, struggles immensely, lashing out at everyone, including Chantelle. As harsh as she can be towards her sister, Austin understands the love beneath Pansy’s prickly surface.

“Here’s the thing,” Austin said. “Pansy doesn’t have anybody else. She does want to be with her sister. Chantelle is her only source of joy and comfort and everything else.”

The complexities of Pansy and Chantelle’s relationship come to a head when Chantelle hosts a Mother’s Day brunch at her house. That scene reveals the breadth and depth of Pansy’s mental health issues to the whole family. It’s the gutting centerpiece of the film, not just for the audience but for the actors responsible for evoking such a powerful response.

“I find that scene really upsetting to watch,” Austin said. “What happens for me in watching it is wanting somebody to grab hold of [Pansy], even though you know she’s hard to help. It’s that helplessness. I can be here for you, but I can’t repair your mental health. The difficulty of that scene is wanting to soothe someone and make it better, but you can’t. They have to get better, and it has to come from them.”

From Chantelle’s perspective, the Mother’s Day brunch opens her eyes to Pansy’s anguish. Austin explained, “What’s difficult is that she loves her sister. She can joke and banter with her, but ultimately, she loves her sister and her family. It’s heartbreaking for her to think that Pansy thinks that people hate her. That’s the emotional charge in that room.” 

Adding to that charge is Austin’s familial chemistry with Jean-Baptiste. The two actresses have been friends for over 30 years, working together on stage and screen, including in Secrets and Lies. “We’ve been through everything together,” Austin said of her and Jean-Baptiste. “Births, marriages, deaths, the whole. I trust her, and I know she trusts me. We have a similar sense of humor. Developing a relationship [with her] is not difficult. It’s really not hard to have a bond with her because there is one.”

Reuniting with Jean-Baptiste and Leigh in another acclaimed film is a full-circle “chef’s kiss” moment for Austin. “After 30 years of plugging away…I’ve worked very hard, and there have been highs and lows. I’m so happy for [Jean-Baptiste]. I’m happy for myself.”

With the film firmly in the awards conversation and reigniting conversations about the types of Black stories we elevate and celebrate, Austin shared her hopes for what audiences take from Hard Truths and Chantelle’s story.

“I hope people take away curiosity, maybe kindness to some of those difficult souls we sometimes rub against in life. I hope people might develop more softness towards certain ‘difficult women’ who appear hard on the surface but really aren’t. I want people to recognize their families and bring their mothers. I hope that people fall in love with Chantelle.”

Hard Truths is currently in select theaters from Bleecker Street in the U.S. and will go wider in the coming weeks.