Why Julia Louis-Dreyfus Wanted to (Literally) Face Down Death in Her Most Dramatic Role Yet
Julia Louis-Dreyfus doesn’t recall the exact pitch she got for Daina O. Pusić’s feature directorial debut “Tuesday,” but she remembers the gist of it. “Maybe they told me, ‘This is a super unusual film,’ and that was it,” the film’s star told IndieWire during a recent interview. She’s not fudging on that designation.
In the film, Louis-Dreyfus stars as Zora, the single mother of ailing teenager Tuesday (played by the remarkable Lola Petticrew). Tuesday has been sick for some time, and when Death (imagined here as a size-morphing talking macaw, super unusual indeed) arrives at the pair’s London flat, the deeply empathetic Tuesday immediately realizes who he is (the macaw is wondrously animated, but the part was played on set by the multi-talented performer Arinzé Kene) and what he wants.
And while we can’t ever stop Death, we can delay him a bit, which is exactly what Tuesday attempts to do, mostly by befriending the beleaguered bird and offering him the sort of kindness and respect no one had in the past.
Zora? Oh, she’s less enthused about him. As she attempts to kick (and stomp and punch and maybe even eat) the winged not-quite villain out of her and Tuesday’s life, she sets off a wholly unexpected chain reaction of wild events. And while (literally) facing Death head-on sure sounds like a “dark” role, the iconic comedian is clear: She wasn’t looking for the opposite of her work on everything from “Seinfeld” to “Veep,” she just wanted something a little different.
“I was looking for something, I’m not going to use the word ‘dark,’ but dramatic, and it came at the right time, and this exact role, I felt like I had a way into it,” she said. “I had an emotional understanding of what the task was before me.”
After reading the script in early 2021, Louis-Dreyfus knew she had to meet Pusić. “I needed to talk to Daina, I needed to see and feel what she was about,” the actress recalled. “I was immediately drawn into it because of the themes of loss and grief and denial and the theme of the relationship, the mother, the parent-child relationship, and how that’s explored. All of that was infinitely interesting to me, but I had to talk to her to get a sense of who she was. … I really wanted to get a sense of her seriousness and her intention, because this was a leap for me. I really wanted to do it, but I wanted to make sure I was in capable hands with her.”
Still, yes, the 11-time Emmy winner gets it: This is something of a left turn for her, and that came with its own pack of concerns.
“This movie required me to go to a place … I have not gone before as an actor in such a big way,” Louis-Dreyfus said. “Perhaps when I was younger on stage, and I did dramatic parts, but to do a film that explores this kind of dramatic material, I needed to make sure I was in safe, tender hands. And then, of course, with the animation that’s in the film, I needed to make sure that the animation was going to be taken seriously. It wasn’t going to be a joke. That was critically important because, if that misses, then this whole thing falls apart.”
But Pusić allayed many of those worries, from the emotional demands to just how the heck they were going to make this bird look real. “We had a couple of conversations, and with each one, I felt more and more like, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to work. This is going to work.’ … She’s very ambitious. She’s very bold. She’s very brave, and she’s a true artist.”
That included bringing actor and playwright Kene on set to portray Death. “He was on set with us, so we were actually working with him, and it’s because of that, I believe this bird and this death works as well as it does,” Louis-Dreyfus said. “The animators animated over him and used his physicality, his expression, his emotional life that he brought to the role. … It made the world of difference to have those really intense conversations. I couldn’t have been doing that with a ping pong ball.”
The frequent Marvel Cinematic Universe star added with a laugh, “And I’ve done my share of ping pong balls!”
The DIY sensibility translated to a number of other scenes that feature Zora, like Death, growing both very big and then super small. For the first scene in which Louis-Dreyfus gets “ginormous,” Pusić offered up a winning idea: putting her star in a box, and then overlaying that over static shots of the living room she’s meant to be inside of instead.
“When I’m in the living room, growing up, and bent over with the roof, that was a little bit tricky practically,” she said. “What was really, frankly hard was filming the bit when I’m crunched over in the living room. I mean, it almost feels like Maurice Sendak or something, doesn’t it? So they shot me separately, obviously inside a box, and it was really small, and it was physically very uncomfortable. My feet kept cramping up, but it sure looked cool!”
The final product? Louis-Dreyfus herself couldn’t be more pleased with how it all looks on the big screen. “I was just, to coin a British phrase, I was just gobsmacked. I was delighted,” she said of her first look at the final film.
Pusić’s film may sound a bit out there, but coming from beloved boutique distributor A24 should go a long way to drawing in dedicated fans of the label and indicating the quality of its storytelling. The film isn’t Louis-Dreyfus’ first outing with the brand; last year, they released her latest film with longtime collaborator Nicole Holofcener, “You Hurt My Feelings.”
And the actress assured us she was up on the cult of A24 even before then. “I am not living under a rock!” she said with a laugh when asked about the existence of a dedicated cadre of A24 fans. “I definitely know! I definitely know, and I’m a big fan of A24. I’m a huge fan of the work that they put out, so I am thrilled to be a part of this. And there aren’t many places, if any, left like A24 in this strange entertainment business that we find ourselves in.”
(Asked what’s happening with Holofcener, with whom the actress has made gems like “Enough Said” and “You Hurt My Feelings,” Louis-Dreyfus assured, “We’re trying to come up with something, but it’s not for lack of trying. We’re working on it. I’m going to see her soon. I’m definitely going to work with her again, but I can’t tell you what it is yet.”)
Next up for Louis-Dreyfus? More make-believe, in the form of her latest Marvel outing, Jake Schreier’s “Thunderbolts,” which sees her reprising her role of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine for the fourth time. “Well, I think you’ll get a kick out of it. I just wrapped, and I can tell you nothing, otherwise, I will be executed,” she said with a laugh. Well, we can’t stop Death, but maybe we can delay him a bit.
An A24 film, “Tuesday” is now in limited release and will expand on Friday, July 14.
