Alexander Payne sent “The Holdovers” star Da'Vine Joy Randolph 'two big boxes of cigarettes' to prepare for role

"Get to it!"

The Holdovers director Alexander Payne always knew he wanted Da'Vine Joy Randolph to play the critical role of Mary, a long-suffering and hard-working cook at the fictional Barton Academy. Once he got her, Payne wasted no time in helping Randolph prepare for the challenging part.

In the latest edition of Variety's Actors on Actors series, Randolph spoke with Fair Play star Alden Ehrenreich about how producers initially required Payne to audition "30 actresses with bigger names" before he was finally allowed to cast her in The Holdovers. Then, the director humorously told her how to prep for Mary's hard-earned cynicism.

"From the first conversation with Alexander, I understood he was the type of director that wants to dig in," Randolph said. "He shipped me two big boxes of cigarettes with a note that said, 'Get to it!'”

The Holdovers is set in 1970, back in the days when Americans smoked a lot more than they do now — including indoors! Mary especially seems to rely on them to give her little breaks from her emotional pain.

When viewers meet Mary in The Holdovers, she is still reeling from the death of her son. Despite working hard in the kitchen for years to get him a discounted prestige education at Barton, Mary didn't make enough to afford a college education. Without a deferment, her son was drafted for the Vietnam War, where he was killed in action.

Mary tries to work through her grief, and Randolph insisted on doing the character's cooking for real.

"That was my deal breaker — I had to do the cooking," she told Ehrenreich. "I need to be working with my hands. Over the course of the entire movie, I make oatmeal, a soup, and I roasted a chicken. On days when we’re eating in scenes, we didn’t have craft services. We really sat down and had dinner."

But Mary can't hide her pain forever. When she attends a holiday party with Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) and Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a teacher and student stuck with her at Barton over the winter break, she finally lets her emotions out. In a recent interview with EW's The Awardist, Randolph revealed that she only did two takes of that crucial scene.

"After I did the first take, I think the DP walked out and was like, 'I need a second,' because I just let it out," Randolph told EW. "And then it was very quiet when I finished, and everyone was just so supportive and respectful. They knew, the actors knew — definitely Paul knew — what that meant for me to go there. And everyone's very respectful of that. I remember [Alexander] was like, 'Okay, so we have that one in the can... let's try one more.' Maybe there was a third one. I don't think so. And that wasn't even intentional. It just was, this is my offering of my interpretation of what is on the page, and it seemed to resonate with everyone."

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