Betty Gilpin on ‘Mrs. Davis’: ‘It was my favorite experience I’ve ever had’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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The following piece and above interview contain spoilers for the entire season of “Mrs. Davis”
For Betty Gilpin, the success of “Mrs. Davis” started on the page.
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“There’s something that gets missed in promoting stuff: the things I was drawn to when I first got into acting,” Gilpin tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “When I was watching my parents in plays, two actors on stage created something between them that was inexplicable. You feel that when you fall in love or hang out with a little kid – there’s this invisible electricity. And I think that is what good writing captures. Their job is to put on paper this invisible fizz between us – this electric web between all of us as humans. And it’s strange because in the promotion of a project, it’s all about the self, and it’s so hard to describe. But that’s why people are drawn to good TV and movies. It’s not because they’re drawn to abs or vanity, they’re drawn to the connections. That’s something that A.I. doesn’t understand and that people who don’t value good writing don’t understand.”
SEEJake McDorman interview: ‘Mrs. Davis’
Co-created by Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez, “Mrs. Davis” defies easy description. It focuses on a nun named Simone (Gilpiin) who goes on a quest to find the actual Holy Grail in an effort to destroy an all-powerful artificial intelligence app named Mrs. Davis. Equal parts outlandishly daffy and emotionally honest – co-star Elizabeth Marvel has compared “Mrs. Davis” to “Monty Python meets ‘Ordinary People’” – “Mrs. Davis” asks a lot of questions about human nature and its predisposition to seek out validation even in the face of the truth proving the opposite.
“I think about the brilliant scripts that Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof wrote along with the writers’ room, the themes that they delved into, it really made me think about the church and the internet as two separate things and how it’s really us that misuse them – or we create these institutions that go against what they’re probably originally designed for,” Gilpin says of her thoughts on the limited series, which finished completed its run last week. “Not being a person of faith myself, but it was probably supposed to be used as asking big questions and wandering and connecting, and probably the internet as well – we could be using it to explore gray areas and get smarter and connect with people. And instead, we’re really good at using these separate institutions as wish fulfillment echo chambers instead of these vessels for exploration and existential thought.”
Gilpin is a three-time Emmy Award nominee for her work on the Netflix series “GLOW.” But “Mrs. Davis” has been hailed by critics as a high-water mark for the beloved actress, in part because Simone provides Gilpin with an opportunity to use the full range of her skills as a performer. Her “Mrs. Davis” co-star Jake McDorman has said of Gilpin, “If you took Lucille Ball and Meryl Streep and put them in a blender, you get Betty Gilpin.”
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“These scripts, they like graphic novels. Even the most minute stage direction, every syllable is intentional and builds this crazy, complicated, beautiful, specific, original world,” Gilpin says. “It’s almost like it’s Wily Coyote Shakespeare. It feels like text. Instead of just quippy or zany lines, it really felt like we were Looney Tunes Hamlet in the best way.”
Gilpin says that specific tone is something she’s often wrestled with in her career so far. “I’ve gotten the note – not in those words – but the subtext from the director was like, ‘not Looney Tunes Hamlet. Just say, ‘Where were you on the night of X? Stop crossing your eyes and sobbing.’ In this one, I was like, ‘Finally, I’m home.’”
But what made “Mrs. Davis” so unique, Gilpin says, is that everyone bought into the high concept just as much as she did. “Every single department felt so passionate about creating that specific world down to the props department,” she says. “So when you feel that level of everyone is stepping up and going out on a limb, it makes you do it creatively as well. Gosh, it was my favorite experience I’ve ever, ever had.”
All episodes of “Mrs. Davis” are streaming on Peacock.
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