EXCLUSIVE: Christina Applegate on Playing 'Badass' Moms and 'Married... with Children's 30th Anniversary
In Christina Applegate's latest film, Youth in Oregon, she plays the adult daughter of a man who plans a road trip to Oregon to make use of the state's Death with Dignity Act, a decision that causes his family's past and future to unravel as everyone's own secrets begin to spill out. In real life, though, the 45-year-old actress' day-to-day sounds increasingly normal.
"Not much to report over here. Making kid breakfast, working out, now going to go pick her up and take her to ballet," Applegate rattled off on a recent Monday during a phone call with ET. "You know, the uzh. My uzh." In addition to her new movie (in select theaters and available On Demand on Feb. 3), the wide-ranging conversation also covered Bad Moms, the recent Women's March and the fact that it has been 30 years since she first donned one of Kelly Bundy's mini-dresses on Married... with Children.
Samuel Goldwyn Films
ET: What sticks with me about Youth in Oregon -- considering everything that is going on in the world right now -- is that even though it is dramatic and the relationships are messy and the subject matter might be controversial, in the end, it's about love.
Applegate: You try to infuse humor in these things, too. Because it is a subject matter that is deeply controversial and deeply disturbing to a lot of people. I really loved the moment when Ray (Frank Langella) watches his friend take his own life, and the catharsis for everybody in that room. I thought that was such a beautiful scene and never in my wildest imagining would it have affected me the way that it did when I finally saw it. It was, like-- I was sobbing.
I wish we could all wake up sometimes from these...nightmares. And it's a powerful movie about family and about what can we control and when do we let go? Those of us who have parents who are that age, you know that time is coming and that's a really frightening thing to face, because that's the inevitable. And there's nothing we can do about the inevitable. For me, being in my mid-40s and my mother and my dad in their 70s, I'm watching them become older and it's harder for them to do things and it's so unbelievably heartbreaking. What if one day my mom just said to me, "I'm done"? That's like... Woooah. That's what I think this character is feeling this whole time. I found that very intriguing, for me as an actress. Especially since these kinds of calls don't come my way very often.
I want to talk about one scene in particular, when the entire family is reunited at the cabin at the end. It's your most emotional scene and you slap Josh Lucas. What was it like shooting that scene?
Incredibly painful -- and also therapeutic, in a way. We shot that towards the end of the movie, and I just sat there and thought about the betrayal that she's feeling from everyone and her rage and everything building up to that moment. Then it was, like, this incredible release. I felt bad for Josh because the first few times, he was like, "No, I'm good! I'm good!" Then after a couple of times, he said, "Can you just not hit me so hard?" [Laughs] And I said, "Josh, I don't even realize I'm doing it! I'm so sorry. I'm so angry right now and I'm filled with so much rage that I completely have no control over my body right now." I felt like that for that whole day we were doing it. Everything was just coming up for me -- as a person, as a character -- and I felt really bad. I never let up. I couldn't. Before we would roll, I would go, "Don't hurt Josh. Don't hurt Josh." And every time I'd see him come out of that taxi, my blood was boiling and I just couldn't stop. I was in it.
How do you decompress after a day like that?
You just go and cry. I just went and cried. I felt actually really light afterward. On the drive home -- we had a long drive home from where we were shooting -- I just felt at ease. Everything was able to pass through my body and my emotions and my spirit. It felt good. Sorry, Joshua! I love that man. I felt very bad. His face was very red.
Many actresses have spoken out about being relegated to playing just the wife or just a mother. You play wives and mothers often. How do you make sure the characters you're playing are more than that?
You can't make it just one-dimensional. On paper, it can seem like one thing, but you have to bring in the history, you have to bring in the person, you have to bring in the structure of who they are. We're all incredibly complex, so trying to find the complexities in what could be a one-note thing can be challenging sometimes, especially, let's just face it, in this male-dominated industry. Which is now turning, I think. It's obviously turning.
Like, with Vacation, the first draft of that was the wife just sitting in the car. I talked to them about who she was and where she came from and her history and her past and why she's on this journey and out of these conversations birthed Debbie Do Anything. So, now we've got this great, weird segment of the movie where I'm throwing up and it made me laugh. [Laughs] Like, she's a badass! I love the fact that she's just a badass at the end of the day! That all came from us having a conversation about there being more to this person than what initially was the thought process.
"They were like, 'Women aren't funny.' And you're like, but we are! And we're smart. And we can prove it." --Christina Applegate
