Julianne Moore and Annette Bening Reunite to Discuss ‘Nyad’ Training, ‘May December’ Danger and Filming Great Movies in 23 Days

In “Nyad,” Annette Bening portrays the famed athlete Diana Nyad during her quest to swim from Cuba to Florida — a feat she achieved in 2013 at age 64 after multiple attempts. In Todd Haynes’ “May December,” Julianne Moore plays Gracie, whose marriage is upended when a TV star named Elizabeth, played by Natalie Portman, embeds herself in Gracie’s life in order to study her for a part. For Elizabeth, Gracie is a plum role because she’s famous for all the wrong reasons: At 36, Gracie preyed upon — or, as Gracie would say, fell in love with — Joe, a 13-year-old boy, and went to prison for molesting him, sparking a national tabloid sensation. More than 20 years later, with Gracie and Joe (Charles Melton) married with three kids, it doesn’t take much for Elizabeth to destabilize them.

Bening and Moore, of course, together played a different kind of couple in 2010’s “The Kids Are All Right.”

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JULIANNE MOORE: I texted you right after I saw “Nyad” — your work is spectacular, and really, really beautiful. What made you decide to take it on?

ANNETTE BENING: I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you just say: “I’m doing this. I have to do this.” I grew up in San Diego; I’ve been in the water a lot. But I got in and started swimming and I thought, “Oh, my God, can I pull this off? And I have to be in a bathing suit?” Which for some reason I hadn’t thought about enough. It’s like, “Shit!”

MOORE: I’m winded after two laps in a pool.

BENING: We hired an amazing coach, Rada Owen. She also loves swimming still, even though she was a serious Olympian and some people get burned out. You just practice and practice until it starts to become natural. Diana always breathes to the left, and she breathes every stroke.

MOORE: I love a teacher. When I’m learning a skill for a job, I usually fall in love with my teachers, and I get very attached. What do you think it was about Diana that made her want to do this?

BENING: I was really interested in how she had to grab that as a 60-year-old. She had failed when she was 28, 29. She’d tried a couple of times. She’s very sophisticated, intellectual. She did all kinds of interesting things with her life. And then at 60, she was like, “I have to do it now.” In her book, she talks about what she went through, and it was her saying, “My life matters, and I’m going to do this thing.”

Now we can talk about your most recent movie, “May December,” which I watched. It is so unsettling.

MOORE: I know. The hardest part, really, is it’s about somebody giving a performance, in a sense — because she’s got to send her narrative out into the world, and she’s giving it to Natalie to observe. She’s saying, “You’re going to play me in a movie. This is who I am. This is my story.” And for her, it’s a great love story.

BENING: Yes.

MOORE: It’s like she met her prince. She was the princess, they fell in love and they lived happily ever after. I think her childlike quality, her hyper-femininity, somebody who feels very genderized, allows herself to be like, “I’m the child. I’m the girl. He’s the man.”

Well, there’s a big difference between the story that she’s telling and the reality. And in between, there’s this incredible tension and volatility. How do you justify your transgression? She justifies it by saying that they were in love.

BENING: How did you work out the relationship between you and Natalie? Did Todd help you with that?

MOORE: Like “The Kids Are All Right,” which we shot in 23 days, we also shot “May December” in 23 days and had no rehearsal.

BENING: Did we shoot “Kids Are All Right” in 23 days?!

MOORE: It was 23 days. I remember. It was like, poof!, and it was over. I needed to figure out who Gracie was, and what are the things that Natalie’s going to be able to latch on to? Reading about the case that it was inspired by, that’s where I discovered this narrative of her feeling very, very childlike and very feminine. I started thinking about a speech thing, like a lisp, because we associate that with children. I thought it’d be interesting if somebody had that. And it also gave Natalie something really concrete to do.

BENING: You were kind of dangerous.

MOORE: When someone has crossed a boundary — and that’s a huge one, to be with a child — you’re going to forever feel unsafe, and you’re not going to know why you feel uncomfortable. “Why do I feel like it’s dangerous? Why do I feel uncomfortable in this room? Something’s wrong!” And so I think that sensation runs through all of it.

I’m digressing here, but I was just thinking about how wonderful you were in “The Kids Are All Right,” and some of the things that you would do. There was that scene where Mark Ruffalo comes over for the first time, and you pour yourself a giant glass of wine. And I come over, and I’m like, “Go easy on the wine, hon.” And you’re like, “Yeah, go easy on the micromanaging.”

BENING: Who doesn’t relate to that moment?

MOORE: I know. It was so wonderful. You were so wonderful.

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