Merritt Wever on Why She Had to ‘Fortify’ Herself to Play Kathryn Hahn’s Mother in ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’
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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Love,” the finale of the limited series “Tiny Beautiful Things,” now streaming on Hulu.
Hulu’s “Tiny Beautiful Things” ends on a serene note, with a hospital bed in the middle of a horse pasture and a single spoken word: “love.”
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The moment is one of the few shared between Kathryn Hahn and Merritt Wever in the limited series, which is based on author Cheryl Strayed’s life and her time writing an advice column called “Dear Sugar.”
Wever plays Frankie, the free-spirited mother of Hahn’s character Clare, who (like Strayed’s mother) dies suddenly of lung cancer at the age of 45. The story primarily takes place in the present day as a grown-up Clare (played by Hahn) grapples with the trauma of having lost her mother, while Wever’s character exists in flashbacks to the 1990s when Clare was in her 20s and played by Sarah Pidgeon.
The finale’s flashbacks largely center around the day Clare wasn’t by Frankie’s side when she died, just seven weeks after being diagnosed. Instead, Clare left the hospital to find her brother Lucas (Owen Painter), who was scared to see their mother’s failing health in her last moments.
“Tiny Beautiful Things” concludes with Clare imagining her mother’s hospital bed in the pasture where Frankie had taken her kids many times to see a neighbor’s horses. The quiet, dream-like sequence allows Clare to live out the moment she never got –– at her mother’s side, reciprocating the final word Frankie could muster for her daughter: “love.”
Thinking back on the scene, Wever, a two-time Emmy winner, candidly tells Variety she doesn’t think it is among her best work.
“It is beautiful, and my honest experience of it was one of not really doing a good job, and of choosing and practicing and failing gracefully,” she says.
When pressed on why, Wever says she and Pidgeon spent the production learning together how to carry the emotional weight of Strayed’s personal love story with her mom. When it came time to do the scene with Hahn, she says she doesn’t feel like she had the same amount of practice to do the moment justice.
“I remember kind of having to steady myself and fortify myself in the face of that kind of energy and love,” she says.
Wever spoke to Variety about filming that scene with the “electric” Hahn, the bond she formed with Pidgeon, and why it wasn’t “Tiny Beautiful Things,” but rather Strayed’s celebrated memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” that helped her get to know Frankie.
You have stellar taste in television roles, primarily with recent limited series like “Unbelievable” and “Godless.” And you’re joining Apple TV+’s “Severance” for its upcoming second season. What do you look for in TV roles, and why was “Tiny Beautiful Things” right for you?
That’s an interesting question. I look for a gut response to the material. In the absence of that, it is tough to move forward with something. With this one, the reasons kind of strayed from my gut. I did it because I respect Kathryn Hahn so much, and I knew this would be a really beautiful and gorgeous part for her. I did it because I related to this story, but I didn’t necessarily relate to the side of the equation I was responsible for. So that was a real challenge.
And speaking of working in television, I did it because I wanted to go to work and get to spend time with a character and a story, and other characters over some time. That’s what doing a limited series offers you. I knew I wasn’t quite yet ready to commit to a series again, like a legit traditional series that could be a multi-season job. I respect what that takes, and I know what it takes, and I knew I wasn’t ready yet. This was a way to go to work and do time with people in a way that I was ready to take on and commit to.
We don’t see Frankie’s life in flashbacks as a linear story. We bounce around in time in Clare’s memories of her mother. Was it also filmed that way?
Yes! We filmed Episode 1 then Episode 2, and so forth. Sometimes we would do two at once if a director was shooting multiple episodes. But it is interesting because I think my first scene that I shot was where I’m in the pharmacy with Sarah, and I remember getting toward the end of the shoot and thinking, “Oh my God, now that I’ve had this visceral experience with Sarah, that scene would feel so different to shoot now at the end.” There were things lost and things gained by filming it that way, but I think it is really interesting the way they chose to tell the story.
Even as we bounce around in time, we don’t get too much backstory on Frankie beyond how she is remembered by Clare. Did you have any additional insight into who she was from Cheryl as you prepared to play her?
The truth is, the biggest resource for understanding Frankie is the book “Wild,” which we weren’t making. But in that book, Cheryl writes so beautifully and in such a guttural way about her mother and her relationship with her mother and her memory of her mother and how the loss of her mother so early in life affected the rest of her life. I kind of used that as my bible, and sometimes that was difficult because, again, we weren’t making that story. In a lot of ways, the Frankie of “Tiny Beautiful Things” is akin to the Frankie of “Wild” and is born of the Frankie in “Wild” — but isn’t exactly the same. And that’s OK. That’s what happens when you adapt something. You choose to make it the most effective version of the thing that it actually is, and they certainly had a tall order in adapting “Tiny Beautiful Things” into a narrative. And they did a wonderful job. But I used that book. Cheryl just writes so gorgeously, and that Frankie became very real to me. I almost had to give myself over to the Frankie I was actually playing, and the one that was in front of me.
What helped you give yourself over to the Frankie you are playing in “Tiny Beautiful Things?”
The way that I found this Frankie was working with Sarah. I think that she reflected me to myself, and I had to almost believe that I could be the person I saw through her eyes.
How was it working with Sarah and Owen as your children? They are your most consistent scene partners in the flashbacks throughout the series.
I turned to Sarah when we wrapped and I said, “You are my entire job.” [Voice starts to tremble] Oh my god, Merritt. Don’t cry!
I left this job with such a severe and tremendous amount of affection and esteem for those kids. And I know that I’m calling them “kids,” and I wouldn’t call fully grown people in their 20s that word, but that’s who they are to me and for me. I could not and cannot sing their praises enough. I feel so lucky to have worked with them, and that I went through his job and this experience with Sarah. I hope she knows that. When the job wrapped, I almost wanted to write to our casting director to thank him for giving me the best kids in the world. I could talk about them forever.
Frankie is almost exclusively seen in flashbacks, except for a few moments when Kathryn Hahn’s Clare interacts with her mother in memories and dreams. What was it like working with Kathryn in those fleeting moments?
That was a challenge too, honestly. There is this intense narrative and relationship and dynamic between them, but I’m over here living it out with Sarah. Then we would have these drops of time, when all of a sudden we are together and it would be this kind of transference. Again, that’s the nature of the job, and what we are asked to do as actors. When I was thinking back on it all today, I thought about how working with Kathryn is like working with a major weather event. She’s electric, she’s mighty, she’s visceral. She vibrates. She would bring to those moments and scenes an electricity. She steps forward and is present with literally every cell of her body. To be playing her mother that she is missing and craving and loving for decades of her life was almost overwhelming. I remember kind of having to steady myself and fortify myself in the face of that kind of energy and love.
The final scene of the series is a beautiful moment spent with you in a hospital bed in the middle of a field surrounded by horses and Kathryn. Was it surreal to shoot that scene with her?
It is beautiful, and my honest experience of it was one of not really doing a good job, and of choosing and practicing and failing gracefully.
In what way?
It was another one of those “OK, it’s 4 a.m. in the woods” kind of scenes. Again, I think an unexpected challenge of this job was having to hold myself steady in the face of that much and that kind of love. I found it very overwhelming, actually. I had a lot more practice with Sarah at kind of growing into it and softening into it, and practicing withstanding it and everything that meant and entailed. One of the things that was tough when I was with present-day Clare was that we didn’t have that practice, or I didn’t have it. I find myself in the face of that and feeling so paltry, and so like a sham. So I never felt like I was able to show up in the scenes with Kathryn the way that I wanted to or wished I could, because it was an unexpected response to the part, the character and the relationship.
Luckily, you had the electric force that is Kathryn Hahn with you in those moments.
Well, yeah, exactly!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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