How Oscar Nominees Found the Key to Projects Close to Their Directors’ Hearts

The term “passion project” is thrown around a lot in Hollywood; usually as a reference to a personal story that means a ton to its writer, director or star.

But what kind of pressure does that put on the rest of the cast and crew?

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This Oscar season, there are a lot of so-called passion projects that have received accolades. Among them: “The Fabelmans,” a family story that was inspired by director and co-writer Steven Spielberg’s own parents; “The Banshees of Inisherin,” a script that writer-director Martin McDonagh spent years perfecting set in an era in Irish history that few outsiders might know about; and the Marvel movie “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” for which director and co-writer Ryan Coogler had to follow the success of the film’s predecessor, 2018’s “Black Panther” while doing justice to its late star, Chadwick Boseman.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” from the writing-directing team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, meanwhile, leaned into diverse storytelling and the power of refusing to be ignored; the past struggles of stars Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan to get roles in Hollywood added poignancy to their performances.

All four films scored acting nominations and three of them — “The Fabelmans,” “Banshees” and “Everything Everywhere” — scored best picture nominations as well.

In the case of “Banshees,” the accolades were far from a slam dunk. Brendan Gleeson tells Variety he began to see the characters gel when he received McDonagh’s rewrites three years ago. “I just remember feeling the thrill of being to explore this person,” he says of Colm. A fiddle player in a fictional remote Irish town circa 1923, Colm is willing to end his relationship with best friend Pádraic (lead actor nominee Colin Farrell, a co-star with Gleeson on McDonagh’s “In Bruges”) — and inflict bodily harm upon himself — if it means the chance to create one great song before he dies.

In the original version of the script that Gleeson saw seven years ago, “Colm was pretty not developed in any way” and he had “just cut off Pádraic and there was no great degree of exploration about why,” recalls the supporting actor nominee. Because Gleeson knew McDonagh wasn’t satisfied with the draft either and that he didn’t want to reunite with the acting pair on anything “half-cocked,” he felt comfortable giving honest feedback.

Now, Gleeson equates the plot of “Banshees” to what he calls a “Garden of Eden” story in which Colm is an Eve-like character who is trying to break free of confines.

But it’s not just McDonagh’s connection with Gleeson and Farrell that makes “Banshees” work. The writer-director’s relationship with Kerry Condon, who plays Pádraic’s put-upon sister Siobhán, dates to when the supporting actress nominee was a teenager and starring in the Royal Shakespeare Co. production of his play “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.”

This being their fifth project together — their shared credits also include the 2017 best picture nominee “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” —  she says, “I think he just kind of knew what I was going to do.” Much like her reserved character, “I didn’t feel this needs to be ‘I’m going to be the current lead,’ and ‘I’m going to steal the scenes.’ ”

She also considered how the era in which the story was set. As a single woman in a deeply Catholic area, she’d be a virgin. And taking a job on the mainland would probably mean she’d never see her brother again.

There’s also at least one aspect of Siobhán that Condon understood immediately: her de-
termination.

“It’s there all the time because I do think it’s kind of an Irish woman trait,” she says. “What I like about Irish women is there’s kind of a toughness to them. But, I think, at this point in the story she’s kind of at her wits’ ends and is quick to lose it a little bit.”

Lead actress nominee Michelle Williams’ portrayal of the flighty and adventurous matriarch Mitzi in “The Fabelmans” falls on the other side of the spectrum. The personal nature of the story could make it hard for any director to step back and look at it with objectivity. But Spielberg was deeply close to his mother, Leah, and her mental health had to be put in the story.

“It’s so delicate because, in telling the story truthfully, he never wanted to expose the person that he loved to judgment — to expose the thing that really haunted her whole life,” Williams told actor Laura Dern during their conversation for Variety’s Actors on Actors.

In the film, Mitzi drives her children into the eye of a tornado, dances in a translucent nightgown in front of a campfire and goes to extensive lengths to help her young son recreate a train crash from the movie “The Greatest Show on Earth” because she understands that’s what he needs to do so he won’t be afraid of it. She also has a secret passion for her husband’s best friend, Bennie (Seth Rogen).

“For me, when I read it, I never judged her,” Williams said. “I just saw, wow, they’ve really let this person breathe. When you live a liberated life, you give that gift to your children passively. It’s not even a lesson you have to teach them.”

Once the scope of the movie became clear, she agreed to play her director’s mother. “I have worked my whole life to feel able to say yes and be ready and capable, when that request is made, to say, ‘I can and I will — and let’s go,’” Williams told Variety.

This confidence had to carry her through the making of the movie, especially since Spielberg famously doesn’t like to rehearse.

“That first day that you show up, you just sort of cross your fingers and you hope that your preparation has led you down the right path and that you’re going to hold hands and walk through it together, but you just don’t know,” Williams said. “But it’s also exciting, that feeling.”

She added: “He’s already cut the movie in his head, but you don’t feel like that. Space, freedom, play, invention, anything goes.”

So a new definition of “passion play”?

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