Hayley Law Finds Her Comedic Chops in ‘Mark, Mary & Some Other People’
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“It’s so weird talking about myself,” says actor Hayley Law, adjusting to life back on the press beat, her first of the pandemic. Law has just flown into New York from her native Vancouver for the Tribeca Film Festival, where her movie “Mark, Mary & Some Other People” is premiering. Despite the weirdness, she is raving about the experience of having other people see the film and getting to talk about it.
“It was the best, honestly. We shot [this movie] right before the pandemic, and it feels so good to have this be how we’re picking up again,” she says. “I’m just happy that I got to work right before, because I didn’t work for like a year and a half then after that.”
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The movie, the second from young actor-turned-director Hannah Marks, stars Law and Ben Rosenfield who meet at a drugstore while Law’s Mary is buying a pregnancy test. Fast forward through a negative test and one year of blissful love later, Mary suggests making their relationship open, which throws everything off balance.
Law’s connection to the film began via a mysterious text message, from a former director. She was going about her business when one day Brian Duffield, who directed her in the movie “Spontaneous,” sent her a text that simply said, “Hannah Marks?”
“ And I was like huh? What are you talking about? Who is that?” Law says. “Six months later, Hannah reached out and I was like ‘oh! This is Hannah Marks!”
Marks sent over the script and Law was thrilled to learn it was a comedy, as despite her film entry being on soapy drama “Riverdale,” she is a diehard comedy fan at heart.
“I love comedy so much. It’s what I want to do forever,” she says. “Right away I was hooked because of the comedy element, but there’s a lot of really good stuff and many messages, and I was just so excited. We didn’t even talk about if I was going to be in the movie or not — she was just telling me about the movie. And I was like, ‘um am I going to be Mary? Because I really want to be Mary.’”
Law always wanted to be an actor but never knew how one went about it. To this day she finds herself questioning herself with Hollywood big shots who want to talk with her about roles.
“It’s always weird when you meet directors and producers to talk about movies because I’m always like do they want to talk about the movie because they want me in it? I’m down to just talk about the movie, too, but I don’t want to get my hopes up and I don’t want to ask because I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable — but I really want to do this movie,” she says.
She got a push to pursue acting when a friend of hers reported back that commercial work was a good starting point — and not bad pay, either.
“She called and told me she had just made $500 doing a cereal commercial. I was working at this breakfast restaurant and I was like, ‘$500?!’ I reached out to every agent in the city,” she says.
Her first foray into the space was writing a song about Vince Vaughn.
“My friend was dating someone who looked like Vince Vaughn at the time,” she says. “It just blossomed. Hopefully one day it’ll see the light of day.”
“Riverdale” was her first TV show, but she’s finally hitting her stride now in offbeat comedic films, she says.
“I feel like, for me, it’s harder for people to see me in ‘Riverdale’ because comedy is so much more natural for me than being a teenager with these crazy problems that hopefully a teenager would never have,” she says. “This is so second nature to jump into.”
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