Scarlett Johansson’s Real-Life Divorce Helped Shape Her Role in “Marriage Story”
Scarlett Johansson has earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role as Nicole in Marriage Story.
Just prior to filming, Johannson was finalizing her divorce from husband Romain Dauriac, with whom she shares a 5-year-old daughter, Rose.
Johansson’s real-life experience helped her connect to her character, saying that it “felt sort of fated in a way.”
People were so blown away by Scarlett Johansson’s performance in Marriage Story that she’s a favorite to win Best Actress at the 92nd Annual Academy Awards. In the hit Netflix film, Johannson’s character, Nicole (an actress) goes through a painful divorce from her husband Charlie (a theater director), played by Adam Driver. Critics have praised the two for their “simply extraordinary” portrayal of heartbreak.
But while the gut-wrenching relationship unraveled on-screen, Johannson was going through a real-life divorce off-screen. The 35-year-old actress finalized her split from her second husband, French journalist Romain Dauriac (with whom she shares a 5-year-old daughter, Rose), in 2017. The entire experience helped her relate to Nicole even more.
Johannson was actually late the day she was first supposed to meet writer and director Noah Baumbach about the movie, which he later talked about at the Elle Women in Hollywood Celebration, per USA Today. Johannson “apologized, saying she was going through a divorce,” Baumbach said. “‘You’ll either love this or hate this,’ I remember myself saying, or maybe just thinking.”
But Johansson liked that she could understand what Nicole was going through. “It felt sort of fated in a way,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was an experience to share with him and have him share with me. And it somehow came at just the right time.”
Moving on from a tragic experience like divorce can be painful, says Manhattan-based licensed clinical psychologist Joseph Cilona, Psy.D., but “one thing that can be very empowering and foster a more positive and healthy path forward post-divorce is to understand that we can choose what things we focus on and where we place our intellectual and emotional energy.”
By the time they actually shot the movie, Johansson was in a “much more settled” place. “I wasn’t in it, which was a better place to be professionally. I’d processed my feelings about it so I could use them instead of being in a cloud about the whole thing,” she said. (Today, she is engaged to Colin Jost, a head writer at Saturday Night Live.)
Cilona says it’s crucial to allow yourself time to process what happened, like Johansson did. “Many fall into the trap of staying stuck in the loss and pain, and carry that with them well past the time needed to heal and process,” he says. “Forgiveness and gratitude for the lessons learned and the good parts of the experience can be really, really difficult, but well worth the work required.”
For Johansson, throwing herself into her work (at the time, Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit) and committing to therapy helped her move forward in a healthy way. “It doesn’t mean I didn’t have a breakdown like either of these characters do—I still have them—but I really credit also having my daughter there,” she said at the Elle Women in Hollywood Celebration. “When I look at her, I feel full of hope and positivity. It’s good to wallow for a little bit. And then you have to pull yourself up.”
“When you have a breakup of any kind, whether it’s amicable or not, you question a lot of the choices that you’ve made,” she said. “OK, who am I now? And I had this new identity as a single mom, so what is that? How does this work? Even the logistics of it, and the emotional cadence of it. How is this going to be? And not knowing what the future holds. These are all things that trigger my anxiety,” she said.
Her desire to explore these feelings was evident in Marriage Story, something that Baumbach deeply appreciated. “The thing about Scarlett is her personal situation wasn’t a reason not to do it, it was a reason to do it,” he said.
Ultimately, Johansson agrees. “There’s so much of all of us in this film that’s out there for everyone to see.”
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