Winona Ryder on Going Dark and Damaged in ‘Turks & Caicos’
Where’s Winona? Following last night’s posh screening of the PBS bound BBC espionage thriller, “Turks & Caicos,” in the depths of Manhattan’s Crosby Street Hotel, the lights lurch up. Star Bill Nighy (yes, senior heartthrob of “Harry Potter” and “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” fame), writer-director David Hare (“The Reader,” “The Hours”) and New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick take three seats on stage. But where’s the female lead, Winona?
Ms. Ryder, sitting in the back row in black-and-white evening-wear, is all dressed up with no place to go. She listens keenly as the men discuss the war profiteering, corrupt politicians, and male posturing of the British and American secret services on a tiny Caribbean island that the movie depicts. As Nighy drily points out, the night’s movie is the “incomprehensible middle part of the trilogy,” graciously letting the people who didn’t comprehend how all the pieces fit together off the hook.
In the audience at the event hosted by Vogue’s Anna Wintour, a smattering of star power stay seated to hear the discussion. As in all these events that dot Manhattan, there’s an element of Madame Tussaud’s, or an armchair celebrity safari where once can play spot the famous figure. Vanessa Redgrave, who starred in Hare’s “A Year of Magical Thinking” on the London stage, attends. As does Wallace Shawn, Tony winner James Naughton, and that guy with the face you’ve seen a million times, Zach Grenier (TV’s “The Good Wife”).
[Related: Winona Ryder Admits ’90s ‘It’ Girl Status “Took its Toll’]
Catching up at the reception next door, having run the gauntlet of proffered wine goblets, Ryder is at a loss for why she didn’t join Hare, Nighy and Remnick on stage. “They didn’t ask me,” she tells Yahoo Movies. She is the opposite of bossy.
At 42, the veteran star of “Heathers” (which celebrates its 25th anniversary this week), “Black Swan,” and more, has pulled her dark hair back to reveal a high forehead and luminous skin. And, although her hair is up, away from that fine-boned face with the expressive brows, it’s as if she’s still hiding under a fringe. She tends to look down and away, her shoulders slightly hunched, even as her smile welcomes as she leans in to converse.
Of her part as Melanie, a hard-drinking sexpot swimming with sharky businessmen in Turks & Caicos, Ryder said she was trying to channel Barbara Stanwyck: “She could really do damaged in an incredible way, in a brilliant way. That great Josephine Hart line, ‘Damaged people are the most dangerous. They know how to survive.’ That was the thing I was thinking of, that was very much the character of Melanie.”
[Related: Review: ‘Heathers: The Musical’ Shallow But Catchy]
Ryder pauses to look down at her shiny silver clutch, which resembles a very large caliber bullet, and she can hardly encircle with her petite hand. “I feel like I’m holding a weapon of mass destruction right now. It’s so heavy,” she says, before handing it off to a colleague.
Clutch dispatched, the actress rhapsodizes about working with Hare and her two older leading men, Nighy and Christopher Walken. “I’m not being indiscrete, David jokes that he just loves Bill, and we’re there to love Bill. Girl, it’s easy. You talk to him for five minutes and that’s it. That was true for Christopher, too. I actually had to put base on my cheeks because my first night was the scene where Christopher was walking me home, and my character is like ‘It’s not going to happen.’ But my face said something different. I was blushing and David was like you look like, ‘You are so in love with him.’ And I was like that with both Chris and Bill.”
If only we could have seen her like that on stage.
