It has to be hard to get a handle on what someone like Jeff Gillooly is like when you’re working on a film that’s comprised almost completely from contradictory first-hand accounts from the people who really lived through these incidents. At times, you portray him sympathetically, and at times you have to show this dark, loathsome, irredeemable side of him. Is that hard to convey these constantly changing character directions as an actor?
Sebastian Stan: That’s one of the great things about the script. One minute I was laughing so hard at what was happening, and then the next scene I would become so aghast that I would get confused about what I was laughing at. It’s the kind of material that was always challenging my own system of values, and the idea that these are real people and that this really happened – not to mention what I thought I knew or didn’t know about it all going in – really sparked my curiosity.
Regardless of what really is the truth, I had to follow the script. In the film, there are scenes where Jeff will say “I didn’t do this. I had nothing to do with it.” Then in the very next moment, we’ll cut to him acting completely opposite of what he was saying because that storytelling perspective has changed. Whether he was telling the truth or he was lying, I always had to follow the script to find the truth in each scene as an actor. Both Jeff and Tonya, from doing these interviews, basically contributed to the screenplay in their own words. Steve Rogers went to interview both of them. I never got a chance to hear Tonya’s interview, but I did get to check out his, and his point of view is definitely in the script, as is her’s. We have to honour both of them to some respect.It’s also a story where there’s a great amount of abuse and violence that colour who these characters are. How were you all able to manage the film’s more outlandish and comedic elements with these incidents of real life violence?
Sebastian Stan: The hard part with Jeff is that there’s no excuse for that kind of behaviour. I don’t care where you’re coming from. There’s no excuse for it. Absolutely none. I think the issue is more than boiling down to calling Jeff and Tonya rednecks, and more about the nature of trauma. You’re talking about two individuals who are very damaged. You can see in both of their lives that their pasts aren’t the greatest, even before they met each other. The problem is that you’re growing up learning these cycles of abandonment, abuse, violence, and survival amid great uncertainty, and if these are present when you’re growing up as a child, the sad part is that these feelings often get equated with love if that’s all these people know. I thought about that a lot, and how people can seek that later in life. I think they both play this tug of war with each other where they try to let go, and they keep coming back together because they exemplify all they think they know about love.
For her, she thinks that she can’t be happy, because if she starts feeling happy or comfortable, she thinks that something must be wrong. That’s relatable, and I think we all have these fears; this fear that if someone puts a gun to your head that you’re going to run a marathon faster than anyone has run a marathon before. It becomes a survival mechanism. People always try to say that there’s something in their background, but I think people always looked in the wrong places for answers. Neither of them was exactly keen on going to therapy. In many ways, this is a story about trauma.You said you got a chance to go over the interview tapes, but did you meet Jeff in person, and did it change your opinion about him as a person?
Sebastian Stan: Yeah, I did. As for if it changed my opinion of him… (long pause) Even right now if you were to ask me that, I honestly wouldn’t know what to say. I’m further removed now, but at the time I had to take such an objective point of view, and to a point where I had to take my own opinions on the matter out of the equation to find a way in to who he was as a person and the situations he found himself in. The only way that this made any sense was to treat the film as an obsessive, compulsive love story. Here’s someone who attached his own identity so close to someone else’s identity and worth that without her he didn’t know what life was going to be like, and it terrified him. I worked from there and tried to figure out what kind of situation that would be like. All of that was in the script, and the accounts were already so contradictory that I would never go up to Steve Rogers and say, “Oh, we can’t say this like this because Jeff told me…”
But there were definitely moments where Margot and I would be in a scene, and I would say to her beforehand, “I’m pretty sure this is where she knew what was happening.” And she would say, “No, because he wasn’t telling her anything.” And we would go back and forth and question ourselves and our characters about who knew what and at what point. I think Craig did such a great job with the film and how he allowed us – and how he allows the audience – to come away with their own take on what happened. No one here is very innocent, so getting the truth out of them all was something I knew would be almost impossible.
We will never really know. Maybe that’s what’s so interesting about the story. Why do we keep coming back to this? Why do we keep examining what happened with O.J. or the Menendez Brothers? There was a bad thing that happened, and we can point to it and know that it’s bad, but knowing where it starts, where it ends, and who knew what is confounding. It’s like no one involved or observing from a far thinks that the actual truth could ever be good enough. Everyone thinks about what could have been and why, but I’m not sure if anyone wants to confront the truth or know it completely. Tonya claims she knew nothing about it, and Jeff says that it started out as this small thing that someone else ended up taking to another level that he wasn’t involved in.
But regardless of who they are, when you play a real life person, there’s still a sense of responsibility there. You have someone’s life in your hands, so to speak. It’s a great challenge, for sure. With Tonya, you have someone who’s very animated and adamant that they had nothing to do with what happened, which if you study behaviour and how people react to certain situations, it makes people question them more. With Jeff, he just kind of shrugs and says he didn’t do it, which is fascinating in its own way because you’re always looking deep into their eyes for any sort of tell that they’re lying to you. It’s colder, but there aren’t as many distractions. It’s so fascinating to be able to play alongside Margot and show these two sides of this crazy story.Did you ever follow the case closely when it was originally unfolding?
Sebastian Stan: I was about ten or eleven when it first happened, so I was actually in Europe at the time, and I wasn’t following it closely. I did see [the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary] Price of Gold, and I think that was that was the first real exposure I had to what happened, and that was great. From there I watched so many tapes about the ins and outs of the figure skating world, and it took my appreciation for the sport and the seriousness of what happened had more weight to it. Here are athletes who make the near impossible look effortless, and I think that was one of the things that endeared people to Nancy Kerrigan. Everything Kerrigan did looked so smooth, pristine, and almost regal. But this idea that it was also like a pageant sort of thing, which is weird when you consider how physically demanding it all is.
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