Jessica Chastain Interview For ‘The Debt’

Director John Madden’s espionage thriller ‘The Debt’ begins in 1997, as shocking news reaches retired Mossad secret agents Rachel (Helen Mirren) and Stefan (Tom Wilkinson) about their former colleague David (Ciaran Hinds). All three have been venerated for decades by their country because of the mission that they undertook back in 1966, when the trio (portrayed, respectively, by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam Worthington tracked down Nazi war criminal Vogel (Jesper Christensen ) in East Berlin. At great risk, and at considerable personal cost, the team’s mission was accomplished – or was it? The suspense builds in and across two different time periods, with startling action and surprising revelations. ‘The Debt’ is set for release August 31st in the US, and September 30th in the UK. Check out what Jessica Chastain had to say about the film below.

You get to be involved in quite a few combat scenes in this film, what was that like?

Jessica Chastain: I’ve never been in a fight in my life (laughs), when approaching this film I was a bit nervous about how I was going to realistic play a Mossad agent. So three and a half months before we started shooting I started working with a coach, that was incredibly helpful for me. I wanted it to look like it made sense, that Rachel could take down these people. My coach taught me a lot about how to use ones body weight, so even if you’re smaller than somebody else, you can use your bodyweight to twist someone’s arm that leads them into the ground, and you can pin them in certain ways. That coaching definitely gave me the confidence to approach those fight scenes, and be tough (laughs).

How did you rehearse with Sam Worthington? The two of you have some incredibly intense scenes.

Jessica Chastain: Sam and I, we met on this film. As always you get nervous when you’re meeting someone for the first time, especially when you have to be in a love story with them, you’re like, ‘please be a cool guy, please be a nice guy!’ (Laughs) Thank goodness he’s a wonderful person. We didn’t really rehearse that much together, because I think the dynamic of Rachel and David’s relationship is that there’s so much unspoken between the two of them. So most of the rehearsal’s were the stunt rehearsals, the Krav Maga stuff I was coached in. With everything else we just allowed to be on set.

What was it like playing the same woman as Helen Mirren, thirty years apart? Did you work together for that?

Jessica Chastain: Yeah, Helen and I met together a couple of times, she’s so wonderful, we worked on the accent together to make sure we had the same voice. We worked with a great dialect coach, Joan Washington, who I’ve worked with three times now, such a wonderful coach, I always enjoy working with Joan. We also talked about Rachel’s back-story, what happened to her family during the holocaust, what brought her to the Mossad, what happened to Rachel’s life before the movie starts. Then we also talked about different mannerism’s we might have, different times we could use them.

There’s actually a scene where both my Rachel and her Rachel tell a story to a group of people, about what was going through her mind during an attack, and she responds with, ’at that time I was thinking of my Mother.’ Helen said to me, ’this feels like a press thing when you’re telling the story over and over again, where you kind of just take the technique of being on that ride, you’re not really being that authentic in that moment.’ We realised that because it’s a lie, because it’s a story she’s told over and over again, we wanted to make sure we told it in the same way. So during that section where we say, ‘I was thinking of my Mother,’ we both put our hands to our heart when we say the word ’Mother’. We did that throughout the film, I don’t think people would necessarily notice, but we just wanted the audience to buy that we were the same person.

How was it working under the direction of John Madden?

Jessica Chastain: I was so excited to be working with John Madden, I knew he was going to be a great mentor, teacher of mine on the set. He works in both theatre and film, I knew we were going to have a very similar language. He’s also great because he doesn’t try to impose anything on you as an actor, he’s really subtle in his direction. He creates an environment for real things to happen, we filmed a lot of the movie in chronological order – which is so helpful for an actor (laughs). When we were shooting in a safe house, a lot of those scenes were in order, he really created an environment where we felt like rats in this box, we were desperate to get out and see some sunshine. I really hope to work with him again!