The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub speaks with Andy Samberg and Andrea Riseborough for
Lee
.
Cinematographer and first-time director Ellen Kuras’ biopic
Lee
brings to life the WWII story of Lee Miller, starring Kate Winslet.
During this interview, Samberg and Riseborough discuss working with Winslet to immerse themselves in the scenes, the heavy material, and more.

Academy Award-nominated for her role in To Leslie, Andrea Riseborough lends her acting talent to the work of celebrated working directors like Armando Iannucci, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and Tom Ford. Riseborough heightens each film with her nuanced performance, unique takes, and fully-embodied characters. Andy Samberg is a modern comedy icon, taking a confident (yet terrifying) step into earnest drama. Together, they’ve been cast alongside Kate Winslet in Ellen Kuras’ moving new biopic, Lee.

Lee tells the amazing story of photojournalist Lee Miller, soberly played (and astutely produced) by Winslet. Lee explores the decade in Miller’s life, changing her forever from fashion model and artist’s muse to an accomplished, storied war correspondent through the Second World War.

In this interview, Riseborough and Samberg speak with Collider’s Steve Weintraub about the film’s production. Together, they discuss what it takes to get into the respective mindsets of the Wartime Editor-in-Chief of Vogue magazine and a Jewish WWII war photographer, capturing the horrors of the Concentration camps.

Will There Be More ‘Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers’?
Image via Disney+

COLLIDER: How are you both doing?

SAMBERG: Good! Very well.

RISEBOROUGH: Very well, thank you.

I really want to start with congrats on the movie. I watched it yesterday. I thought Ellen did such a great job and Kate might have a career after this. She’ll land on her feet. She’ll get another role.

SAMBERG: We’re hopeful for her.

RISEBOROUGH: We are.

I like throwing a curveball at the beginning. In another world– a better world– there would be a Chip ‘N Dale sequel.

SAMBERG: Ah. We’re talking Rescue Rangers!? [To Riseborough] I’m so sorry.

I’m throwing that out there because I love that movie.

SAMBERG: Yeah, I’m game! I think [director Akiva Schaffer] probably would want to.

RISEBOROUGH: You’ve gone off piece? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

SAMBERG: This is a Disney live-action mixed with animation movie based on Chip ‘N Dale cartoon.

RISEBOROUGH: And how many minutes do we have? We have like three minutes?

No, we have eight minutes.

RISEBOROUGH: No, let’s talk about the Chippendales and not Lee Miller. Or not the Chippendales, the Chipmunks?

SAMBERG: Chip and Dale

RISEBOROUGH: Oh! Chip and Dale! We should talk about Lee Miller, right?

100%.

SAMBERG: He’s starting with his curveball.

RISEBOROUGH: Could we finish with the curveball?

Yeah, 100%!

RISEBOROUGH: Brilliant! Let’s get to it.

I just learned the dynamic of the room very quickly.

SAMBERG: We’re learning on our feet.

Andrea Riseborough and Andy Samberg on Playing Real People in ‘Lee’

You are both playing real people, but you are making a movie. What is it actually in those weeks or months leading up to playing a role in that preparation process?

RISEBOROUGH: It’s an extraordinary preparation process. I can’t speak to what Andy was experiencing, but I know for me, I’ve played a lot of people who have existed in life. It’s always very, very different, but there’s something that happens in the lead-up that is very, very personal between you and this person, who you may or may not have met or may or may not have known already. There’s a real intimacy there. Then, all of that has to go away as you step into the reality that they were in in the story that we’re telling, during a certain time that we’re telling it. I always feel as present as I am when I’m playing somebody who didn’t exist. It’s the lead-up to playing somebody who really walked on the earth, I think, is quite different to playing somebody that you’ve constructed psychologically from the roots up.

SAMBERG: For me, it was the first time ever doing that. I tried to learn as much as I could about him and was really excited to learn. He was a very fascinating person who led an exciting, brave, and crazy life. That got me more excited to portray him because I felt affection towards him and his deeds. I had a couple of interviews he had done to listen to. Then I realized, outside of people who really knew David Scherman, there’s not a lot of people that are gonna be like, “He doesn’t sound anything like him.” So, trying to get the closest approximation of something I felt comfortable in performance-wise and what he actually sounded like. From there, yeah, you have to try and make it something you connect with personally so that when you’re acting, it feels natural, real, you react, and all that stuff.

Andrea Riseborough Shares The Importance of Vogue Magazine in WWII
Image via Roadside Attractions

One of the things that people might not realize is the importance Vogue played during the war in London. Can you talk about that aspect and what Vogue did for people?

RISEBOROUGH: Yes. The character I play, Audrey, was a really unlikely candidate for editor of Vogue during the Second World War. Or perhaps very likely during the Second World War, but in no other time. Only because she was quite austere and very, very warm, practical, and cared very much about the war effort. So she really harnessed Vogue as a publication toward doing everything they could to contribute to that, to the point where she recycled all of the Vogue copies between one year and another in order to get paper for the war effort.

She was an interesting character because she was a staunch socialist in a very conservative fashion world, yet seemed to really embrace everybody, and wanted very much for Lee to have the opportunity as a war correspondent and a brilliant writer and journalist to share her experience with the world. There were so many hurdles in order to do that. Then, when she did, with Andy’s character, finally take these images, I mean, we’re indebted to them for having documented what they documented. My character, Audrey, was unable then to share them with the world because of the British government’s thoughts about how low the morale was amongst the citizens at the time, them not being able to take any more tragedy. We both played such wonderful people, and it’s such an important story. It’s wonderful to shed light on. We are playing real people, but it’s wonderful to shed light on lesser-known real people, I suppose.

Andy Samberg’s Personal Connection To His ‘Lee’ Character
“It was horrible, and it felt horrible, and I let it be horrible.”
Image via Roadside Attractions

You’ve done a lot of work in your career, but I don’t think you have done anything as serious as when you’re doing the Concentration camp sequence and then finally showing the emotion of what this is doing to you. Talk a little bit about filming those sequences and the importance you placed on yourself when you are dealing with such important subject matter.

SAMBERG: That’s 100% accurate. It was by far the heaviest material I’ve ever done. I think I have a personal connection to some of that stuff with my own family. That helped, but really, it was about putting my trust in Ellen and with Kate. I will say Kate really helped me through a lot of it and really just told me to get out of my head, experience it, and let myself go there. She was very sweet and kept telling me I could do it. When you come from the comedic side of things, it’s my natural instinct to undercut, to protect myself. But in this case, you have to be fully open and vulnerable, dive fully into it, and go for it. That’s what I did. I tried to experience it as much as if it was really happening as I could. The way they shot it, the cameras were all really far away. It was horrible, and it felt horrible, and I let it be horrible. You do those things because you feel like you owe it to the people who actually went through those things and to history.

This is a real question, and I’m a huge SNL fan. I know the 50th anniversary is about to happen. Are you and are you and the guys doing anything?

SAMBERG: Not officially, but maybe! If they call, we’ll come.

Lee is currently playing in theaters.

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