 In the horror thriller Orphan, the tragic loss of their unborn child has devastated Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard), taking a toll on their marriage. Struggling to regain some semblance of normalcy in their lives, the couple decides to adopt a child from a local orphanage.
John and Kate find themselves drawn to a 9-year-old Russian girl (Isabelle Fuhrman), but quickly learn that she is not what she appears to be. There is something very wrong with Esther.
At the film's press day, co-stars Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard and Isabelle Fuhrman talked about what they love about scary movies.
Q: Vera, what was your main attraction to this material? Were you intrigued from the beginning?
Vera: For me, it was the story. I'd never read anything like it. I love the genre. It's very rare to find characters that you can really believe in and want to invest in. I found, what my character was going through, which is this miscarriage, very compelling. It's such a complex grief. And, I was in the dysfunction of this family. Then, really, it was just a matter of who was going to be a part of it. That was the deciding factor for me.
Q: Peter, what drew you to the material?
Peter: When I got it, her name was already floating out there. I remember seeing Vera in the first breakthrough movie that I'm aware of, that she did, which was Down to the Bone at Sundance and just going "Oh, my God, we've been waiting for an actress that could do that." And, since then, I'd always just wanted to do anything with her. When I read this, I thought "Well, that would be very interesting." We're friends and to be these dysfunctional lovers, I thought that would be very weird and interesting. It was weird because Vera is friends with my wife.
Vera: It was weird and fun.
Q: Peter how was it to be a very intelligent actor, playing a character as clueless as this one?
Peter: I see his intelligence, off screen. His intelligence is his work. Isn't it the most commonplace thing, in a man, that around his house, you could get so into this routine where you just wanted everything to stay at this decibel and if somebody got upset, you just go, "Ah, hang on." You're just keeping it all right here so that, if you had an office in that building, which he does, and can go downstairs and work, just to keep everyone happy and to keep everything going in a nice, easy way. I very much identify with that. I'm sure many of you do as well.
Q: Isabelle, did you stay in character between scenes?
Isabelle: I could dip in and out of character, but I mainly stayed in character, during the week. When I had days off, I would monkey around. Sometimes, I'd go and talk to Vera and Peter about advice on acting because they're just amazing actors and I'm new to this.
Q: What was it like playing someone so evil?
Isabelle: A lot of fun, but it was challenging because I'm so different from that.
Q: Did you worry about shaking this character, after you were through shooting this movie?
Isabelle: Not really because I'm really different than my character. I'm not evil at all, I promise you that. I go to school. All my friends are really excited for me, so it's been great.
Q: Vera, as an actress, you're obviously very accustomed to melding the physicality of a role with the memorization of lines. Does that skill translate into learning the sign language? How was that as a performance tool?
Vera: It wasn't a tremendous effort. We went pretty quickly, after the whole thing came together, so there wasn't much pre-production. But, Aryana Engineer was hard of hearing and we wanted to just have the easiest and fullest communication, so we all dabbled, as much as we could, in trying to learn the language beforehand. And then, we could communicate with her, just by speaking very loudly and gesticulating madly.
Peter: To be honest, Vera was the most into it.
Vera: I think I was, but Isabelle went far beyond me. Once I realized I could speak really loudly, I just focused on the script and making sure the script was accurate.
Peter: But, Vera was the initial catalyst. She was very focused on learning it. She totally took off, and I was way behind. You just find yourself doing things, as you would. I got less focused on sign language and Isabelle got the most focused, which made sense because she had to talk to Aryana and become her confidante.
Vera: It was crucial for my relationship with my daughter in the film to have that communication that you don't quite see with the father or her brother. So, yeah, that was an important aspect that I relished and I loved learning.
Q: Isabelle, at the age of 12, are you allowed to see movies like this in theaters?
Isabelle: Not other movies, but this movie, I'm allowed to see. My sister sat next to me at the premiere and, during some scenes that Vera and Peter have, she had my eyes covered.
Vera: Isabelle, in fact, was not present during that scene. It's a trick of the camera, where you think her character's actually there, but she's not.
Q: So, your choice of films is under some family control?
Isabelle: It's mainly up to me. The challenge that I saw, when I read the script, was very large. The challenge of playing a conflicted, complex character, who can be happy one moment and then turn her head and just be thinking of a diabolical plan of something to do the next. "What will be next on the list to check off, that can make this family even more miserable?"
Peter: I have to say, I think a lot of the stuff that Isabelle did in the movie, for any actor, no matter how experienced -- doing it in dialect, talking ad nauseum, always playing at least three things -- would have been difficult. I have those days when I come to work and I see a scene like that, and you get sick to your stomach and go, "Oh man!" She had that almost every day.
Isabelle: It was challenging, but it was a lot of fun. I had such a great time and it was such a great experience, and I really learned a lot from this, from Vera and Peter, and from (director) Jaume Collet-Serra. I learned a lot about myself, through this. I can actually do this.
Q: Jaume indicated that maybe in some of the more intense scene that it wasn't you, and that it was you in just the close-ups. Is that true?
Isabelle: It's very true, yeah. I did a lot of stunts in the movie. CCH Pounder was amazing in those scenes we did. It was really funny. We were laughing, in between these scenes. We were like, "Oh, you look really funny. You've got that little scar there. That's really funny. What does it feel like, all the prosthetic stuff?" And, she'd be like, "It's kind of itchy and funny." Everything was just a lot of fun. It was like Halloween. Of course, I'd never do this in real life. Never, never, never. But, it's fun to play evil. It's very fun.
Q: Did you learn to play the piano?
Isabelle: I didn't learn to play piano. I learned one piece that I play with Vera, in one of the scenes, and then I learned to fake play piano for this piece, called "August Harvest," that I play in the movie. I went for two days to a composer's house and he taught me how to fake play, showing me where I could put my fingers on the keys of the piano. Then, they had a hand double, who was 13. She knew the piece and was playing it, and I was like "Whoa!" I can't play it, but I can fake play it.
Peter: And, Vera does play the piano quite well.
Q: What was it like working in Toronto, in the ferocious winter?
Peter: We didn't intend for some of those scenes to have quite so much snow in them. There was a Halloween scene, at one point, that we had to get rid of because it was just not believable that it would be so snowy.
Vera: But, it just added to the oppression of the film.
Q: Are you all fans of the horror genre?
Vera: Very much so.
Peter: You kind of have to be, if you're going to do something like this.
Isabelle: I like watching the trailers. I can't see the movies. I'm always like, "Oh, the trailer grossed me out. I'm not going to be able to see the movie."
Vera: I don't think you could participate in the film, if you weren't an enormous fan of the genre and loved being scared.
Q: What are some of your all-time favorite horror movies?
Vera: The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion.
Peter: Mine are a little bit more low brow, like Bad Seed and Omen. Bad Seed is so good. And, in The Omen, with the news that the child is possessed by the devil, I just love the priest's reaction of, "Oh, well." I could personally watch that scene, over and over, just to see him go, "Oh, God, the child's possessed by the devil. What are we going to do, honey?"
Vera: These kind of films, in the genre, only work if I'm invested in the characters and find the characters compelling. Oftentimes, you want to go see these films, but you feel so duped and it's not scary because you're not buying into their lives.
Peter: They need a witness that's in the movie, seeing the things that are going on, in a believable way, like Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist. We all talk about the image of her spinning and throwing up, but that's not what makes you scared. It's seeing Ellen Burstyn go, "Oh, my God!" I really think that sometimes, in this genre, people either put in actors that are not up to it or actors that are dismissive of it, and they don't witness the stuff that is happening. In the end, it's not about all the goop, it's about these witnesses to these events, and that's what always draws the audience in. When I heard that Vera was cast in this, I went "It's going to be great."
Q: Vera, was this a different experience for you, compared to Joshua?
Vera: It is also a mother in distress, but the characters were suffering from two different ailments. The character in Joshua is a woman who's going through a post-partum psychosis, who does nothing to better her situation. She just wallows in it, and goes deeper and deeper. Whereas, my character in Orphan, who suffered a very complex grief with miscarriage, is trying to heal her family, and persevere and seek forgiveness. She's motivated by the things that she's done because of alcoholism, and she wants to repair their marriage and fill that hole in her heart. They're just two completely different stories. Joshua was a great film. I wish more people had seen it.
Q: Isabelle, did your parents have any reservations about you doing this?
Isabelle: No, they were really all for it because I really wanted to do this film. Before I went on the audition, I was talking to my mom and was like, "If I get this, I really want to do this. I so want to do this." And she was like, "Alright, well let's do it." When I got it, my mom was actually in Africa on a press trip. She's a journalist who does Travel & Life Style. She got a call in the middle of the bush, riding an elephant in the morning, saying, "Your family needs to speak to you right now." My mom was thinking, "What the heck happened? What's going on?" She picked up the phone and heard, "She got the part!," and was like, "Oh, my Gosh!" It was very exciting. I was just so happy. After I got the call, I went to my computer and did my homework and my dad said, "Why are you doing your homework? You should be celebrating." I said, "I'm finishing, so I can go celebrate."
Q: Did they allow you to see the full script for this?
Isabelle: Yup. I read the full script and all the revisions of it because I really wanted to understand who she was, to be able to actually play her. I really needed to become her and think about what she might be feeling, in each different situation.
Q: Vera, did it impress you when you found out the twist?
Vera: Unquestionably, yes. Absolutely. I howled and I was terrified. I had this really nervous laughter. And then, I handed it to my husband, who's a good barometer, and he was nervously giggling throughout and shrieking the whole time, and I thought, "Okay, I'll do it."
ORPHAN opens in theaters July 24th.
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