Actors don't always portray characters that they like. In fact, some actors choose roles that allow them to be someone that they find despicable—artistic challenges that unveil insights into human nature and
society. In this interview with the AMERICAN COLLECTION, actress Cherry Jones discusses her role as the unlikable Mrs. Studevant in Cora Unashamed.
Question: Can you tell us something about this woman—who is she, what is she like?
Cherry Jones: Well, Mrs. Studevant is a tremendously stunted human being. She suffers, I think, from a sense of
profound inadequacy, and rather than making her submissive, it made her a vicious and insecure person. And she's also a product of a social code—she has been brought up…
Q: The social code that prevailed in Iowa at that time.
CJ: Which she did not have the wherewithal to overcome. She was not a particularly bright woman, and her soul was not a large
soul, and so she didn't have the motivation or the wherewithal to question or challenge things, as most people don't when they are brought up in a rigid social order. I honestly wanted to do her because
Cora Unashamed struck me in the same place that To Kill a Mockingbird struck. And in To Kill a Mockingbird, you had to have an actor who played that hideous, horrible father of the girl who
alleges the rape. And without that villain, you cannot have that authority. And so I took it upon myself to be the actor who played the arrogant, vain, stupid person in Cora.
Q: The way you're describing her…do you have to like a character in order to play her well?
CJ: Well, I always have in the past. I've always played heroines in the past; this is the first time
I've ever played anyone that I really, intensely disliked. I have very little compassion for Elizabeth Studevant. I wish I had more, because she, too, is a victim. I mean in an eternal sense, she is
the victim of this film, because Cora is a magnificent human being and intellect and soul, although her life has been made impossible by this woman, she is going to have a much fuller life than Mrs. Studevant ever
could. Mrs. Studevant's life is over at the end of this film, and Cora proceeds with her life. For all the horrendous tragedies she's had to endure, she now proceeds with her life, and Elizabeth's life is
over. But I feel that Elizabeth is, unfortunately, one of those people who takes up too much oxygen on this planet.
Q: She's older than you are. Is it difficult to play someone that is moderately
older than you are? Does that demand specific challenges?
CJ: Well, Regina and I play Cora and Elizabeth as younger women through to their middle years. I think we span about twenty years.
With someone like Elizabeth, it's actually easier to play her older, because it's harder to imagine her as a fresh and youthful woman. She hardens and solidifies as time goes by, and that's easier to play.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced during production? Can you think of anything—either a scene or an aspect of the character or a sequence or something that was most difficult?
CJ: The
hardest thing to prepare for was the final scene, the funeral. Actually, in the short story, Langston Hughes's description of Mrs. Studevant before the funeral is horrific. He has her almost feigning her
grief. She has a nice big breakfast to fortify herself before she goes to the funeral. Anne [Peacock] took that out, and I'm grateful, because it was so horrible. I didn't buy it. I wanted the
audience to realize, in those final moments of the funeral, that this is a woman who is utterly destroyed. She's destroyed because, although she was not capable of maternal love for her child, there is a great
regret at not being able to love. Her child is gone, she's destroyed socially in the town, she is now an outcast. And I think her health is destroyed. Certainly her marriage is over. And I think
at the point that Cora tells the people gathered at the funeral what has happened, Mrs. Studevant is almost so far gone, she sort of hears it, but I think she's almost catatonic, to tell you the truth. I think
this is a woman who is now on her way down a deep slope into, perhaps, insanity or catatonia. I can imagine her becoming a vegetable. Maybe this is all too overly dramatic, but I don't know how someone like
that could survive the convergence of all those events in her life.
Q: She's got a lot of time to think about it, unless she does slip away.
CJ: Yeah. But preparing for that moment, when
she's still there and she's hearing, but she's so far gone—I've never had to go quite that far in doing something. And when I first read the short story—which I honestly don't remember that well right now because
I also tried to put it out of my mind because that's not what we're doing; we're doing Anne Peacock's version of the short story—I remember thinking that as Langston Hughes had drawn Mrs. Studevant, it was almost like
the parents in the Charlie Brown cartoon—all you heard was the blah-bl-blah-blah. I don't know how you transcribe that, but you know, that sound that the grownups make on the Charlie Brown specials. That's
what Mrs. Studevant was like. It was very two-dimensional, well, not even two-dimensional, it was just sort of like this wash of this evil white woman. And even in Anne's script, because she is this
archetype, she is fairly two-dimensional, because there's not a lot of time to develop who this woman is. She is an obstacle to Cora, and not the central character. So I had to find a way to flesh her out a
little bit, and at least try to make her clear. On top of being an insecure white woman tied to all those social codes, I also think she was a bit of a nut case. From the get-go. And I wanted to try to
make that clear. Her kind of behavior is so extreme. I have to believe she was a little unbalanced from the start.
Q: I think the scenes with her and Cora, whether it's the script or whether it's
what you and Regina bring to it, are certainly two characters who are conceived in the round, interacting with each other. What do you remember as the highest moment of the production for you?
CJ:
Well, any time that I got to be in a scene with Regina Taylor was a high point. I'm a great admirer of Regina's work, as a playwright and as an actor. There was one scene when we had a showdown over who was
going to take the tray up to Jessie. And to get to perform with a woman of that power, most actresses don't get to work with other actresses. We're always working with the man. It's usually the woman
and her boss, the woman and her husband. There's not a lot written for two strong women to lock horns, and that was a very difficult but wonderful scene as an actor, to get to work with someone of Regina's
stature. It was a thrill for me.
Q: It's funny, because as I look back on this movie, it seems to me to be a duet for musical instruments. It reminds me of Autumn Sonata, where Liv
Ulmann and Ingrid Bergman just own the screen, two terrific actresses going at it. You guys were really wonderful. When I read the script I thought, gee, I don't know. And then when I saw the movie I
thought, yeah, it's all there. I was going to ask you one more thing about Cora—this interview is going to be read primarily by high school and junior high school students. Some of them read and some of them
don't. Did you read when you were that age?
CJ: Very sporadically. I remember loving Ray Bradbury, and I read Nancy Drew, but I was always in the top of the tree. I was never a
big reader. But I remember when I was about thirteen or fourteen reading Nicholas and Alexandra, which was unheard of for me, to read a book of that size, or a book as dense as that. But it was so
accessibly written, and it was a period that I was immediately drawn to and fascinated by, and I felt sure that I had been reincarnated, that I had lived through the Russian Revolution. It seemed familiar. I
had a really strong connection to that book. And I think that was the book that got me interested in reading. I still don't read as much as I would like; it's the curse of the actor who's blessed with having
to read one script after another. You just don't have time to read books the way you'd like. But Nicholas and Alexandra was the book of my childhood.
Q: Mine was Gone With the Wind. I opened it when I was thirteen and I suddenly realized that there were other worlds. I didn't have to stay home, I could be anywhere, I could be in any time, and
I pretty much read nonstop.
CJ: I have a suggestion for students. Charles Dickens wrote a book called American Notes. He wrote it when he came to this country in
1842. For six months, Charles Dickens came to America. And it takes him from Boston down through the East Coast down to Washington, D.C. He was going to continue down into the South, but he so abhorred
slavery, and by the time he got to Washington it was March, and it was already so beastly hot for an Englishman, he was sure he would languish and die if he went farther south. So he decided to cut west and
actually crossed the Mississippi—in 1842, and then went up along the Great Lakes to places like Sandusky, which were Indian villages in 1842. It's an amazing book, and his characterization of the American spirit
and the energy of America is still so spot-on, it's just phenomenal. I was reading it during the Monica Lewinsky trials and tribulations of our president, and even the way he writes about the American presidency
was absolutely accurate to 1999, when I was reading it.Q: It would be interesting to compare that with Utopia. Was he giving readings when he did that trip, or was he just touring?
CJ: I think
it was more touring. He was being invited places, and maybe he was doing some readings, but I think the second trip was more the reading tour. I could be wrong.
Q: My last question. What do you hope that kids will take away from Cora?
CJ: The true strength of the meek, and the corruption and the weakness of the powerful, and the meek will win
out. People whose souls are strong and clear and pure, and who have the wherewithal to fight injustice, whether they die for what they believe in, or whether they live to a ripe old age, will win out.
