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FACES OF ANGELS
Magazine / Source: Advocate Magazine, December 2003 |
In HBO’s six-hour adaptation, debuting December 7, Meryl Streep plays the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, who keeps vigil at the deathbed of Cohn, the right-wing lawyer who was instrumental in condemning her to death for treason; Hannah Pitt, the bitter Mormon mom who learns that her son, Joe, is gay; and, for good measure, the aged male rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz, who opens the film. Below, a taste of Streep’s exclusive interview with The Advocate.
You begin the film as an ancient male rabbi. Soon afterward, you sit next to Tony Kushner, also dressed as a rabbi. You two seem deep in discussion. What were you actually talking about?
I think Tony and I were discussing our mutual friend Maurice Sendak, writer, illustrator, teacher, artist, and scenic designer, who plays the third rabbi on the bench in that scene.… We’d spent that morning in our rabbi suits, reading the paper and discussing events; we snacked, we joked and talked politics. I guess I was happy for the opportunity to try out my scrabbly voice before shooting. Anyway, in this picture Tony is telling me that after lunch Maurice had leaned over and asked, “When is Meryl Streep going to show up? I thought she would be on the set today”—and a few minutes after this photo was taken, Tony walked him some distance away and told him who the other old guy was. Maurice was, how do you say, gob-smacked: “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” and I was tickled…I felt better too, because actually he had been kind of distant from me all morning, nice but reserved, and my feelings had been a teeny bit hurt…ha!
You’ve had a long, good collaboration with Mike Nichols. How has he changed as a director between 1983’s Silkwood and today?
Mike is more relaxed and confident and just as delicious and inventive as he ever was. He lacerates you with the bons mots; he levels you with his wit and makes you feel omnipotent with the freedom he gives you. He’s incapable of earnestness and of saying anything that isn’t funny, deeply funny; even and especially criticism, for which he saves his best material. When you’re laughing it all goes in easier. And I don’t know any other director on earth who would’ve immediately and without reservation asked me to do these characters and then left it entirely up to me as to how they’d look, act, talk. He trusted me, and it’s that confidence in his actors that makes people want to work with him again and again and again.
How have you changed as an actor?
Fifteen pounds.
Many of us have wanted to kiss Emma Thompson in midair. Could you describe the experience of actually shooting this scene?
Emma was sporting a really nasty truss in this film, which she wore on and off for about a year. It wasn’t for the hernia; it enabled her to fly, with a sensation she compared to the last stages of labor. I only had to wear it on the one day, and I feel it mitigated against the transcendent sexual experience depicted. I remember it was hard to kiss midair and not break each other’s front teeth.
Your portrayal of Ethel Rosenberg once again employs your superb ear for accents. How did you study to become Ethel?
Miss Streep doesn’t respond well to questions about “accents.” She feels they should be placed under the tongue and allowed to dissolve.
Angels in America, the play, challenged a nation deep in conflict over how to deal with its gay and lesbian citizens. America is still embroiled in that conflict. In this adaptation, what do you want to communicate to the TV audience?
I hope this helps us explain ourselves to ourselves. Having said that, I just think it’s an amazingly ambitious piece that people will undoubtedly argue about, love, be scandalized by, and be riveted to. Can you end a sentence in a preposition? Am I in trouble? Am I trouble in?
