NEW YORK—Once she‘d decided to take on her gritty new role in “Wild,” there were a few things Reese Witherspoon knew she DIDN’T want to hear from movie studio executives:
“We want her to be more likable.”
“We don’t want her to use drugs.”
“We don’t want her to be profane.”
And so, Witherspoon says, she didn’t give them the chance.
She developed the film, which follows a hard-living woman’s path to solace and redemption via a long trek in the wilderness, outside the studio system under the auspices of her own production company, with private financing. “And then I took it to the studios and said, ‘I’m not changing a word,’” Witherspoon recounts in an interview. “And I had three bids on it that day.”
“Wild,” based on the best-selling memoir by Cheryl Strayed, is a story of personal catharsis, and listening to Witherspoon, one gets the sense she was seeking a sort of professional catharsis by choosing it.
The role, which has garnered significant Oscar buzz, includes difficult scenes depicting rough sex and heroin use. Witherspoon wore no makeup and spent days lugging a heavy backpack up and down hills.
“By far, it’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” she says. “The physical aspects were really challenging—the elements, the heat, the cold, the water, the rain, 55 locations in 35 days, and carrying that backpack. And there was nothing else to cut to—just me.”
Emotionally, it was even harder, she says: “One day I‘d be getting divorced. Another, my mother would be dying. The next day I’d be using heroin. It was just nonstop—not even a roller coaster, just a continual descent downward! There are always scenes that I dread, that I say, ‘That day’s going to be miserable.’ And here, it was three weeks of that.”
Witherspoon’s director, Jean-Marc Vallée, calls the actress “a trouper.” As well he should: He noticed that the backpack looked too light and forced her to carry a much heavier one.
“And then he just walked away, and I was like, OK ...” Witherspoon laughs. “You can see it digging into my skin. Because it really WAS digging into my skin!”
Vallée says Witherspoon “went out there with no makeup, looking like nothing, on the trail for 65 percent of the film, looking like a hiker, with a heavy backpack on her back. I removed the mirrors in the makeup trailer and she didn’t look at herself.”
