Jessica Lange Breaks Down Her Career, from King Kong to American Horror Story (2023)

It's a very violent scene.

We were rehearsing.

It's hysterical and I'm kind of screaming.

There was this pounding on the door

and some neighbor had heard us and called the police.

We looked out the window, we were scared to death.

A cop car, two cop cars had pulled up.

I thought, this is the power of that thing.

[upbeat piano music]

You put me down!

Put me down.

King Kong is my first IMDB credit.

I was taking acting classes in New York,

I was working as a waitress at The Lion's Head.

I had gone to see a modeling agent in hopes that

maybe I could supplement my waitress income,

but I was never very successful at modeling,

but the woman there, the agent,

knew that I was serious about acting.

When she was contacted by De Launrentiis, she thought of me.

I arrived in LA and suddenly,

I'm driving through the gates of MGM,

which was my childhood studio.

Everything about MGM fascinated me.

They took one look at me and they weren't interested at all,

completely not the type he was looking for,

but since they had flown me out there,

they agreed to at least put me on camera.

I think the second AD showed up to just say roll it.

I did the scene and then he asked me

if I'd like to do another one, so I did another one.

Then he said, why don't you just wait a bit?

Pretty soon, then the AD came on the set and

he ran a few takes and then they called

the director to come.

Then the director showed up and I did a few more scenes

and then they called the producer.

De Launrentiis came to the set and

by the time I left that afternoon, I had the part.

It was one of those crazy, hard to believe stories,

but that's how it happened.

I think because I was so inexperienced

and it was the first time I was in front of cameras,

it didn't seem bizarre to me that

I was sitting in some big hydraulic hand

and playing scenes to blue screen or green screen.

At that point, it was better than being a waitress.

That's all I could keep thinking is,

this is a little more interesting

than going to The Lion's Head every night.

Not too much,

[woman laughs]

but a little bit.

[Man] Now that's what I call a real drinker's nose.

And you should know because you're

a real drinker, aren't you Joe?

Yeah.

Also heavy into speed, aren't you?

Yeah.

Also sleep with a great many women.

[Man] Real turn-off, huh?

Just the opposite.

Bob Fosse directed All That Jazz.

Bobby was a really dear friend

and he actually recognized something of my talent

that nobody else did at that time,

or very few people because after doing King Kong,

it was kind of just like she's not really

an actress or whatever.

There wasn't much to take away from that experience,

but Bobby, he really wanted me to work

and he wanted to create this character for me.

He was shooting All That Jazz and

had been shooting a long time.

I think they were way over budget and over schedule

'cause my scenes as the angel of death

were to come at the very end of the shooting schedule.

They told him that they were gonna shut down

and he really, really went to bat to

get those scenes that I was in shot.

He was just a really dear friend,

very loyal and fiercely supportive.

That was basically my second part, my second role.

Everybody was fabulous,

Roy Scheider and all the actors that were in it.

I'm the only character in it that doesn't sing or dance.

I thought, not that I could sing.

I could dance a little,

but I certainly couldn't sing, but I thought,

this is an odd character in the midst

of this whole kind of musical meilleur to be,

but I understood what he was going for.

It was classic Bobby, wasn't it?

A beautiful young woman comes to gather you up

when your time is done.

The Postman Always Rings Twice.

[woman crying]

Say you won't leave me, please.

The idea that I was a newcomer and suddenly,

I was being directed by a great director like Bob Rafelson

and working with this extraordinary actor Jack Nicholson.

It did a lot just for my whole way of seeing

and thinking of myself as an actor.

Both of them were so incredibly generous to me

for all of that.

As you can imagine, working with Jack is a lot of fun.

We had a great time doing it.

Thinking back on that time,

it was like something there really

opened up for me as an actor.

It was the first time I had been given

the kind of part that felt like

maybe I was a dramatic actress and that

this was something I could pursue and want to pursue.

You were gonna leave me.

What are you, writing me a thank you note?

I learned a lot from watching Jack work

because he always had a sense of camera

that was kind of uncanny.

It wasn't the kind of acting that

I had studied in acting class, obviously.

That was something new to me,

that it was specific for the camera

how you created your performance.

I'd never even thought in those terms really before.

It's a classic story, James M. Cain.

His stories were always sex and death and opera.

I would've been insane not to do that part.

There would've been no reason in hell not to take that role.

I think more than anything,

it was the beginning of the way I work.

It was the beginning of finding the

emotional life and working from there.

You gotta go back there and tell them to let me out

'cause I'm ready to get out now,

so you go back in there and you tell them

that you're gonna let me out of here!

Frances, I'm warning you.

No, I'm warning you!

Graham Clifford was the editor of

Postman Always Rings Twice

and when he decided to direct the film,

he thought immediately of asking me to play Frances,

which is interesting because years before

when I was taking acting classes in New York

with Warren Robertson,

Warren Robertson gave me the book

Will There Really be a Morning,

which was Frances' autobiography, and said,

you should find some scenes in here to do for class

'cause this was scene study class.

I did, I found some excerpts of things to do in class

and a couple years later,

this movie comes to me of Frances Farmer.

I didn't have to think twice about doing it.

I knew I could do it and that

it would change my life doing it, and it kind of did.

Suddenly, I was considered really for the first time

a real actress.

I wanted to do it 'cause I knew it would be

one of the greatest roles I'd ever play

and the idea of exploring madness

is something that has always fascinated me,

that idea of somebody who is living on the edge,

and the relationship with the mother

and the fact that after I talked to Graham about it,

he said, I'd like to offer this part to Kim Stanley.

Kim Stanley has always been, to me,

the greatest actress ever.

There's nobody that compares to Kim Stanley,

so the idea that I could play this role

with this actress and tell this story,

it was like a gift from the gods.

It turned out that way, really.

It was.

[Announcer] For her riveting portrayal of the beautiful,

but tortured actress,

a star with a comet that burned out too soon,

Jessica Lange in Frances.

[audience claps]

You're always yourself and I'm grateful for you,

but I just can't see you anymore.

No.

I work in a very similar way that Kim worked.

There was no protective coating.

It was wild and it was raw and the

crazier it was, the better it was, especially for this part.

I think Kim recognized that.

She said to me, the best thing you can do

is do a comedy next.

Out of the blue, I got a call from Sydney Pollack

and Dustin Hoffman and there was Tootsie.

It was an extraordinary time, Frances and Tootsie.

It was a banner year.

It was a good year, it was a really, really good year.

I won an Oscar for Tootsie and a couple years later,

I won an Oscar for Blue Sky.

It just validated the fact that

people recognized that I could do it, that I did a good job.

The script was brilliant.

It was funny, it was smart, it was an extraordinary vehicle

for Dusty and I give Sydney Pollack

total credit for creating that role.

He really saw something in it and brought it forward.

It's funny, and it's touching.

Again, I think Sydney Pollack is one of the

genius directors.

I was so lucky to be able to work with him on that.

Sometimes I'm watching television at night

and it comes on and that scene,

it just plays so beautifully and the

way he let the camera follow us as we walked away.

It says everything about that relationship.

It's hopeful and it's sweet and it's tender.

Stop!

Yes Leigh?

Listen to me Max.

Listen to me.

You know Max, since all this started,

I thought about you all the time.

I've tried to imagine what it must've

been like for you all those years locked up in jail.

First of all, that was one of those moments where

when I was talking to Marty and

he came to see me about doing this part.

I thought, this is a done deal.

I'm gonna work with Martin Scorsese

at least once in my career.

I wanna work with this brilliant man.

I loved working with Marty because

he has an enthusiasm that's almost childlike.

His love of film and the process is so contagious.

I'm sorry that I've only had one

opportunity to work with him.

The scene where my character that I played, Leigh,

is trying to bargain to not abuse her daughter,

to not assault her daughter, but to take her instead,

begging him to leave her daughter alone.

I want you to do it just with me, not with her,

because we have this connection.

That's one of those scenes where you

do your homework and you've got the lines,

you know what is expected,

but something then explodes in the moment of doing it.

For me, that's always the thrill of acting

where you don't set things ahead of time.

With that scene, it really was some kind of explosion.

It's so emotionally powerful that it

kind of sweeps you along with it.

I loved that scene, I loved playing that scene.

It was a great project, it was.

I really enjoyed doing it.

I wish the opportunity to do something

like that would come up again.

Dance the waltz!

How can you resist it?

[woman coughs]

How can you resist that?

The director Michael Susi again asked me to do it

and of course I didn't give it a second thought.

Big Edie, are you kidding?

The way he had designed the story that

we would actually go back and tell some of the early stuff

to portray their early lives because

as you know in that brilliant documentary,

you're just in the house with these women

in this period of time at the end,

but Michael's script takes us through those

previous years to kind of see how this all came about.

I remember working with my singing coach

and we were getting ready to prerecord Tea For Two

and he said, I don't know,

do you wanna do anything different with it?

I thought, oh no, no.

I wanna do it beat by beat, breath by breath,

exactly as she did it because you could

never in a million years improve

on Big Edie's singing Tea For Two.

The way I found into her character every day

was listening to her voice.

I would come into the trailer in the morning

and I would put on the DVD.

It was an interesting process because

I would hear her voice and I would listen to it,

and I would listen to it, and I would listen to it,

and then suddenly I'd feel as though

something had settled down and that I had the character.

I loved her.

She's one of those characters.

You can look back in your whole cannon of work

and you can say, there were characters I

really fell in love with.

Frances Farmer obviously, Patsy Cline,

Blanche DuBois, Mary Tyrone, Edith Beale,

there are some that you just,

they mean so much to you and you just

hold them in your heart.

I loved everything about it except

the four hours in the makeup trailer in the makeup chair,

starting at 5AM.

Do they work?

You'll see.

Tonight, I'm gonna let the whole world in,

get a good look at me.

Who's the baddest witch now?

I was up at my farm Upstate New York

and the phone rang and he introduced himself

and I had head of Ryan Murphy, but I didn't know him.

I'd never met him in person and I

wasn't familiar with his work, really,

but I just loved his energy and his enthusiasm

right from the beginning.

It didn't take much to talk me into it.

He's heard me say this before,

but if Ryan wants something from you,

he knows exactly how to get it.

He spun this story of the first season

of American Horror Story and I thought,

I'm sitting up here at the farm.

Why not do it, why not do it?

I always wanted to do a psychological thriller.

It didn't end up exactly of that genre,

but that's what he originally promised me.

[woman laughs]

I loved working with Ryan.

I loved his imagination and he had great writers

writing this stuff specifically for me.

It is a very special way of working

when you know the writers understand who you are,

your voice, what you like to do, the emotional content,

and what you're willing to do,

and they're crafting it specifically for you.

I'm still a little bit caught off guard

when people in obscure places will

suddenly recognize me and I realize

that's the power of television.

It is there and they have a sense of familiarity with you

that they wouldn't have from film.

For me, it was the last season that I did,

the fourth season, Freak Show.

I loved the character of Elsa.

The set outside of New Orleans and this

field and all the carnival equipment set up

and the tents and the seediness of it.

It was like a poem to me.

It was so beautiful.

The fact that I got to sing David Bowie,

[woman laughs]

it was a great season.

♪ Sailors fighting in the dance hall ♪

♪ Oh man, look at those cavemen go ♪

I'm not a singer so it was very kind of them

to entrust these musical numbers to me.

I worked really hard at it, but I'm not a natural singer.

It was fun, it was great fun to try.

You win the election, what do we get out of it?

She really loves boats,

specifically those Disney-themed cruises, right?

Ryan at his most seductive and convincing,

calling me up and I know he wants something.

I'm not exactly sure what this is gonna be,

but the idea that it was a comedy,

I think that made all the difference because

I'd done four seasons of American Horror Story with him

and then Betty and Joe,

but this was going to be a dark comedy

and I thought, I wanna try that.

In all my long, many years acting,

I've only done two comedies, Tootsie and then this one,

so I thought, let me try this.

The part is so outrageous and she is a monster,

and she's selfish, and ignorant, willfully ignorant,

and what she does is inexcusable and criminal,

but it's also in the context of comedy.

You think I should kill him?

What?

Yes, yes I do.

The look, I thought about that going into it

and Ryan and I talked about it.

This was a young girl, maybe as a teenager,

and somewhere in some rural West Virginia, poor,

I always imagined she was probably abused,

and she sees this film Five Easy Pieces

and sees Karen Black and thinks,

that's what I wanna look like,

and she creates that look for herself,

goes to Hollywood hoping to become the next Vanna White,

and now we're 30 years later, whatever,

and this is the character you have

and she still looks like she's

trying to be Karen Black, but she isn't.

[woman laughs]

That time has passed.

It was a fun character to play, it really was.

[light upbeat music]

I remember the advice Kim Stanley gave me once

'cause you're in the middle of

all of this stuff going on and she said,

just remember, the work speaks for itself.

I would keep that very close, that advice.

The work speaks for itself.

None of the other stuff matters in the long run,

the rewards, the awards, the publicity,

the success, the so-called failures, whatever,

it's the work.

The work speaks for itself.