Michelle Williams says living out the events of “Blue Valentine” while away from set was not easy.
During a recent appearance on the “Armchair Expert” podcast, Williams said that during a break in the production of “Blue Valentine,” which follows Williams and Ryan Gosling as a married couple in a floundering relationship, she and her costar lived together and practiced for the second part of the movie.
“We took a break in filming. We shot the first part when they’re young and in love and everything’s going really well,” Williams said. “And then we took a two-week break, and we lived together.”
She continued, “We did these improvisations during the day, honestly, to figure out ways to annoy each other and to destroy this thing that we had made.”
Williams maintained that it was an entirely “professional situation,” and was more like “office hours,” meeting “nine to five” every day. While it wasn’t originally in the production schedule, it was suggested that the costars take a break and live together after they struggled to shoot scenes where their characters were fighting.
“We were having such a hard time letting go of the thing that we loved,” she recalled. “[Director] Derek [Cianfrance] was like, ‘We gotta mess this up, and we need to burn it down.’ And we did a ceremonial [burn of] our wedding photo.”
Williams explained that Cianfrance would first give her and Gosling scenarios, and then the pair would go off on their one to work them out. She went on to describe the experience as “horrible,” adding that it was completely against her instincts to make Gosling hate her.
“I don’t know if anybody could work like that again,” Williams said. “You’ve got a crew that’s on hold. You’re paying people I mean, it’s such a small movie, so, so low budget and a small crew, but you’re taking a big down period in the middle of the thing.”
