When Zoe Saldaña was first getting to know “Emilia Pérez” director Jacques Audiard, she immediately got a sense of what was important to him by looking around his living room.
“When we were doing all of our rehearsals, I noticed that there were three very strong elements that were very present in your life and it’s books, chairs to read and coffee,” Saldaña told Audiard in the latest installment of TheWrap’s longform video series Visionaries.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I think I’m more of a reader than a viewer actually,” Audiard responded.
Indeed, the darkly comedic musical “Emilia Pérez” is based on Audiard’s own opera libretto of the same name which itself was loosely based on the 2018 Boris Razon novel “Écoute.” In the film, Saldaña plays lawyer Rita Mora Castroa, but during her conversation with Audiard for TheWrap she revealed it was actually a scene that didn’t end up in the film that helped her unlock the story and Rita’s true feelings for Emilia.
“There is that song, ‘Cuatro Años,’ which I’m so happy that you decided last minute to take it away and but I’m happy that that song was still very present for the auditioning process, because it helped me understand that relationship, and it helped me make a decision about it, because it wasn’t completely stated,” Saldaña said of her character’s relationship to Emilia after Audiard called theirs a “love story.”
“I think that Rita and Emilia, they had a very platonic friendship. When we were performing ‘Cuatro Años,’ it kept going into a beautiful love energy, I would say, but it wasn’t sexual. It was spiritual. It was passionate, and it was through admiration. I felt that through ‘Cuatro Años,’ Rita goes from fearing this possible monster to revering it, admiring it, discovering her.”
Audiard replied that he cut the song because it “would have been too far ahead of the character’s real feelings,” to which Saldaña nodded fervently in agreement while stressing that it was integral to her processing the complicated Rita-Emilia dynamic.
“That fear of her transformed into fear for her, through that love, and it was a really beautiful journey,” Saldaña said.
Watch the full video above.
