“Hard Truths” star David Webber said working with costar Marianne Jean-Baptiste was a “very intense and beautiful process” that was also “painful.” The pair play husband and wife Curtley and Pansy in the new Mike Leigh-directed film, which follows various members of an extended Black family living in London.
“Mike and I worked, individually, until things got to a certain level. Then we started to work together and we discovered how they work together. And that was a very intense and beautiful process, and also a painful process in many ways as well,” Webber told TheWrap’s Steve Pond at TheWrap’s 2024 TIFF Studio sponsored by Moët & Chandon and Boss Design.
Leigh originally intended the make the movie before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, but the director said that the first version of the film “disappeared with COVID.”
“This is the film’s we’ve actually made,” Leigh added.
During the beginning stages of making a movie, Leigh continued, he also just has “ideas and possibilities and feelings” that are “hard to put it down in an easily digestible form.” The process is the same as how “people paint pictures and write novels and make music and make poetry and sculpture.”
“We got together another gang of really interesting and talented character actors… we then went on the journey and discovered the film,” Leigh said.
The movie reunited Leigh and Jean-Baptiste, who previously worked together on 1996’s “Secrets & Lies.” The actress made it clear that the process of working with the director was collaborative. After her character was described as “exhausting,” Jean-Baptiste explained, “You have to keep her at a certain level. And at times I think I can say to Mike, this isn’t sustainable. It’s like something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna give.”
Still, the experience of playing the character was rewarding. She added, “But yeah, I mean, it’s wonderful but I mean, it’s great having to really get your teeth into something like that and motor through.”
