Kate Winslet

Nathan's Post:

Don't get mad at us for not blogging - we have sure tried! Whitney was writing a post the other night about all of her most recent auditions and right when she went to post it - there was some kind of error and she lost everything. The annoying thing about it is that this blogger has an auto save but it only saved the first couple of sentences. That was not a good day for Whit - she had a terrible day at work and then that happened when she came home. So, we have abandoned our blog for quite some time to teach it a lesson:)

I still haven't updated ya'll on my experience with Mildred Pierce with Kate Winslet.
2 weeks ago I went to Long Island. I got on a charter bus in Manhattan and it took a little over 2 hours to get to the set. It was because the traffic was terrible. We got there around 4:00pm.

 

the bottom green line is Long Island

They had food already there for us to eat. We all got in our costume which was 1930's attire. They did my hair and I waited around for a couple of hours and then finally got to go on set.
There she was... Kate... sitting down in the restaurant where we were filming. I couldn't believe it. KATE WINSLET!!! We were at a gorgeous location - right off of the water. The weather was perfect and they had me sit down on the patio in a chair with 2 others.
We were there till 5:30am!!!!!!!!!! Nope - no nap - and what did I do the whole time? Sit in the same chair doing absolutely nothing - I'm pretty positive I wasn't even in the shot! We filmed the same scene for 13 hours!!!! They fed us very well though - but ya'll, it was the worst. At around midnight the temperature started to drop and we were freezing. I mean 5:30am ???

All the timing was on Kate, she got to take as much time as she needed to be emotionally ready for the scene. It was insane. We broke for dinner at around 1:00am - and they called it lunch. "Go break for lunch" they told us... I just laughed! I couldn't believe that everyone was still there! The scene was of Mildred Pierce at her restaurant and they asked for the radio to be brought to them because her daughter was going to sing some aria. The scene that they did over and over again was of Kate Winslet staring at the radio listening to her daughter sing - and then she left and stared at the water. She smoked a cigarette in between takes. She looked very sleep deprived and thin. One time after she did her scene and walked to the water - they said cut and she went to her knees and sobbed crying. I was very impressed by her work, duh.
However... If she's needing to take some time in between each take to get where she needs to be emotionally - than to me, that's not the most impressive. I respect her work ethic and I'm sure the director was being very demanding and specific but still, 12 hours for a 1 minute scene??

Again - got this off the internet... didn't take this.