In a new interview with Marie Claire, actress Amy Adams talks about her family, finding her voice as an executive producer of HBO’s forthcoming fiction thriller Sharp Objects, and what it was like to embody one of her most disturbed characters yet.
“There’s something freeing about playing somebody who’s a mess,” Adams told Marie Claire about Camille Preaker, described by the magazine as “a self-mutilating, sex-addicted, alcoholic newspaper reporter fresh from a psych ward who is sent to cover a pair of creepy child murders in her creepy hometown where her creepy estranged family lives.” Preaker is the protagonist in Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name, but rather than turn the book into a two-hour movie, Flynn said the eight-episode adaptation was the way to go.
“Sharp Objects is a character study hidden inside a mystery. It’s not a whodunit; it’s a ‘who-is-she?’” Flynn told the magazine.
Adams works to figure that out, acknowledging: “the depth of pain that [the character is] constantly in is tricky. I felt like I had to not back away from it because so many people have a personal experience with this book.”
According to director Jean Marc Vallée, Adams perfectly encompasses the complexity the character calls for, saying: Amy has this dark quality that is always there, even after five, 10 minutes…Camille has so much pain and shame, pouring liquor all the time over her demons; she carries all these scars. Amy didn’t judge her. She approached her with humility, humanity.”
Sharp Objects premieres on HBO July 8. Take a look at the trailer below.
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