ELLE spoke with Elizabeth Olsen ahead of HBO Max’s Love & Death finale tonight, and discussed her approach to working on the show and playing the character Candy, working with intimacy coordinators, and her plans to return to film.

On the cast and crew filming Love & Death without realizing Hulu’s recent show Candy, was taking place with the same subject matter: At the start of their endeavor, neither Olsen nor the showrunners thought the other project was in the works. “When we were discussing doing this, we were told by multiple people that it wasn’t happening. But while we were filming, we learned that it was happening. You don’t usually sign onto something knowing that someone’s doing the same thing, because you understand it’s going to be compared,” she continues. “At this point, you just have to make peace with it. I would hope that the audiences would get something different [from this] in an interesting way.”

On the intimacy of her and Jesse Plemons characters, not just in sex scenes, but how the affair between Candy and Allan starts awkward and childlike: “It was really nice because Jesse had suggested a thought really early on, which is relating their relationship to that of people in high school. And I think when he had mentioned that, everything kind of fell into place of the emotional intelligence of where they are with relationships and their own personal experiences. They all got married so young and had kids immediately. Their personal experiences are almost out of a high schooler. And I’m not saying that the only way you have growth is by having multiple partners until you’re in your thirties, but there was a limit to how they communicated with their own partners and their intimacy within their own houses. And so I think he started us off on a really nice pitch and tone, a good ground for us to then build on.” 

On intimacy coordinators and what value they bring to set: “I think honestly the best value is they tell you how to make things look more realistic. It’s really nice to have, it’s almost like having a dance coach for someone to say, “Oh, it actually would look more realistic if your leg shape was here.” I think that’s a really helpful tool to have someone else specifically knowing tricks. I mean, if you think about it, if you’re timing camera movement and [syncing that up] with action, there’s a lot of coordinating for everyone to be on the same page. Winging and improvising those moments doesn’t make something more cinematic. So I think it was just nice to have someone to build these movements and tell you how you can make it look better or sexier.” 

On how the choreography and challenges of the murder scene that is so truthfully and harrowingly done: “There are quite a few elements that made it challenging. We shot it over a couple days, the actual fighting aspect. But the whole sequence was three or four days. We were on stages for the interior and on location at a different time for the exterior. Lily [Rabe] being six months pregnant also made it challenging because I felt very protective of her safety and she felt very confident in how she was able to control her body, but I felt very protective of me not making a mistake towards her. And then we choreographed the entire sequence based on lacerations that were read in the trial. It’s also connected to Candy’s testimony. But we were considering how she received lacerations based on the medical examiner. And that brutal reality made it feel really terrible to shoot and choreograph and consider. It’s pretty morbidly disturbing.” 

On what kind of projects she gravitates towards and what she wants to do next:  “What I’m gravitating towards right now is really filmmaker driven, it’s all just filmmaker driven. When I read something, I know if I’m the right person for it. And even if someone thinks that I am, I sometimes disagree. And I think it benefits them when I say no, because I think they’ll find someone who’s going to do a better job. There’s an instinct, either you feel it when you’re reading something or you don’t. But I do think that right now I’m in a place of trying to make movies and the scale is on the smaller side, because those are usually the tones or the pieces that I’m most interested in. I keep trying to do a commercial comedy or something, but I just never find them as funny as the twisted weird things that are not as broad. I find those to just be funnier. I’m open to any of it right now. But I really do want to stick with film. I feel like there’s a big pendulum swinging back towards film… [I’d love to work with] Ruben Östlund. I saw Force Majeure when it came out. He’s so creative. And The Square, I love. There’s always some sort of moral dilemma that I find hilarious about how he tells a story. And I love the way he surprises his audiences.” 

Link to story: https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a43991768/elizabeth-olsen-love-and-death-interview/