Mulligan: In those brief moments, what’s the alternate?
Dano: Oh, you know, those things that are never going to happen, which I’m really not cut out for, like I’ll go live on a farm. I would like to spend more time writing. I really want to make another film.
How is the point you’re both at now in your careers, and since you both now have families, influencing your career choices?
Dano: First of all, becoming a parent has changed everything. The Fabelmans, frankly, was the first time that I’ve really used so much of my present life, so to speak. It was about marriage. It was about being a father. When I do The Batman, that part of me is not coming to work in the same way. So, it felt transitional almost. I was like I’m stepping into my adult self even further somehow through this character and through this film. In a weird way, it makes it harder. It’s harder to go away. It’s harder to ask your family to go away on location. It’s harder to prepare. It’s harder to come home after work, but I also think that I feel like my priorities just keep becoming clearer.
Mulligan: I think it also changes as they get older. It’s different now. When they’re tiny, they are sort of portable. Now mine are getting a bit older, it will become clearer what is and isn’t possible for us. But I think in terms of the work, I feel a lot more relaxed. It’s that old cliché—the acting you do for free and everything else is what you get paid for. I’m so lucky, we’re both so lucky that at the moment we get to do jobs because we want to do them, not because we have to. And that’s such a luxury in life and in the world to be able to do that. I think it’s sort of very obvious when it’s the right time to do something and not, whereas I think I probably debated more in the past. I feel very cut and dry.
Since you’re friends in real life, can you share something surprising about each other?
Mulligan: For a long time Zoe and I would hang a lot and it was not like the three of us. Like even at my wedding, Zoe was there all week and you came for the weekend. I think for a while I was so intimidated by you as an actor, from There Will Be Blood. It was so otherworldly and incredible. I think for a while I was like, “Ugh, he’s a proper one.” And, and then after a while I was like, “oh, he’s so goofy.” I don’t know if that’s the perception of serious actors, and I think you are perceived as a serious actor.
Dano: But I’m just like a silly person. Yeah, I don’t know why. It’s hard, this part of what we do is weird, right? I do think that I have to save some part of myself for me in my real life, so to speak. Because I think it’s important to separate them actually. When you’re there for work, I do think the character is guiding you. And then when we come to do this, I have to have some sense of separation. I don’t know why.
Rebecca Ford
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