PODCAST: Rosemarie DeWitt's not getting married, but she might be getting nominated...

Rosemarie DeWitt is best known for her work on stage (she and her cast-mates won an Obie for the show "Small Tragedy") and television (she plays Don Draper's bohemian mistress on the Emmy-winning "Mad Men"), but she is currently at the center of growing Oscar buzz for her supporting performance as the title character in a big screen production, Jonathan Demme's critically-acclaimed "Rachel Getting Married."

DeWitt's Rachel is the somewhat uptight older sister of Anne Hathaway's Kym, who is a bit of a loose cannon. What made these ladies the way they are? We find out when Kym is brought home from her latest stint in rehab in order to be present for the weekend leading up to Rachel's wedding, a tumultuous period in which long-suppressed conflicts, issues and tragedies from the family's past rise to the surface.

I spoke with DeWitt on Thursday morning about her past work, this film, and her next project, which will place her even more in the public eye, a role on the greatly-anticipated TV series "The United States of Tara," which is being produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Diablo Cody.

Key portions of our conversation are transcribed below, and the full audio can be heard by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

• On her ties to the movie "Cinderella Man"...
• "That's a movie that was based on my maternal grandfather, James Braddock, and I had been following the script around forever while different directors were attached — and different actors. And then I begged my agent to get me in to read for Ron Howard, and I was probably the sympathetic favorite to have a small part in the film. But that was a huge high-point of my career."

 

• On her stage and television work prior to "Rachel Getting Married"...
• "I was starting to get some really wonderful roles in the theater in New York, which is where I was kind of spending most of my time at that point — which, I think for an actor, you know, helps you keep up your game and build up your confidence. And then I came out for pilot season, and that was the year that I shot the pilot of "Standoff." And I actually shot "Mad Men" — the pilot — that same season, but Matt Weiner was still on "The Sopranos," so they waited a year to start a series for that. So I left to do a year of "Standoff," and then that came to an end, and then I did the first season of "Mad Men," which was dreamy."

 

• On how she got the part in "Rachel Getting Married"...
• "A casting director from New York, Bernie Telsey, who does cast a lot of New York theater and film, brought me in I think on what was kind of a short list for Jonathan Demme. I think he said to Bernie, 'I don't want to see every actor in New York; just bring me your top five for each role for the moment and we'll go from there.' ...I was pretending I was living in New York at the time because I know Jonathan wanted to cast all New York actors [laughs] — not pretending, I just was living in L.A. at the moment — so, of course, there I was on, you know, the website for JetBlue being like, 'Yeah, I can be there tomorrow!' [laughs] And I met with Jonathan, and we talked a little bit about the script, and he said, 'Wouldn't it be great to just read it out loud and, sort of, pull it apart?' And I was thinking, 'It would be great,' you know? 'Are you asking me to do that, or are you just sort of pontificating?'"

 

• On why she thinks Demme asked the cast to watch the movie "After the Wedding" prior to commencing production...
• "You know, I think at the time we were sort of confused by it. ... Jonathan doesn't really explain much. He just sort of, I think, showed us that that was a leaping-off point for his inspiration. And I was really impressed with him in that that was what ['Rachel Getting Married'] looked like — it doesn't look like ['After the Wedding'], but I do see somewhere that that's where he started from. And I think that it also was probably a good excuse to get us all together because we didn't rehearse the film at all — you know, we just sort of got together once, and had sushi, and watched a really good movie, and then off we went."

 

• How she and Anne Hathaway decided to conduct their relationship off-screen, in consideration of their relationship on it...
• "We had one dinner beforehand, and I think we were already starting to inhabit our characters a bit, and it was very polite and nice. And then I think our instincts were to not become buddy-buddy — sometimes that works, you know, sometimes you need that to be able to finish each other's sentences — but I think we would have been in danger of maybe diffusing the necessary tension between these two women. So we sort of just maybe had a little bit of chat in the morning before we started and then, you know, I had my iPod in probably for the rest of the day."

 

• On the balance between material that was scripted versus improvised?
• "I think I heard Jonathan say in an audition that it was 90% scripted and 10% something more; I think that's pretty accurate. ... I think the rehearsal dinner — we shot it maybe four times, and I think the takes were 45 minutes long, you know, which is half a movie right there."

 

• On how the issue of a mixed-race couple in the film is never really addressed...
• "That's one of the things I love most about the film. ... I don't think that was intentional; I think that Jonathan was just very color-blind and gender-blind when casting the film. I know, at one point, he had offered Paul Thomas Anderson the role of Sydney, so that would have been a different movie right there. ... While we were doing it, I remember there was a moment where one of the actors said to me, you know, 'I wonder what people are gonna think of this watching this,' because, you know, sitting around that table at the rehearsal dinner felt like, you know, the U.N. or something."

 

• On the opportunity to act with Debra Winger, who rarely appears in films anymore...
• "That was a thrill. Like, I already thought it was awesome to get the movie, and then, like, a day later they say, 'Debra Winger's playing your mom.' I'm like, 'Get outta here!' [laughs] Like, this is, like, pinch yourself time."

 

• On her funny effort to separate herself from her character...
• "I think I was just, sort of, dancing at the wrap party, and getting a little drunk, and telling Jonathan, 'I'm not Rachel!' just because there were so many moments where she was just so petty and horrible to her sister — just trying to, like, wash it off, you know, with a vodka tonic or something. [laughs]

 

• On playing another sister on the upcoming Steven Spielberg-produced, Diablo Cody-scribed, Toni Collette-starring TV series "The United States of Tara"...
• "I'm having so much fun on "The United States of Tara." It's another sister role. I play Toni Collette's younger sister, and she's got D.I.D. [or Dissociative Identity Disorder] — which is, you know, to most people, multiple-personality disorder — and she's struggling, and in a lot of ways is that sister that tends to be invisible, as well, but her ways of trying to be seen are a lot more desperate and aggressive. You know, she's not the well-adjusted sister; if anything, she's just really, kind of, lost. So it's a really fun character — she's got a lot of flaws."

Click here to listen to Scott's conversation with Rosemarie DeWitt!

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Photo: Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie DeWitt in "Rachel Getting Married." Credit: Sony Pictures Classics.