I’m curious if you ever experienced a dynamic like the one between you and your co-worker, Sheila (Suki Waterhouse) in the film? She’s kind of a bully towards Melinda. I feel like it’s a common dynamic when younger people work in close quarters with each other sometimes.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a relationship completely like the relationship between Melinda and Sheila. I definitely see it as a common dynamic, often between females, too. I think definitely in high school one experiences things like that. I think as a young woman finding your confidence and your voice is a really complicated thing and I think Melinda isn’t trying to do that. I sort of see Melinda and Sheila’s relationship as more like sisters. It’s like Sheila’s the older sister and Melinda’s the younger. That’s how I ended up thinking of the girls because they can be quite brutal to each other, but it’s all out of love and affection, too. I definitely think that was part of the dynamic as well.
“We blocked the camera and it was sort of like a dance…”
What was it like working on one set the whole time? Was it a set or was it an actual gas station? How did that inform your performance to have that limitation of space?
Yeah it was really interesting. So, it was an old gas station In Poughkeepsie, New York. It’s not open anymore so we were free to use the inside of it. Production was inside the gas station and all the other rooms are were all connected to the gas station as well so that was all part of it. There was one bit inside the breakroom that was shot at a studio, and that was a created space, but all the rest of was shot at the gas station. I think space is really important to actors in a film. I think because we only had the gas station it became a big character in the film. It gave us an opportunity to really blossom and use the space It was a lot like doing theater. We blocked the camera and it was sort of like a dance between the actors and where the characters could fit within the space. It was one of those things as well where we only had 14 days, so it was a really quick shoot, so having that space made it all kind of feel more manageable. It felt like a home by the end that we could all go in. We got really used to the space and all the tools and props that we had to play with so that was really cool.
