From writer/director Eva Vives, the indie dramedy All About Nina follows up-and-coming comedian Nina Geld (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, in the best work of her career so far), whose undeniable talent has helped her build a career for herself in the male-dominated world of stand-up. Off the stage, Nina’s life is a mess, and that’s most evident when it comes to romantic relationships, including one with an abusive married man (Chace Crawford) that she leaves behind in New York City to go out to Los Angeles for a huge opportunity. While finding her footing in a new town, she meets Rafe (Common), who attempts to move her past her own desire to self-destruct and onto the path of commitment.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead talked about how this script ended up coming her way, what most excited her about this character, how terrifying the idea of stand-up comedy is to her, whether she ever did an open mic night to prepare, deciding which impersonations to do, doing some of the more emotionally intense scenes, and working with someone as charming as Common. She also talked about her experience on Gemini Man, directed by Ang Lee, and teaming up with Will Smith.

Collider:  First of all, truly tremendous work in this movie, so congratulations on that!

MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD:  Oh, thank you! Thank you so much.

The idea of getting up on a stage to do stand-up seems terrifying.

WINSTEAD:  It’s so different. I was certainly very lucky that I had my lines written for me, so I can’t really say that I experienced exactly what a real stand-up experience is. This is the much lazier version. But for me, I still felt just as much fear. I was absolutely terrified.

At any point, did you ever think about going out and doing an open mic night?

WINSTEAD:  I thought that I would. I talked a big game. (Writer/director) Eva [Vives] and I were talking about this film for nearly a year, or maybe eight months, before we actually made it We’d get together and talk about it and be like, “Yeah, I’ll go to open mic nights. We’ll totally do that!” But it seemed far enough away that I didn’t really have to think about it, and I was shooting something else, so it was always just in the back of my head. And then, all of a sudden, we got the funding, were ready to go and were gonna shoot it, and I was so scared. I thought, “If I go and do this, I’m just gonna bomb.” Bombing isn’t really what happens that often in the film, with Nina. We come into it when she’s at a pretty good place, in terms of her skill level and what she’s able to do with an audience. Ultimately, I felt like I would be better suited coming into it, working on the character and working on the confidence of the character, if I could focus more on creating a confident character who’s in her element when she’s on stage, rather than being really nervous and sweating and falling apart.

How did this all come about? You talked about working with the writer/director for a while before doing this, so how did you guys come into contact with each other?

WINSTEAD:  Well, she had been through the Sundance Lab with the script. She had been working on it for awhile and she was going to do a live reading of it for Sundance. She initially got the script to me through her husband, who I had known, just in passing, over the years because he’s also a director and I had been up for a couple of his projects. So, he sent it to me and said, “This is my wife’s script. It’s gonna be her first feature. She’s doing a live reading of it, and she would love you to play the lead character in the live reading.” I read it knowing that I wasn’t going to be available for the live reading, at the time, but I read it just out of curiosity, to see what it was, and I was so blown away. I have rarely read such a challenging, complex, funny, dark female lead role. So, I instantly wanted to meet her and talk to her about it, even though I couldn’t do the reading, just to say, “If you ever make this movie, I would love to be a part of it.” And then, in talking to her and hearing more about her story, it became such a no-brainer. It’s a great feeling, as an actor, to find something that you just know you wanna do. Even though I was really scared to do it, that was part of why I really needed to do it. It was a great thing to discover.

We know why you were scared to do this. What most excited you about playing this character?

WINSTEAD:  Probably everything about who she is. She felt really different from me. Every time you play a character, you get a little something from them, so I feel like I’ve got a little bit of her in me now. I felt like I wanted to know what it would be like to be her, and to bring that to life. Also, once I met with Eva and learned that the character’s backstory is based largely on her own personal backstory, it felt like a really important thing to get to be a part of. I’m telling Eva’s story, speaking her truth, and being a part of something bigger than just the comedy that it looks like on the surface.

The scene where Nina is practicing her stand-up topless was so interesting because it’s this interesting moment where she’s just so vulnerable, more so from what she’s saying than the fact that she’s topless. What was that moment like to shoot?

WINSTEAD:  In large part, what we discovered about Nina is that when she’s on stage is when she’s able to bare herself, in a way that she can’t really, in her personal life. That scene is not necessarily things that she would say on stage, but it might be some form of something that she’s building to saying on stage. You’re seeing where it’s really coming from, which is this very vulnerable, real place. Eventually, she’s gonna turn it into something funnier and slicker and make it into more of a performance when it’s ready to be on stage. The start of it is this very real, oftentimes sad place of, these are things that happen, happened to me, and happened to my friends, and they’re not funny, at all, but as a comedian, I’m gonna cope with it by finding the humor in it and turning it into something larger than life. That’s a very real, frank moment. It’s just part of who she is. She’s not an easy person to sum up, I guess. Nina is an incredibly complex and complicated character, which was what drew me to playing her. She’s incredibly wounded, which has led her to be tough and brash, and to have a wall up between her and other people, especially between her and men. That could seem like a mixed message because she sleeps with many men, and she’s very comfortable with her sexuality, in that way, and uses it a lot on stage, but it’s masking this deep uncomfortability, and all of these issues that she has around her sexuality and her self-esteem. When she’s on stage, all of that gets stripped away and she’s able to be confident and in control, which is something that she’s never really been able to have in her life, starting from a very young age. There are a lot of complexities within that, and all of those things add to her personality, and to the choices she makes and why she makes them.

Along with everything else you have to do in this movie, you also have to do impersonations. How did you decide who you would do impersonations for? Were there a bunch of different ones that you tried?

WINSTEAD:  We tried a bunch of them. Some of them were scripted, so we tried those. And then, I came up with some that I thought I might be more suited to do. I’ve never done impressions before, in my life. Everybody probably has certain people that they’re more suited to doing an impression of because of the tone of their voice or a look in their face, or something. I knew I could sing, so I thought that was a good place to start. I knew that my voice could go towards Cher, Shakira, Céline Dion, Britney Spears, or Christina Aguilera. Björk made it into the movie. She’s one that I always do around the house, so I figured that I could throw that in. And then, Werner Herzog came out of the fact that, whenever I hear him, he sounds very similar to my Björk impression. So, I came forth with my ideas of who I thought I could impersonate, and Jamie Loftus, who was our comedy consultant, helped us a lot with all of the comedy stuff. We would get together and come up with how we could use the impersonations. One of the things that we came up with was having all of them ordering a smoothie, and that just wrote itself. When it was just me, in front of a mirror, trying out all of these different impersonates, it was a really exposing day. I was quite embarrassed.

The relationship that your character has with Chace Crawford’s character is just so toxic. It’s not only emotionally intense, but it’s also physically intense. When you have scenes like that, where you have someone that your character is supposed to be intimate with, but he also physically hits her, how is that to navigate? Are there are a lot of discussions prior to doing something like that?

WINSTEAD:  Yeah. We certainly talked about it quite a bit – Evan, Chace and I. We had a stunt coordinator on set that day, to make sure everything was done safely, but ultimately it’s difficult, in a scene like that, where it’s coming out of the heat of the moment. You don’t want to choreograph it too much. The difficult part of a scene like that, at least logistically, is not wanting it to seem like you’ve mapped it out, but also wanting it to be safe because we don’t really want to hit anybody. In the end, Chace and I just really trusted each other, and we trusted that we knew what we were doing, so that we could just let the emotions fly and let everything come out of that. With all of that stuff, I was really lucky to have Eva be at the helm because I really trusted her and her judgment, in terms of guiding these characters in a way that feels very real to them and to their experience. She was an amazing person to collaborate with, on all of this, and to bring a lot of truth to every single moment.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the relationship your character has with Common’s character is actually this really beautiful, honest, adult relationship. What was it like to work with him? What do you feel he brought to their story?

WINSTEAD:  He’s just so lovely and charming and open, which is so jarring for Nina. He’s totally different than any of the guys she’s been around. Normally, she wouldn’t really go anywhere near him because she’s so afraid of being that open with anybody. Somebody coming at her saying, “I just wanna be honest, and I want you to be honest with me,” is terrifying for someone like her, who’s really never been honest, in her entire life. There’s just something about him and something about the moment in time that she makes the decision to slowly open herself up to him. There’s something in her that’s just ready to do that. She sees that she can trust him, more so than anybody she’s met before. And I think Common was just the perfect person for that kind of energy. She refers to him in the movie as being solid, and that’s something that he just is. He just seems so solid and centered, and like he knows himself. You don’t have any of those feelings of him being uncomfortable in his skin, or shifty, or not knowing whether you can trust him. All of that is wiped away. You just see this person who really is just who they are. And he was perfect to play that person.

You also have Gemini Man coming out, which sounds like it uses some crazy high tech stuff. What was that experience like and what most surprised you about the approach to all of that?

WINSTEAD:  It was an incredibly amazing and totally unique experience. We worked on it for nearly six months. I just wrapped it not too long ago, and it was amazing. It was so incredible to get to work with Ang Lee on something that’s this big action movie, but also this experimental drama, all wrapped together. The technology feels very experimental, in a way. Ang is really pushing the envelope of that and what it can do, and he’s also experimenting with what you can get away with, under the umbrella of an action movie, what you can talk about, and how sensitive you can be. It was really great to get to explore all of those things with him, and with Will [Smith], as well, who is just one of the most wonderful people you could ever be working beside, for months at a time. He’s so positive and uplifting for everybody, in a really amazing way that I was really blown away by.

Could you ever have imagined that you would find yourself in a film where your co-stars are the current age Will Smith and the digitally de-aged younger clone of Will Smith?

WINSTEAD:  It’s beyond imagination. I don’t think I ever would have dreamt that up. But if there’s any person that you’d want to be cloned, Will is not a bad choice.

What kind of character are you playing in that?

WINSTEAD:  I play an operative with the DIA, who’s been hired to watch Will Smith’s character. He is a sniper for the government who’s retired, and I don’t really know why exactly I’ve been hired to spy on him and keep an eye on him. He starts to catch on to the fact that he’s being watched, and once we realized that there’s no real reason for it, we start to realize that maybe there’s something nefarious happening within our government and within our own people. And so, I team up with him to fight back against them, and we go on the run together, from our own government, who are trying to hunt him down for reasons that we don’t understand. And then, we come to find that he’s been cloned and he’s basically being hunted down by a younger clone of himself. All of these questions emerge about our government, about ourselves, about society, and about all of these things that come from it. It’s a complex plot, but I think it’s an exciting thriller/drama. I’m excited to see how it turns out.

All About Nina opens in select theaters on September 28th.