From writer/director Philippe Falardeau, the ‘90s-set drama My Salinger Year follows Joanna (Margaret Qualley), a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer, who gets hired as the assistant to Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), the literary agent who represents J.D. Salinger. As she wades through the endless piles of fan mail that she’s supposed to divert from ever making its way directly to the elusive author, the emotions laid bare inside of those letters inspire her to discover her own voice and follow her dream.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Weaver talked about falling in love with the script for My Salinger Year, the inspiration for playing a woman like Margaret, and what she most enjoyed about working with co-star Qualley. She also talked about being optimistic about the future of Hollywood, what she thinks will surprise people about the Avatar sequels, her favorite Alien movie, and the status of a return to the world of Galaxy Quest.
COLLIDER: My Salinger Year is such an interesting and sometimes odd little story. When this came your way and you read it, what was your reaction to it? Was it something that you were on board with immediately, or did you need to have a conversation with director Philippe Falardeau first?
SIGOURNEY WEAVER: I was sent the script right before Christmas, in 2019. I had very close friends of ours and their children visiting us for Christmas and I just completely forgot all about it. I found it in the beginning of January and read it and went, “Oh, my God, this is great.” I just fell so in love with it and said, “They’ve clearly gone on to someone else because I didn’t even bother to read it.” Luckily, that had not happened. So, I met Philippe, who’s such a charming but also deep thinker. He’s this wonderful combination for a director, of huge heart, great sense of humor, and very, very interesting mind. He felt the book really had chosen him and it was an ode to all of us, at a certain age, when we dream of becoming something that seems so far away and yet we’re just so drawn to this dream of becoming that person, that writer, that actor. And so, I loved that about it and I loved Philippe.
Having grown up in New York and having spent some time in the publishing and literary world, I remembered women that I had been, not really working for but knew about, who were eccentric and marvelous and very intimidating. I still can think of those women. In fact, I met two women in this world for the movie. You have to be so together to be functioning in this world with such aplomb and with such excellent skills of communicating with writers and the public and the whole world of publishing. For me, this was like writing a love letter, not only to books and New York, but to these amazing career women, who really inspired me when I was in my 20s.
I love the relationship between Joanna and Margaret. What did you enjoy about playing that dynamic with Margaret Qualley? How did you find her as a scene partner?
WEAVER: It’s hard to generalize about Margaret. She’s such a lovely young woman. She’s so talented. I don’t think she’s at all like Audrey Hepburn, but to me, she holds that place in the current world of actors. She’s exquisite, very nice, hardworking, and we just had a lot of fun. We shot this movie quickly and we were all thrown together in Montreal. From the very first day we started shooting, we both enjoyed telling this story about two women and this quasi-reluctant mentorship that they fall into, at least from Margaret’s point of view, that ends up being so meaningful for them. Part of mentorship must come from the older mentor seeing themselves in the younger person – that hope, that dream, that daring, that certain point when you want a career in a field, like writing or acting or music. You have to really take a leap of faith in yourself and encouraging someone and getting out of their way and saying, “Yes, do that hard thing instead of stay with me,” is a very powerful story. It’s especially powerful for women because women are such natural mentors and we also need mentors. There aren’t that many women in publishing. There weren’t many people like Margaret. I did research the woman, Phyllis, who Joanna Rakoff did work for. It was a very unique opportunity to tell this women’s story.
Having been in the business as long as you have, how do you feel that Hollywood has changed? Are you optimistic about the future?
WEAVER: I’m so optimistic about the future because I see our world bubbling over with women’s scripts and women directors. On Salinger, we had an almost all-woman crew. All of the heads of the departments were women and it’s because one of our producers, who’s a woman, had given people in these different departments, the chance to be the head of a department. The art director hadn’t ever been the head of the art department and the prop person had never been the head of props. It was that kind of love letter to how talented and powerful women are, and Margaret Qualley and I also felt very inspired by that going on in real life. I feel very optimistic about it. My gosh, I’ve never been so busy in my life with so many different challenges that are being sent to me.
I think COVID has, in a way, reaffirmed for the industry how much people need entertainment, how much they need good stories, and how much they want to be taken away into a different world. Unfortunately, we had the great solace of theaters to congregate in, but in terms of what stories can do for people, I think we can all agree that watching great series on TV and watching movies, I’ve never watched so much TV in my entire life. I watch with my daughter and my husband, and all three of us have our different tastes. It’s been amazing for me and a very important part of getting through this. It was a hard year. It was such a tough year for so many people, especially being an election year. We really wanted to escape and we’re so grateful. I’m looking forward to people having the opportunity to see our movie when they still are being so careful and staying so close to home.
James Cameron has always pushed technology forward on all of his movies. What was he doing on the Avatar sequels that you think everyone will be doing in a few years?
WEAVER: The way I look at Jim’s movies, what I think will surprise people is what amazingly intense emotional stories these are. So, yes, we did great state-of-the-art performance capture and goodness knows all of the other things that he doing underwater, that will be dazzling technically. What I really admire is that he’s often invented a lot of these things because he wants the emotional power of the stories to come through. In that sense, he’s a real traditionalist, as well. He’s not doing far off, crazy sci-fi stuff. He’s really telling a very intimate story about an indigenous people and the corporations that come and almost wipe them out.
What’s a film that you’ve done that you’re proud of, but that you also feel deserves more recognition?
WEAVER: That would probably be A Map of the World, which I did with Kathleen Kennedy. I had the opportunity to see that at a wonderful film festival in Barbados. The festival’s theme is that films are about resiliency and rebirth. A Map of the World is very, very much about that. I watched the movie and it held up so well. The character was so interesting and I was so proud of it. It’s one of the movies that I’m sorry people didn’t see. It was such an interesting movie and there were good actors in it, like Julianne Moore and David Strathairn. It’s good stuff.
Which Alien movie would you say was your favorite to do?
WEAVER: Oh, goodness, that’s difficult. The best-constructed story for the character to tell was in Aliens, just because Jim [Cameron] has such an amazing sense of structure of story. To take this character out of hyper-sleep, have no one believe her, have her be exiled into this limbo land where no one believes her and her family’s dead. The whole set-up for Ripley in Aliens and then what she ends up doing and what it, finding this new family by the end. The whole structure of that story, to me, was gold. I always felt that I could jump up and down on it. It was such a great, supportive, arc for the character. In that sense, the second one for Ripley is probably the most satisfying.
Where do things stand when it comes to Galaxy Quest ever being revived, in some form? Is that something that you think will happen?
WEAVER: They were in the middle of reviving it. First of all, there was another script. There was a sequel written by our writer, Bob Gordon. The movie was so witty, and when they released it, DreamWorks cut a lot of the wittiest scenes because they wanted to put it out as a children’s movie at Christmas. I think that was disappointing for everybody, so he decided not to let them have the second one. However, it was about four years ago, Bob and (producer) Mark Johnson and the whole group, started to develop a series. We lost the wonderful Alan [Rickman] unexpectedly, so that was put in mothballs, but I think they are finally now reviving it. It will be the story of the old ancient Galaxy Questers being brought into this series with another young cast. I haven’t read them, so I don’t know the details, but I think that everyone in Galaxy Quest would love to participate because it was such a wonderful experience for us. How they will find someone to play Alan’s part, don’t know, but I think that they have a very good idea of who to do it. He’s irreplaceable, eternally. I think there may be good news on that front, but I haven’t heard about it in these six months, so when it’s gonna happen, I’m not sure.
My Salinger Year is now in theaters and on-demand.
