Katherine Waterston has had a unique journey in the industry as the daughter of an accomplished actor who strove to hone her craft and find her own success. With Waterston’s latest release, The World to Come, now available to digital, she took the time to join us for an episode of Collider Connected to highlight a bunch of pivotal moments in her career, like scoring a breakout role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice and joining her first big franchise with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
In addition to that, we also spent a good deal of time talking about those early days and how being the daughter of Law & Order star Sam Waterston influenced some of her formative decisions, like her choice to study acting formally:
“It was really important for me to study and then it was at least as important for me to throw it all away, sort of abandon everything I’d learned. In a way maybe studying acting was just some kind of strange exercise for myself to prove to myself and to anyone around who was paying attention - although I don’t think anyone really was [laughs] - just how serious I was about it. And maybe that had something to do with being a second generation actor, that I didn’t want to be perceived as some kind of silly dilettante who is bopping around and hanging off the coattails of her dad, that I was interested and really trying to be good at this thing.”
The thing is though, for Waterston, her acting education in school wasn’t the same as the education she got while out in the world performing, specifically while performing on stage. Here’s how she put it:
“But then when I got near the end of my education I found that I didn’t know anything, not anything really useful or what we really needed to know. And I realized everything I could find out, I’d find out from being in front of a live audience and it’s just such a brutal reality if the scene isn’t working, they’ll let you know. You’ll hear the rustling of the candy bag or just really loud yawns or people start talking or you make a joke and nobody laughs, and you know. So I realized sort of in retrospect that to a certain degree that I’d gotten really good at talking about acting and I had to get on my feet and really figure out how to draw an audience in. Those were the dreamiest years. I look back on them - although I was nervous about, ‘Oh, will I really work? Will I make it?’ - those first jobs I was given in the theater where I figured out how to tell a story in front of an audience, I learned more in weeks on stage than I ever did in school.”
Years later, Waterston is mighty busy bringing that passion and expertise from project to project. From Inherent Vice to Alien: Covenant and Fantastic Beasts, Waterston is often a standout whose personal work undoubtedly ups the quality of the project overall, and The World to Come is no different. She leads the 19th century American Northeast-set romance as Abigail, a farmer’s wife drawn to her new neighbor Tallie played by Vanessa Kirby. To hear more about Waterston’s experience making the film, check out our full Collider Connected conversation at the top of this article.
The World to Come is now available to buy or rent on digital.
Katherine Waterston:
- 01:40 - What it’s like being the child of a successful actor; admiring actors who disappear in their roles.
- 03:27 - Waterston discusses the need to surrender to the uncertainty of the business.
- 05:17 - Why Waterston chose to study acting in school; why she learned more on stage than she ever did in school.
- 07:41 - Who Waterston turns to on a film set to replicate that live response from a theater audience and to get reassurance in what she’s doing.
- 09:55 - What it was like auditioning for Law & Order and not booking the role.
- 12:13 - How Waterston scored her role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice.
- 13:58 - Inherent Vice changed everything for Waterston.
- 16:10 - How Anderson’s approach to casting could improve the process.
- 18:00 - Waterston revisits her lengthy list of incredible co-stars.
- 18:45 - Waterston didn’t know what she was getting into when she first signed on for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
- 20:12 - Waterston confirms the plan still is for David Yates to direct all the Fantastic Beasts films.
- 20:52 - Meeting Mads Mikkelsen for the first time just before he was cast in the franchise.
- 21:24 - Why The World to Come spoke to Waterston right now; how the film communicates so much with very little.
- 23:38 - Waterston discusses a particular line of dialogue (that wound up getting cut from the film) that really intrigued her when first beginning her journey with the project.
- 25:08 - Bringing the material to set on a micro-budget; not realizing how demanding the scenes would be until they were filming.
- 26:30 - Waterston thinks The World to Come is a good argument for taking a little more time to complete a script.
- 27:21 - Waterston delivers a significant amount of narration in The World to Come; the process of figuring out how to get the voice over as deep into the film as possible.