“In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast” features in-depth conversations with today’s most noteworthy actors and creators. Join host and Awards Editor Jack Smart for this guide on how to live the creative life from those who are doing it every day.
Riley Keough could be considered an authority on how actors can connect with—and avoid judging—their characters. “I don’t know if you need to love your character,” she tells Backstage. But, she adds, “When you’re playing somebody, you have to try and find empathy for them.”
Growing up in Los Angeles surrounded by entertainers (including her mother Lisa Marie Presley), Keough is fulfilling a lifelong dream of playing complex characters on camera. She modeled before debuting in “The Runaways” and breaking out in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” then starring in “It Comes at Night,” “The Lodge,” “The Devil All the Time,” working with Steven Soderbergh in “Magic Mike,” “Logan Lucky,” and Season 1 of “The Girlfriend Experience,” and earning a Spirit Award nomination for “American Honey.”
“I knew I always wanted to act,” says Keough, despite the fact she wouldn’t speak that goal aloud until age 18. “I was afraid to fail,” she remembers. “I was a little scared that if I said it, then I could jinx it.”
And while Keough hangs her head in shame at the mere mention of auditions (“My horror stories are like, I go in there, I do really badly, and then they tell my agent I did a bad job,” she deadpans), she’s in her element on set. “It’s never the same preparation for me,” says Keough, revealing how she puts herself in the shoes of fascinating, liberated, and sometimes dangerous women. “Some things that work for one character don’t work for the next one, and I have to just improvise and feel in my heart what’s going to work for this.
“It is one of those things where you prep, you prep, you prep, and then it kind of goes out the window, and it becomes a sort of spiritual experience, but those things are in there somewhere,” she adds. “And that’s the fun, sort of magical part of acting: there’s not really a right or wrong way to do it.”
‘Zola’ Filmmaker Janicza Bravo Is a Storyteller From Another Planet Case in point: Stefani, a stripper-sex worker and source of absurdist chaos in A24’s Sundance Film Festival hit “Zola.” Adapted by writer-director Janicza Bravo and writer Jeremy O. Harris from an infamous Twitter thread and its resulting article, “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted,” the film is a wild odyssey as told by A’Ziah “Zola” King, inspired by actual events over the course of two days in Florida.
“The thing that’s so great about cinema and film is you get to spend time with these people that you would just so quickly judge and brush off,” says Keough. From her hairstyles to her every colloquialism, Stefani appropriates Black culture beyond what most would consider insulting—in fact, according to Keough, she’s the film’s personification of cultural appropriation itself. “It’s all just offensive, she’s this demonic person. That was sort of the direction from Janicza, she really wanted to go there with her dialect, with her hair, with everything.”
Such physical components are often Keough’s most valuable, and admittedly favorite, ways of constructing a character. “That’s my favorite part of human beings,” she says. “Watching people do things, the way they eat, or the way they move their hands.”
How Intimacy Coordination Is Changing the Way We Make TV for Good Drawing from her time filming “The Girlfriend Experience,” “Zola,” and more (next up: a standout voice performance in Antoine Fuqua’s “The Guilty”), Keough also gives key advice to actors on portraying intimacy onscreen. “You’re always wanting to do your job and you don’t want to upset anybody, especially if it’s like you’re starting out and you don’t feel like you have enough agency,” she says. “The most important thing is knowing that you can say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to do another take, I’m uncomfortable’.... Stop, and you can breathe, and you can take your time. And learning those things took me years!”
Backstage casting insider Christine McKenna-Tirella follows that up with tips on ensuring safety and comfort on set. Her recommended casting notices of the week are a YouTube series host, a video campaign, and more. Tune in wherever you listen to podcasts.
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