Nina Romina is at the epicenter of the Los Angeles crime-journalism world in writer-director Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler.” Though she’s a veteran news editor, Nina’s career has been a scattered one. Shuffled from local network to local network, her desperation comes to fruition during her time at news station KWLA when she meets her match in Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), the aspiring video journalist who loses himself and his morals to get his footage on the morning broadcast.
As Nina—whose mantra is “If it bleeds, it leads”—Rene Russo struggled to discover the common ground between herself and the character.
“I got to the restaurant scene and I thought, Well, there’s no way in hell I would ever consider any of his bullshit,” she says, referencing Louis’ demand for sexual favors in return for exclusive dibs on his footage.
Unlike Nina, Russo says, “I would have probably just gotten up and told him to eff off, so that was my initial response and I kind of had to find my way from there.”
Noting she initially “didn’t have any reference” in her own life for the situation, the actor adds that she “had a really hard time” trying to find the character her husband, Gilroy, created. But then somewhere, something clicked. She says, “I realized, Oh my God, I have crossed many a moral boundary in my life and it’s always been out of fear or loss or desperation”—those same feelings that have plagued her character throughout her news career.
And when she finally “found” Nina, Russo says she discovered her to be desperate, vulnerable, and “hanging on by her fingernails,” turning the deal offered by Lou into one she didn’t have the luxury of refusing.
“Probably she’s had to manipulate men her whole life. She’s been in a job where they’ve been her bosses and she’s gotten pretty good at it,” Russo says, “so I think ultimately, for her, it’s a business deal. I think that she probably has been struggling for a long time and has rationalized every moral boundary,” she adds, admitting she’s not proud to have compromised her own moral boundaries at points in her life.
But with only a handful of scenes, Russo manages to give Nina a life beyond the frame; a fully developed character whose story takes place more off-camera than it does on.
And leaving the details of Lou and Nina’s sexual encounters to the audience’s imagination makes the onscreen chemistry between the actors even more compelling—the key to which is listening, according to Russo.
“If you really listen to your [scene] partner, it’s just there,” she says. “I think that we listened to each other, and with this dialogue you kind of really had to because there were so many emotional things coming at you at once that you completely didn’t expect.”
Russo says her effort to stay in the moment was interrupted by Gyllenhaal’s performance from time to time. “Jake is a very good listener—so good that I’m watching him and one reel is going, Oh my God, that’s a good choice! You can’t help it,” she says.
Most important, Russo notes that her character relies heavily on individual interpretation. “People have told me she’s a victim, others have told me she’s completely in control. Some people find her sympathetic and others just find her to be a bitch and evil. So I’ve been given a lot of credit for all kinds of performances I wasn’t aware of,” she says, laughing.
In a particularly desperate moment in the film, a frustrated Nina yells, “I want what you promised me. I want something people can’t turn away from.” And Russo provides exactly that.
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