We sat down with actress Judy Reyes to talk about her new film, Laura Moss’ Birth/Rebirth, and her character, Celie.
Judy Reyes will perhaps always be best known as Carla from Scrubs, but in Laura Moss’ Birth/Rebirth, she delivers a powerhouse performance as a desperate mother struggling to cope with insurmountable grief.
Reyes plays Celie, a nurse who loses her daughter to bacterial meningitis. After the daughter’s body goes missing, Celie discovers she’s being kept at mortician Rose’s apartment and against all odds, is alive. The two women work together to keep it that way, but exactly how far would Celie go to keep her daughter in the land of the living?
In our chat, Judy and I talk about the film’s unique tone, pouring your private self into each role, and what a diva the film’s only animal actor was.
The film is quite a roller coaster of emotion, like I told Laura.
It’s dark, it’s weird, it’s creepy, it’s funny. And that’s what I appreciated about it when I read it. There was really no monster. It was really complicated, the journey, what was happening, the things people do to get what they want, and what is it that people want?
I related to it completely as a parent, as a caregiver, as a person who played a nurse for a bunch of years. I really appreciated that Laura reached out to me to play this role. And I just love the kind of work that I was able to do to convince people of the kind of person that Celie is, both a woman who cares, and a woman who’s got a dark determination to get what she wants.
The film has so many terrifying themes and scenes. What was your first reaction to the script?
My manager came to me with the script by this writer-director, Laura Moss, and she said she wrote it with me in mind. I read it twice, just to be sure that this wasn’t a joke, because I loved it. I really loved it. I thought everything about it was crazy and relatable in a really weird way. Not all in one capacity like that – I understood the feminist incarnation of the whole idea of Frankenstein and frankly, it being written by a woman makes so much more sense.
I understood the relationship that Celie would have with Rose, played magnificently and hilariously, by Marin Ireland. And it was easy, it was fun to realise that relationship with her. She’s great to work with. She’s so present, she’s such a character actor. And it was fun! And the only real diva was the pig!
Of course, aren’t they always?!
It was trying to upstage us the whole time! Even AJ (Lister) who played my child was just such a terrific presence and an energy and made so much sense in what she was there to do. It was a wonderful experience.
You already mentioned that you could relate to Celie because you are a mother. How much of yourself, your own authentic, private self do you pour into these characters when you show up to work?
I think the only way to make it real is to put all of your authentic, private self [into it]. You don’t really have to share with anybody what the details are, but for me, if it’s not all me, it doesn’t feel real. There’s always going to be something more that you demand of yourself, if you’re trying to see what you feel. I think it’s got to be all or nothing. And make some recovery afterwards as it takes some… depending on the extent of the role that you are incarnating.
This must have felt quite difficult. After your child dies, it’s very raw, it’s very real. And it must have taken quite a toll on you.
It definitely takes a toll. But I’ll tell you this, about this role in particular. The thing that propels Celie is that she’s in denial. She just can’t wrap her head around it. And then when she sees what Rose has done, it’s just another way of not coping with everything that led to that very place. At the end, there’s almost like a release of all that stuff that she was putting on in order to be able to complete that journey.
And I asked Laura this as well. The film has been in the making for a really long time, but you ended up shooting this only a few months after Roe vs. Wade was overturned. It affected women all around the world, but it must have been quite difficult for all of you making a film that is so tied to female bodily autonomy, to process all of that at the same time.
It continues to be. Our crew and our team was so heavily female and very diverse, it’s almost like an unspoken language, about how fucked up it is, how unpredictable it became. It’s the coal on the other wood to the fire that empowers us to tell these stories from this point of view. You have Laura, Malin (Elfman, producer), Marin and myself, and that this really great team of designers, lighting executives and department heads who are all female and heavily oriented, knowing the truth, and living the truth as opposed to surrendering to a world that wants to trap us in the world of hate watching and not doing anything.
Like you said, it was a very diverse crew and a very female-led and thematically very female. We’ve just had an incredible year with Barbie as the highest grossing film, very tied to the female experience. And 2024, after a record breaking year, there’s still not that many films, by women, about women. Does it feel like from your side of the table as well, that it is still an anomaly to be a part of something like this?
It is and the so-called anomaly is used to say, “You can’t say that there’s not enough films about women. Look at 2023! You had Barbie, you had The Colour Purple!” Either way, people [use it to] defend fucking up the next year. It’s hard. A lot of actors, particularly actors of colour, have been saying that when you’re in a position where you can bring light to a certain situation, the very thing you’re talking about, you’re criticised for because you’re the one who’s working. Why are you worried about that? Why are you complaining? It could be that people were threatened by that year and they’ll say, “You’re fine now.” I know as a person of colour, it’s constant. And as a woman of colour, it happens all the time.
It’s not a direct adaptation in any way of Frankenstein, but we’ve had quite a few of these films that kind of toy with that idea. Poor Things is currently in cinemas and is kind of riff on that as well. Why are we so drawn to it?
Creating life. This is a retelling of a classic story, right? What would you do if you could actually bring someone to life? I think, as women, we know what it’s like.
We know the price.
Yes and the importance of it, the magnitude of it, the power that comes with it, the almost unnatural indoctrination that comes with it. And what happens when somebody else isn’t like that, and wants to take that from you, use what you have, because it’s the condition of the world, right?
We continue to tell the same stories, but it’s the lens that matters, through whose experience you [tell it]. I can only bring mine, Rose can only bring hers, Laura, as well. And I think that’s what becomes more interesting, who’s telling the story that not only I’ve heard a million times, but that I’ve actually lived.
You’ve already mentioned Marin Ireland, who’s brilliant as Rose. The two characters, they’re so contrasting, which is where a lot of the film’s dynamism comes from. How did you work with her, and also with Laura, to establish that dynamic and that relationship?
She’s terrific, she’s easy to work with. There’s a natural way that she operates, she’s a character actor as I am, and as I tried to be. There’s something so deadpan and straight and funny about her that you can play off of. Knowing my character is nothing but warm, talkative and healing and [Rose is] not, so both our deliveries clash, and we made each other laugh the entire time. And Laura was there as our guide to both pull us together and pull us apart. It was really rewarding.
Birth/Rebirth is now available digitally.
