Scarlett Johansson has one of the covers for Elle Magazine’s Women In Hollywood issue. ScarJo is promoting Jojo Rabbit and Marriage Story, and both films are getting Oscar buzz. Even though Jojo Rabbit surprised everyone by taking home a big award at TIFF, I feel safe saying that Marriage Story is the movie which will probably get Scarlett a Best Actress Oscar nomination. The reviews for both Scarlett and Adam Driver are terrific and ScarJo is seemingly teflon – none of her dumb statements about playing transgender trees or supporting Woody Allen will make one bit of difference. Case in point: while Elle Mag brings up Scarlett’s bulls–t in the text of the profile, they didn’t ask her about it. Imagine that. You can read the full profile here. Some highlights:
She has a big monologue in ‘Marriage Story’: “It was the first piece Noah gave me, and it felt familiar somehow, but not because of what I’d been experiencing then. But maybe because of how I grew up, and the dynamic between my parents—or maybe because I’ve known women who’ve dedicated themselves to their partner’s vision and then come out of this decade-long relationship feeling almost like a ghost.” She adds that she, too, has been in that place, and that the truth in Nicole’s story was what excited her. “I didn’t hesitate at all, because I knew that I’d have the opportunity to say those words. Noah gave me that monologue, and I was like, ‘Well, sh-t, come on.’ Am I going to be like, ‘Nah, I’m good—let some other actor have that’? No way.”
She’s having a good career period: “I am in a good creative period… everything ebbs and flows, and sometimes you’re riding a wave, and then the wave subsides, and then you’re waiting for another wave.”
Playing mothers in Jojo Rabbit & Marriage Story: “It’s funny, because I had never played a mother before, and now suddenly I have two films back to back where I have children who are, like, eight or nine years old. Actors get to wherever they need to go whether or not they’ve lived it, but [these roles] had a deeper resonance with me because of my own personal experience.”
On equality: “Laura [Dern’s character] gives a great speech about this facade of equality, where the mother is the Virgin Mary, and God’s up there and didn’t even do the f–king. It gives you second thoughts as to what true gender equality looks like, and whether it’s possible.”
On her engagement to Colin Jost: “My ability to compartmentalize comes in handy when it’s time for things like that. I’m certainly, obviously, very happy and fulfilled in my personal life, but I’m also a sum of many parts, and able to access different parts of my story and how I got here. It’s all valuable.”
What she said about playing a mom now… I had to look it up, she’s only 34 years old!! And she’s in two films where she’s playing a mother to an eight or nine-year-old child? First you’re the ingenue, then you’re the mother and then… you’re the witch/crone. Who said some variation on that? I think it was Meryl Streep or Bette Davis or someone else. Anyway… welcome to Scarlett Johansson’s Oscar campaign, where she gets to say crazy sh-t about Woody Allen and no one even bothers to ask her about it again. What do you think, if Best Actress comes down to ScarJo versus Renee Zellweger in Judy? Who will Oscar voters choose?
