Yesterday, Red Sparrow star Jennifer Lawrence’s interview with Marc Maron on Maron’s WTF podcast caused waves on Twitter thanks to this revelation: She turned off Phantom Thread after three minutes.“I got through about three minutes of it,” she said. “I put in a good, solid three. Oh my god, I couldn’t.” Maron went on to try to persuade Lawrence to give the movie another shot by saying that he had had a similarly visceral reaction to Mother!, a comparison that didn’t convince Lawrence. “Is he kind of like a narcissistic sociopath, and he’s an artist, so every girl falls in love with him because he makes her feel bad about herself, and that’s the love story?,” she asked, before making this revealing comment: “I’ve been down that road, I know what that’s like,” she said. “I don’t need to watch that movie.”
We’d argue, should Lawrence decide to give her super-fancy movie-star screener of the film another try, that Phantom Thread is more of a critique of the idea of the narcissistic genius artist than a celebration of same, and that underneath all that ego Reynolds Woodcock is an overgrown, fussy toddler. She might even find the direction the film eventually goes in quite satisfying. (We will say no more, for fear of spoilers.)
But we also see where Lawrence is coming from: Not only was she dating director Darren Aronofsky—who she goes out of her way to clarify wasn’t the target of her “I lived that movie” comment—during the famously demanding filming of Mother!, the other film about how awful living with an artist can be released last year, she’s also worked with David O. Russell, who—well, the sheer volume of relevant links when you Google “David O. Russell abusive” speaks for itself. So not only has she been in that movie—albeit a much less subtle version—she’s also lived that movie. Under the circumstances, we’ll let it go.