EM: There’s a quote that describes your performance as complete, animalistic despair and it describes the horror of her anger. I was so intrigued by how the table readings would have compared to reading the script in costume, in situ? Dressed versus undressed: how did the two compare?
GC: I don’t think we ever had a table read because I came in halfway through. In fact, I had to quickly discover the universe I was stepping into. I had a scene with John Malkovich during which I was saying silently to myself: ‘What the fuck are you doing? I don’t understand. Where am I? What’s happening?’ Afterwards, I asked Stephen Frears if I could see all the footage that he had shot with John up to that. Afterwards, I said, ‘OK, I get it.’ And it was fine. We had a great time together because, as those two characters, we were engaged in a deadly a war of wit and one-upmanship — with dire consequences. These are two people who have a monumentally destructive love for each other. They couldn’t live with each other, and they couldn’t live without each other. I mean his whole thing was, if he succeeded in seducing Merteuil, his reward was a night in her bed. He wanted to conquer her, to literally invade her.
EM: You were his prize, ultimately.
GC: I was his ultimate prize because I had left him. He didn’t leave me. I think her physical grief at the end shows how much she actually loved him. By choosing to die, he ultimately won.
EM: Another critic described your relationship with Malkovich as ‘a tennis match of the soul’, which I think is so profound. What are your memories of the rest of the cast? What was their relationship with their transformation into their individual roles?
GC: You know, it’s fun to think back. I first met Malkovich in New York in a hotel room with Stephen Frears. He had been cast first, and I think Stephen wanted to see how we would respond to each other. I remember sitting across the room from him and thinking, ‘Yes, I could definitely be attracted to him.’ It was a big moment for me because I was supposed to have replaced Lindsay Duncan who played the role opposite Alan Rickman on Broadway. After six months, the producers had to replace the British actors with Americans. Then the production did not win enough Tony Awards to stay open, so it closed before I was able to play Merteuil onstage. I was devastated. But then, Stephen asked me to come in and meet. It felt like a miracle, because in our profession you don’t get second chances.
EM: And how wonderful to also bring it to life truly in situ as well, because the whole thing was filmed in France. You were living it, feeling it. That film came out when I was 11 years old, and I saw it with such wide eyes. And I watched it so many times.
GC: I read the book way before I played the part. The book is, other than Dracula, the most terrifying book I have ever read and it’s just a series of letters. It was terrifying, psychologically terrifying.