Da’Vine Joy Randolph on The Holdovers

Da’Vine Joy Randolph won a Golden Globe for her role in The Holdovers. Randolph plays Mary, the cook at a boarding school. She keeps the kitchen open for students who have to stay over Christmas break, and becomes friends with Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) and teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti).

In a Zoom with the Critics Choice Association, whose awards are this Saturday, Randolph spoke at length about her process for creating Mary. Mary is also grieving the death of her son in Vietnam and it manifests throughout the film. The Holdovers is now on DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and streaming on Peacock.

Q: How did you approach the complexity of this woman grieving her own son while agreeing to care for these students?

DJR: Sure, so caring for the students is her job. However I find what was so beautiful about it is it is a great distraction. It opens her heart up from not being so hardened. It allows her to go through this process of grieving. In a way, I think it saves her that she has work to do in the midst of all this. Angus, without a word being said, ends up healing and filling this gap within her as she is suffering the loss of her child in a really beautiful way. 

In regards to the grief, when I was in graduate school, I unfortunately, in that three year span, suffered a lot of loss. But due to me going to school, I was at Yale School of Drama, due to me going there, my parents didn’t want me to become distracted. And so they told me to stay at school, don’t worry about the funeral, the family understands and supports what you’re doing. So I didn’t go and I thought I had grieved them. I didn’t know that I didn’t fully. When we started doing this show, some of those things started to come up for me. What I understood that was really interesting was that grief, though there is that convenient chart of the stages of grief, it’s so much more complex than that. However, I use that as a template if you will to chart where she was at scene to scene, moment to moment. 

What I found interesting is that with grief, they can come in any array of ranges. You can go through denial and depression at the same time. You can go through acceptance and anger at the same time. It’s not so cookie cutter convenient. It really can happen in a lot of different ways and out of order. So I just allowed myself to go on this emotional roller coaster of feeling and I did that. When I realized that this movie was potentially going to be a movie for people who aren’t necessarily feeling in the holiday spirit that so many of a dramatic amount of movies are about, this one is unique in that it shows this other view which is also a very real view.  So I quickly wanted to have something in this character of Mary not only being the strong feminine presence and one of the few female presence, I wanted it to be something that people could really attach to and relate to. So I wanted to show as many, if not all, of the stages of grief so that whoever was watching it and whatever they were going through in that time, they could relate to it. So if someone is in their current stage of denial, great. We got you covered. 

It’s beyond somebody saying you did a great job in the movie. It means more to me when people are connecting on a deep level or it’s somehow bringing a family or people together or allowing people to go through [grief]. People have said to me too like, ‘Oh, I realized I hadn’t processed my own loss and I know what it’s like now.’ That was how I went about it. You’ve got to find that right tone because if I would have leaned into it heavy, I think you guys, as a viewer, would have disassociated, like too much. And I think if I wouldn’t have done  it enough, you would have been like does she really care? Does it really matter? I was constantly, with Alexander [Payne]’s help, having to tune and turn the dial to find the right sweet spot scene to scene, moment by moment of what is appropriate in this moment and finding the right point where you as a viewer could engage and respond and connect.

Q: How did that turning of the dial you described manifest?

DJR: It’s just instinctual/a lot of practice. I started with theater so the beautiful thing about theater is we can just listen to the audience and they’ll let us know. So it took a lot of trial and error and then sometimes to be honest, the crew. People on set. Sometimes they would come up to me like oh, you really gutted me. Then I’d be like okay, that might be too much. Or feedback from them, Alexander. There was no video village or monitors so in many senses he quite literally was my eyes. So I think, and then I think, not to be corny, I think you’ve got to do some work on yourself. Like I said, you have to be in a place within your spirit where you can be open and willing to surrender to that character. You’ve kind of got to emotionally palette cleanse yourself if that makes sense in order to be open to that.

I didn’t mope around and be sad and all those things. I did the opposite. I was very cheery and jokey and jovial up until I had to do what I had to do because if I would have been stuck in a rut, I would either be giving bits of my performance away throughout the day or I would be locked and I couldn’t go there, or it would probably be too much. Listen, I think in many senses, we all, whether you’re doing a role about grief or not, I think actors and creatives when doing art, I think empathy is a huge component. Whether you’re a visual artist or a musician, I think that’s the whole point. Even if you’re doing comedy. My job is to be able to tell and retell and show the human condition and empathy has to be present. Even if you’re playing a villain, you still have to be empathetic because that person is going through something that’s making this their story be told in this way. So I think it really requires you to do a bit of work on yourself as well in order to give unto the character. 

Q: How did you develop your accent and keep it consistent in The Holdovers?

DJR: At first the creative team was kind of indifferent about the dialect. They were like well, you know, because I’m from Philadelphia and I’ve lived for many years in New York, so I think they were kind of content with the idea of “northeast.” I was like oh, no no no. It’s Boston. That’s so specific and I thought if I was from Boston, I would want it to sound as such. Because those are things that, as a viewer, bother me. That’s my personal taste that I’m just that kind of person that enjoys that kind of stuff, and I love dialects. 

So I had the great privilege to work with a dialect coach named Thom Jones. I think he’s probably most known for working with Nicole Kidman on almost all of her stuff because a lot of times she’s not speaking in her actual tongue. So we worked on it but what was so cool is we got so specific with it that we were able to nail down a late ‘60s/early ‘70s Black dialect for Boston. How we did it is we pulled YouTube University, I always say. We pulled lots of interviews when local news was interviewing people or people giving speeches. My personal favorite was Donna Summer. Donna Summer’s from Boston also during that time period. If you notice with Mary, there’s a little bit more nasality that she has and that’s a huge Donna thing. That’s my little Donna just showing her love, but she’s a little more nasal but I just love that characteristic. I thought that was so cute and charming and endearing. That was our way in. 

Then, we had this thing when working on dialects, when you have key phrases. There’s usually five to six phrases, words, or it can be riddles or a little nursery rhyme, that each one contains the sound or really the vowel of that dialect. A dialect’s biggest notes of differentiation is vowels. Vowels are what really dictate a dialect. Just like notes of how musical they are with the phrasing or speed and rhythm but really the vowels are the thing. That’s the heart. Vowels are the emotion. So I had these key phrases. Whenever I felt like I lost it, I would go to these key phrases. Before we did a take, I would always say a little phrase, I’d be like, “Mr. Hunham, you’re so funny.” That would help me like I’m ready, I’m locked in.

It also helped that we did live in Boston although it made it almost trickier for me because they’re speaking in modern day Boston. There were little things that were different that sometimes would throw me. But, what I did do is, we were there for three months, I stayed in a Boston dialect the entire time. I would order groceries. Whatever I could do, I stayed in that dialect. I talked like that the whole time and it just helped me stay in the general area of it.