Annette Bening says that one of the most iconic scenes from American Beauty just happens to be one she improvised.
Talking with ET’s Denny Directo in anticipation of her new Peacock series, Apples Never Fall, the 65-year-old actress spoke about the 25th anniversary of the controversial and critically acclaimed film, as well as which scenes still stick with her to this day.
“I guess my favorite memory would be one of the little moments after he’s died — Kevin Spacey’s character — I take the gun…” she said before being hilariously cut off by her on-screen daughter, Alison Brie.
“Spoiler alert,” Brie, 41, said while laughing with her co-stars and fellow members of the fictional Delaney family.
“Oh, I shouldn’t say that?” Bening responded, confused. “Oh my god, see I’m not very good at that.”
After calming down, the actress — who is currently nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Netflix’s Nyad — explained that some of her favorite moments from the 1999 movie were the scenes where her character, Carolyn Burnham, is left reeling from the loss of her husband (played by Spacey). In one scene, Bening’s character smells her husband’s clothes after his murder and folds up the laundry items.
“Very rarely do they have time to say, ‘OK, you know, improvise, do what you want,’ but I do remember that moment and I remember thinking I needed that,” the Academy Award nominee said. “That I needed that moment for her to, you know, be missing her husband. That was important even though there’s all that brutalness about her. That she also really, at heart, she loved him.”
“We all remember it — iconic,” chimed in Brie.
Bening gives major props to the film’s director, Sam Mendes, for those incredibly volatile moments and said that it was his extended leash that allowed her and the other actors in the film to swing for the fences — a decision that resulted in eight Oscar nominations and five wins, including Best Picture.
“I can remember him coming in and saying — Sam Mendes, our director, wonderful director — coming in and saying, ‘Hey, you know, now just do it again, say whatever you want,” she said of another scene in the movie. “In the moment, you know, when you literally don’t know what you’re going to say, it’s very exciting.”
She also admitted that of all the roles in her career, she still maintains a certain fondness for Carolyn, in spite of her potentially less-than-stable mental state.
“I just loved playing her,” the actress said, before joking, “she was a little psychotic.”
As for what attracted her to the role in her new show, Bening says she found a certain appeal in the Liane Moriarty book the show is based on, as well as her character, Joy Delaney, a wife and mom of four who suddenly disappears one day, leaving her children and community to wonder what happened to her.
“There’s a kind of deliciousness in her writing,” the actress told ET. “It’s very entertaining the way that she [Moriarty] approaches characters and plot. She makes the stakes very high. She has a way of doing that. So, she’s also on the knife edge of something very painful, mysterious, dark, and something hysterically funny. And that’s good writing. And sometimes, you know, as you just play the truth of the moment and some people find it funny, some people find it tragic and sometimes it’s kind of both.”
Watch the trailer for Apples Never Fall in the player below:
Apples Never Fall premieres on Peacock on March 15.
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