Elle Fanning: “I can’t think of anything else but being an actress”

The Angels

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Elle Fanning becomes Michelle Carter, the young woman who shook the news of the United States in 2014 in an unprecedented suicide case. Guilty or innocent? Her new series, “The Girl of Plainville,” asks that question as she recounts the life of Carter, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter after the death of her boyfriend. In fiction, available on Starzplay, she also tackles cancellation culture, social networks and a sentence that left the world speechless. Fanning steps away from comedy in a project that explores Carter’s relationship with Conroy Rod III and the events that led to her conviction.

—The character is very dark. Is it possible to mentally prepare for such a role?

-Yes. This case was well known, because it had a lot of media coverage. I was attracted to, and also understood well, that kind of false sense of intimacy and false reality that cell phones and technology create. With this paper I delved into how technology affected these two people, especially Michelle, who was very lonely. When she met Conrad, her relationship was ‘ignited’, that kind of instant gratification that you feel in the networks caught her. That can be a very dark place to live. It was a great challenge to balance, wanting to be sensitive and feel the responsibility of playing real people but at the same time creating a character of your own.

—Is it difficult to go from your character in ‘The Great’ to one so different?

—Yes, our shoots couldn’t have had a more different tone, but I was relieved because in ˙The Great˙ we have a lot of dialogue, it’s a lot of memorization. I think I even said to Liz and Patrick when they offered me this role, “Oh, that’s great. I don’t have to say anything. I can tell with my eyes. Fantastic”. I am an artist who likes challenges.

– Have you felt the harassment of social networks?

—Yes, it is very easy to harass from social networks. The easier it is for people to say things behind a screen, the more they do it. You can create a world that is not real with real consequences for what you say. There are a lot of comments on Instagram that are nasty, there are people who send scary text messages, and without this necessarily being a warning, I think the public needs to know that those words don’t go away. There is a receiver who is reading those words and reacting to them: taking them seriously or feeling pain receiving them. There are tragedies that start like this. In this series, the weapon is two phones, which is really modern.

—You have been acting since you were a child, what do you like about acting?

“I started very young. I was lucky enough to find what I wanted to do at a very young age and I still fall in love with it. I can’t think of doing anything other than being an actress. I make a movie and go home. I do a series and go home. I have time for myself, to study, to continue learning and reading. I am a lucky actress. I don’t like to extend my break because what I enjoy the most is being on a shoot. I love to connect with the team and create a small community for several months.

—What does this series say about the current adolescent culture?

—I think it sums up the relationship of young people with their phones. For me it has been fascinating to enter this world because it allows, in that false reality, to be the star of the show. Michelle Carter was raised on that fantasy, which is a great escape for people who are lonely or who become the popular girl. Being that girl, even if only for a second, sums up the fascination that exists for idolizing, for creating this false sense of reality so that oneself feels accepted in these worlds in which one is not.

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Elle Fanning: “I can’t think of anything else but being an actress”