Elisabeth Moss recently appeared on Kelly Ripa’s “Let’s Talk Off Camera” podcast while promoting her new FX series “The Veil” and reflected on the “intimidating” but exhilarating set of James Mangold’s 1999 drama “Girl, Interrupted.” Moss was around 15 years old when she shot the movie and starred as Polly “Torch” Clark, a burn victim who suffers from schizophrenia. The cast was headlined by Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, the latter of whom won an Oscar for her performance. Because of the tension that exists between their two characters, Moss said the film set became naturally divided into two camps.
“There were two kinds of camps. There was the Winona Ryder camp and the Angelina Jolie camp. … Off camera, but based on what was on camera, based on the script,” Moss said. “I was in the Winona Ryder camp. The Angelina Jolie camp was really cool. I was intimidated by the Angelina Jolie camp. I had no thoughts of ever being able to be in that camp.”
“I’ve spoken to Angelina since then and she’s lovely, but at the time it was just incredibly intimidating,” Moss continued. “I never brought it up. I’m sure she would have no idea what I was talking about anyway. I was just definitely not cool enough to be in her camp.”
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Ryder herself once alluded to the divided set in a 2010 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, noting that she never became good friends with Jolie during the making of the movie. Ryder was both the star of and an executive producer on “Girl, Interrupted.”
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh we’re going to turn out to be great friends,” Ryder said then. “But I think she needed to be able to look at me just as the character Susanna, not as Winona, so in a very respectful way she just kind of kept her distance.”
“Girl, Interrupted” was based on Susanna Kaysen’s 1993 memoir of the same name. Ryder played Kaysen, an 18-year-old girl with borderline personality disorder who is sent to a local psychiatric hospital. Jolie starred as Lisa Rowe, a manipulative patient at the hospital who is a diagnosed sociopath. The two women are drawn to each other and the film centers on the highs and lows of their relationship.
Moss said on Ripa’s podcast that making the movie was “an incredible experience,” adding: “I was 15 or 16. My mom was still with me going to set. I was with all these movie stars. Winona Ryder! Angelina Jolie! Clea DuVall! Britney Murphy! This amazing cast of women. It was like being dropped into the Wizard of Oz. I was so awe struck by my surroundings and working with Winona and Angelina, and they were so different and interesting.”
