Judith Lightis having a moment.
Read on below.Before You Know Itis now playing in select cities.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Lets start with what drew you to this movie.
Credit: Greg Doherty/FilmMagic
Hes done a lot of film.
He said, You know what would be great for you, and great for them?
If you ever got a chance to go to the Sundance Film Labs.
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I said Id love that.
Literally, a week later… our casting director sent me a script.
She said, Heres this script.
Its for the Sundance Film Labs.
What do you think?
I said, Im in.
I want to go.
I met Hannah and Jen, and we spent four or five days together in the mountains of Utah.
Just working on the script.
Talking to each other.
Talking about our lives.
And where the script could go, where it needed to go.
Then we did a full reading for a lot of people at Sundance.
We all kissed each other goodbye and said how great it was to be together.
I was all over it!
And they are the future of film.
Sounds like such a unique process, too.Its a really unique process.
That you could find some place where you could understand her.
How forgiveness could happen.
How things could be fixed.
So thats how we tended to work through it.
But it was really a focus of all of ours.
Thats really how you shape something, how you work on something together.
They never took anything for granted.
They were always on the side of making it realer, more expansive.
It wasnt that they were going deeper with the characters, they were going wider.
They were allowing it to evolve out of who were the actors playing them.
That evolution it doesnt feel off in some way, its integrated into the whole story.
She had a lot to do with that look.
Again, making sure we were not making this character a caricature.
Then to see this character at the end I guess we cant talk about that yet.
[laughs] I also knew that for time purposes that a wig was going to be essential.
We were always walking that very delicate, fine line.
[Laughs]
So what was it like to dig into that story line?
Did it hit close to home at all?Im not exactly sure how to answer that.
I feel so incredibly fortunate and grateful for what seems to be happening for me.
I find that in that, people are really moving in my direction.
Im working on something really fascinating right now, [Manhunt], for Charter Spectrum and Lionsgate.
Theres a sense that Im coming into the best years of my life.
There is something that is being generated around that feeling.
I got to take on all of these new, different, and very interesting roles.
What are you thinking about as possibilities?Its so interesting that you ask that.
Ive started to produce and put things together.
My husband [Robert Desiderio] is a writer.
Hes writing two projects that were working on right now.
I have a couple of other films that Im looking at producing.
All of a sudden Ive been open to this whole other world.
Its all new and different exciting.
Its not even like Im taking risks.
Its that Im opening up, expanding, a sense of life that I just didnt have before.
I dont know how else to describe it; its one of those things thats indescribable, but experiential.
The minute I put words to it, it escapes me.
What are you getting out of acting now?Its a thrill.
I feel freer than I ever have.
More open than I have.
The respect I have for the people that I get to work with.
The gratitude that I have for being able to do all of this.
It started, really, when I was doingUgly Bettyand then whenTransparenthappened.
Now working with Ryan and Jill.
And now Hannah and Jen.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
