Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety This interview is part of Variety and CNN’s Actors on Actors series. Watch the full video interview now at CNN.com/Watch (or on the CNN app) and on Variety’s YouTube channel starting at 11:59 pm ET.
Colman Domingo and Sarah Pidgeon are true thespians. Both from theater backgrounds, they approach their television work with a certain grandeur and meditativeness that turns heads — and drums up awards attention as soon as they show up on-screen. As they meet to discuss Domingo’s work in HBO’s “Euphoria” and Netflix’s “The Four Seasons” and Pidgeon’s breakout role as Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in FX’s “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette,” they go deep on the transformative potential of the right costume, their perspectives on the differences between acting and directing and the way their characters stay with them long after the cameras stop rolling.
Colman Domingo: Your Carolyn Bessette is outstanding. I read comments online. They’re like, “You had her mannerisms and her cadence, the way she walked …” You were that ’90s it-girl. What kind of research went into that?
Sarah Pidgeon: While she was so well documented through paparazzi photos, she was so enigmatic and she never sat for an interview. There were very few videos of her speaking. It was this discovery process, and it gave me a lot of freedom. And it was quite intimidating in some ways. I know you’ve played real people as well, and there is this pressure of …
Domingo: People are trying to get it “right,” which I never liked. I’m like, “No, no, no. We’re doing something with a dramatic arc. We’re not trying to ‘get it right.’ We’re trying to be authentic and truthful in our experience.”
Pidgeon: And you don’t want it to be an impersonation. Because it’s your body at the end of the day, and it’s your voice.
Domingo: Yeah. It’s gotta be attached to you.
Pidgeon: I don’t know if you ever struggled with feeling like, “What are the limitations of what I can transform?” I can’t change my height. Well, to a certain extent, with heels. She was 5-10 [like me], though.
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