Original-Cin Q&A: Jump, Darling director and co-star talk about Cloris Leachman in her final role
Jump, Darling is a charming indie Canadian film about a rookie drag queen reeling from a breakup who escapes to the country. There he finds his grandmother in steep decline yet desperate to avoid the local nursing home.
What makes this film extra special - is that it stars the late Cloris Leachman in her final role.
At 93 years young, Cloris traveled to Prince Edward County to star as a feisty yet caring grandmother who has her own ideas of how she wants to live out her last days.
Cloris Leachman died on Jan. 27 of a stroke complicated by COVID-19.
Veteran Canadian actresses Linda Kash and Jayne Eastwood also star in the film.
The late Cloris Leachman plays Margaret, a dementia-stricken grandmother in Jump, Darling.
Our Bonnie Laufer spoke with writer director Phil Connell and star Thomas Duplessie to find out their most cherished memories of working with Leachman and how working on this film brought them together as a couple.
Jump, Darling is available on VOD on March 9th.
To WATCH Bonnie’s interview with star Jayne Eastwood click HERE.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
To WATCH Bonnie’s interview with star Linda Kash, click HERE.
To read Linda Barnard’s review of Jump, Darling, click HERE.
Original-Cin: The film debuted at Toronto’s Inside Out Festival last fall, but is releasing now. And it takes on a whole new meaning because of Cloris Leachman’s recent passing. Phil, where did the idea for the story come from?
PHIL CONNELL: I knew that my first film was going to be a family drama because family dramas were the kind of movies I grew up on and loved to watch most. At the time that I started writing the script, which was early 2013, I had just started kind of end-of-life kind of care conversations with my grandmother. She wasn't as advanced as Cloris’s character Margaret is in the film, but that was kind of a regular feature of the visits I was having with her at the time.
She lived in a small town in Vermont, but she actually was also the person who bought my family cottage in Prince Edward County in the in the late ‘90s. So I was used to visiting her in a small town and then later in Prince Edward County when she had a cottage there.
So that's kind of how those two things came together. It was the city-versus-country aspect, small town grandmother end-of-life care kind of journey, right?
Meanwhile, I was going on my own journey as a filmmaker and choosing life as an artist and committing myself to that life. And I had just finished making a short film that was a gay coming-of-age story which sort of left me feeling very exposed. So I was starting to realize if I recommit myself to a life making queer art because I'm a gay man, that's going to be a feature of my work.
Cloris Leachman and Thomas Duplessie in Jump, Darling.
I guess I didn't realize that kind of vulnerability was going to be part of the journey, and then it kind of confronted me. I started to put that into the script, and thought, “What is the ultimate expression of queer artistry?” And for me, that was that was drag.
Drag queens are the crusaders against our collective queer shame in the world. And so it was kind of those three ideas that took me on my way to writing the story.
O-C: Thomas had you ever even attempted drag before taking on This role?
THOMAS DUPLESSIE: It was honestly a dream come true to have a role that was so flushed out and then to also have the opportunity to become a full-on drag queen. It was always something that I hoped to try at some point. So when this opportunity came along I was so excited about it. It was definitely a challenge but I had so much fun doing it. I have a whole new respect for anyone who wears heels for eight hours a day. I had never done that before.
O-C: Phil, what was it about Thomas that won you over to cast him in the lead role?
CONNELL: I always said that we wanted to cast a star in the role of Margaret, and we wanted to discover a star for the role of Russell.
We had an open call of Canadian actors and we wanted to discover some home-grown talent and felt that it was a perfect opportunity to do that for a film like this. It was very challenging, because we knew we needed somebody who could have the chops for high classic drama and be comfortable working opposite a sort of a big star.
Plus, the actor would have to be able to carry the role of a drag queen who's also exploring her art - someone not entirely fully-formed, who's kind of trying different things on and expressing it in different ways with sort of a rawness to it.
So it was really just a matter of seeing who was out there. Our casting director put out an open call, first in Ontario, and then across Canada. And we saw about 150 people for the role.
Thomas came along early in the submissions by sending us a tape. And it was one of those beginners' luck situations where he came in during one of the first rounds. And we just knew immediately he was the real deal, but we'd only seen about 15 or 20 people. Eventually, we didn’t see anyone we liked as much as Thomas, and so he got the role!
O-C: Thomas, lucky indeed because you pretty much did the bulk of your scenes with Cloris Leachman. What was it like going head-to-head with her and what did you learn from a veteran actress like that?
DUPLESSIE: I've said it a lot, but it really was a master class every day and I just took in everything from her. She was so generous and lovely to work with, and she taught me how to be present in the moment and be spontaneous once the film starts rolling. It was pure joy going to work every day. It was unpredictable. It was exciting. It was challenging. It was everything you kind of hope to have in an amazing scene partner. She was incredible.
O-C: I loved that her character was so accepting of her grandson being gay. In real life she was a champion for the community and gay rights so I was wondering what kind of off screen conversations did you had with her?
DUPLESSIE: Offscreen, we got along great. There was a lot of horsing around. She was always trying to make me laugh and keep the energy up between takes. What I really wanted to know from her was about her life and how she got into acting, stuff like that. We talked a lot about her childhood, her growing up in Iowa and we talked about her dogs and normal day-to-day stuff. Nothing was off limits and she was always willing to help or give advice if I asked for it.
O-C: Phil was it at all intimidating or scary directing this legend, especially since it was your first feature film?
CONNELL: Yes it was in a way, but the fear went away pretty quickly. I did speak to her before she arrived, we had a FaceTime call which was a bit like having a FaceTime call with your grandmother.
She was hilarious, like, “How do I use this thing?” It was the, “Can we just talk in person?” kind of situation. (Laughs). There was an evolution to the relationship, but once we got working it was amazing.
Cloris was really such a pro. She would always say to me, “You tell me where to stand and where to go. I'll deliver the goods.” She truly made my life easy, so after a while it really wasn't intimidating because she just considered herself an equal to everyone on the set.
O-C: Do you have any recollections of shooting with her that really stands out?
CONNELL: One of my favorite stories is that, on the first day on set, we were shooting the very first scene where the two characters (Margaret and Russell) meet for the first time. Russell comes to see her and she says, “Get the hell out of my house.”
This was the first scene that we were shooting between the two of them. It was also the first time these characters met. I thought it would be a great idea that it should be the first time the actors meet. So we set up the camera and you can cut the tension with a knife. Here’s Cloris Leachman, a 93-year-old Hollywood legend puttering onto the set on this little Indie ragtag production in Prince Edward County.
Thomas has his back to her, and we're setting up the shot. There's hushed voices, and we roll the cameras. Her line is, “Get the hell out of my house you prowling son of a bitch.”
And Cloris says, “Get the hell out of my house you rotating son of a bitch.” Of course, he rotates the spin around and it worked brilliantly. The whole crew just fell apart laughing including Cloris and it was just at that moment I knew it was going to be really fun.
DUPLESSIE: We had an amazing time with her and she was just such a professional, always studiously working away on her sides before we call to action. Everyone had a great time with her and I think she loved it too. It was just really an honor to work with her.
O-C: To top off the whole experience, you both fell in love while making the film and are now a couple!
DUPLESSIE: I would say that it was toward the end of the production when we moved to Toronto that both of us were recognizing or feeling something for each other. It wasn't until after we wrapped that anything was acknowledged or talked about and then quite quickly after that we just started dating and the rest is history.