Way out west with the Coen brothers

By Laura Harding

Zoe Kazan is inspecting the headboard of the bed in the hotel room. “I think that has blood spattered on it!” she exclaims with alarm.

“It’s something anyway. Coffee?”

The 35-year-old stars in The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, the latest movie from directing brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.

The movie is an anthology western, which also stars James Franco, Liam Neeson and Tom Waits, and Kazan plays a woman crossing the Old West to get to Oregon.

“I have never started a job not terrified but with the Coens I was shitting myself the entire time.

“It’s just that when you really love someone’s work so much and you get the opportunity to work with them, it doesn’t happen that often.

I felt like I was contending, at least at first, with my own nerves and not wanting to f**k it up. But it was just me, I was the source of all nerves on set.

“The Coens were very relaxed on set and they are not micro-managers in the least, which is nice.”

Kazan points out that the celebrated brothers have been working with the same crew for decades so there is a lot of trust on set.

Kazan said she still throws her scripts in the bin as she leaves an audition and for Buster Scruggs she even wore a special outfit.

“I wore a prairie dress, one that I already own. I didn’t even rent one. This is something I wear in real life. No bonnet, I do own one though.”

RUBY SPARKS

For fans of Kazan’s work, this might not come as a surprise. She has the vibe of someone who might own a prairie dress and a bonnet.

She is best known for her role in Ruby Sparks, which she also penned, starring opposite her real-life partner Paul Dano in the story about a struggling novelist who finds romance by writing a female character he thinks will love him, and then willing her into existence.

Kazan has recently penned her second film, this time with Dano, an adaptation of Richard Ford’s novel Wildlife, with Dano making his directorial debut.

She said: “I don’t have the fear with writing that I do with acting.

“It’s a totally different kind of thing because with acting you’re waiting for permission all the time to be able to do the thing you love and with writing, if someone doesn’t like my writing I can still write.”

Wildlife follows a six-year gap since 2012’s Ruby Sparks, but for Kazan the time has flown by.

In that time, she has starred in What If with Daniel Radcliffe, Olive Kitteridge with Frances McDormand, Our Brand Is Crisis with Sandra Bullock and of course last year’s hit The Big Sick, which was nominated for a string of awards.

“I also wrote two plays during that period of time, so I think I was just writing in a different medium but movies take a long time to make.

“With Wildlife, we wrote for three or four years and then it took a couple of years to get it made so it just works out that way.

I remember when we were on our Ruby Sparks press tour, people would say to John and Val (the directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris), ‘It’s been five years since Little Miss Sunshine, why such a big break?’ and I thought, ‘Yeah, why such a big break?’ but now I’m like it’s not long at all, it goes really fast when you’re a grown-up.

“The thing that makes me feel older than anything is when people write to me online and say, ‘When I was in middle school I loved Ruby Sparks’ and I know it feels like no time to me.

“It was 2012, six years ago, but to me it’s nothing. I feel I have different hair and that is it. I sleep a little less, that is all.”

Wildlife is out now. The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs is on Netflix from Friday.