Merritt Wever Answers Every Question We Have About Michael Clayton

On those overwhelming three days when this New Yorker played a farm girl described as “God’s perfect little creature.”

The year 2007 was a great one for films that observed the malevolent underbelly of American politics, capitalism, and family life; titles like No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Gone Baby Gone, and American Gangster poked and prodded at it. Of that year’s releases, Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton maintains a particular kind of relevance with its plot about a brilliant corporate lawyer (Tom Wilkinson) suddenly aware of the immorality of his work for an agricultural company whose products have caused hundreds of deaths. The film only won one of the seven Academy Awards for which it was nominated (Best Supporting Actress for Tilda Swinton), but Gilroy’s anti-establishment film has undergone a recent re-appreciation after the success of his similarly themed Star Wars series Andor.

Michael Clayton’s timeliness has never really wavered. Both before and after 2007, countless lawsuits against pesticide manufacturers have brought to light their chemicals’ harmful effects on people and the environment, including a $10 billion payout from the maker of Roundup in 2020. In Michael Clayton, Wilkinson’s Arthur Edens is inspired to switch sides and face off against one such company, called U-North, and its general counsel Karen Crowder (Swinton) because of Anna Kaiserson (Merritt Wever), a plaintiff in the case whose parents both died because of U-North’s carcinogenic products. Arthur is hyperbolic in his praise for Anna, calling the teenage farmers’ daughter “God’s perfect little creature” and vowing to his colleague Michael Clayton (George Clooney) that he’ll triumph against U-North to defend Anna’s purity.

Arthur’s grandiose promise, and our sympathy for it, is predicated on Wever’s performance: We have to understand why Arthur would be so moved by her story, and why Clayton would be willing to continue Arthur’s work after he’s murdered. At that point in her career, Wever had done some small films, appeared briefly in bigger ones like Signs, and popped up in a number of TV shows, including Law & Order and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. In her three scenes in Michael Clayton, she brings a vulnerability and pique to Anna that makes the character easy to root for. But Wever — whose latest film, the drama Midday Black Midnight Blue, is now out in limited release and available on demand — was initially a little hesitant to discuss the role.

“I almost was like, ‘Can I pitch another movie? I know that’s not how this works. But there are films that I could talk about — old, too, ones I shot in the ‘90s — that I could talk about until the cows come home. Real solid anecdotes, funny things, with famous people and stuff!’” Wever laughs. “It’s a little remarkable that this one, I have this odd, blank space around that I actually kind of need to get to the bottom of.”

When I say the words Michael Clayton, what comes to mind?
I get bashful. I shrink a little bit, like it’s this lovely little secret that I forgot about, and then someone reminds me and I’m like, That’s so nice. But also, it was a long time ago and I’m a pretty slim part of the piece. I think maybe Anna’s presence is a little larger as a character than what my presence as an actor was.

You’d done movies, you’d done TV. What kind of roles were you looking for at that time?
It was 2005 and I wasn’t planning, you know, a career — I was just trying to get a job, any job. It wasn’t like, I’ll deign to do Michael Clayton. There are plenty of jobs that I wanted to get that I didn’t get, and my work life would be very different if I had ended up on those network series, or if the network pilot I did had gotten picked up. But when you’re a young working actor and you’re using your job to pay your bills, any job is a yes job.

Do you remember the description of the role?
It’s in my inbox, so I went back and looked it up. She’s described as a country girl, a plain, open, farm girl. I always felt like maybe, especially when I was younger, there was something perhaps a little milk-fed about my face — farm fresh. I look familiar with dairy. [Laughs.] Even though I myself am very much a city kid, I have a feeling that the optics may have worked in my favor. When I watch her, I feel like I can see my city kid-ness creep in a little bit, and I am discouraged, and get a little disappointed in her. Katherine Waterston pops up in this. She has one scene and I realized watching this, I bet that she went in for Anna. She would have been a lovely, lovely Anna, and I have a feeling that they just wanted a blonde girl. It was, I think, in the script. They wanted a certain look.

What was the audition process like?
This was when we would go into the rooms in person, and there was always a sign-in sheet. It was the devastating thing of walking into the room and either seeing the other actors up for the same part or reading their names, the ones that had been there and left ahead of you. That always really threw me for a loop. I don’t remember that part. I knew they had already cast Tilda Swinton, George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson. I went back into my email and it looks like I auditioned in early November 2005 and then got a call back for the next day, and it says, “with the director.” I have one image of being in that room in casting director Ellen Chenoweth’s office and Tony being there too, so I can see their silhouettes. I remember feeling like I didn’t nail the audition by any means, but I was to some degree able to have a couple of honest moments, and that made me feel good.

That summer I had gone to L.A., maybe for the first time, and I’d spent two months making the rounds and navigating the buses and living in a new place and meeting new people. Sometimes, especially when I was young and I was doing something new in a new place, I’d really feel a kind of spread of my wings, and I’d feel confident and grown and a little more capable. I have a feeling that that feeling was still maybe lingering come November. I’m sure it went away by the time we were shooting. [Laughs.] But I wonder if that’s one of the reasons that I was able to go in there with a little more confidence than I usually had.

I’m sure that I wore sneakers but packed heels I put on right outside the office. It’s 2005, I think that’s pre-iPhone, so I probably was still using my Manhattan block-by-block book that my mother gave me in high school when I started auditioning and had to look up the random, strange East Midtown addresses. And I think that I had lately been taken to maybe Bergdorf Goodman or Barney’s or some kind of fancy department store, to the makeup counter, with people who knew about these things, because it had been brought to my attention that I was not doing that properly. I probably had my Laura Mercier Flawless face makeup on, but prior to that, I was certainly using A&D ointment as a lip gloss.

As a city kid, did the country girl part of it feel like a particular challenge? Had you played anyone with this kind of background before?
There was a time when I was getting the sweet young girls, but I was also getting the petulant ones, and I see that when I watch her scenes. It’s not that she’s bratty, but she’s throwing some elbows. She wants to show her sister that she’s grown. She seems like a very young 23 year old. The word “unsophisticated” sounds elitist, but she was inexperienced. I see aspects of the city kid sometimes when I’m watching, and I wish I could broom them out a little bit. But I’m sure I related to feeling small and young, especially in a work environment like that. This kind of esteemed movie with these talented, important people, I’m sure that I could use that to feel unsure of myself.

What are the city kid aspects that you see when you watch it now?
The way she sounds feels a little familiar to me. I remember going back into the script and wondering, Oh God, did I really put that petulance in there myself? But it’s in the script. I reread the sides. It’s in there.

In the phone call conversation scene, where Anna is on the phone with Arthur, I love the tone Anna uses with her older sister. Having been a teenage girl, it feels very real: “Get off the phone!”
It’s not sexual, Anna and Arthur’s dynamic. It isn’t. I mean, the optics are horrific. [Laughs.] They’re so bad. But his aims are a lot higher and truer. He’s coming in with grand ideals, but there is a sense, and it starts in that call, that this is her act two of being wooed. She’s being told all of a sudden by this big powerful man that she’s important. “Why have you chosen me?” “Because there’s something special about you.”

When I started to watch, I didn’t know why, but my chest got really tight and I was like, Is this because you’re scared of seeing your own work and it feels like going back and reading your high school poetry? I do see a young actor in front of me, and I remember I was navigating how the script says things like, “She cries on certain lines.” As a young actor, you’re learning how to encounter that stage direction, how to communicate or not communicate around it, how to learn that maybe sometimes scripts are written to be read and not necessarily performed, and how to give yourself permission to go into the work openly, honestly, and freely, and not try to tighten yourself into a certain result.

But I didn’t understand why I felt so small and embarrassed when I started to watch the movie. There’s that line where Arthur says something about two Lithuanian prostitutes, and as a grown up, I can hear that. But there was this part of my heart that contracted and squeezed and I didn’t know why, and I think in retrospect, part of me somewhere remembered what was coming, and it was as though I was listening with Anna’s ears and I didn’t like hearing Arthur talk like that. [Laughs.] I knew there was a journey coming where I was gonna end up feeling abandoned and silly and small in a hotel room, thinking that I could have been important, and I can’t believe I even got on the plane. It’s interesting how the body remembers.

What touches me about that scene between Anna and Clayton is the idea of human worthiness. Who is worthy of living a life, who is worthy of using a product and knowing that it won’t kill them, who is worthy of justice? There is something about the human experience that we should all be guaranteed, and that has been taken from her.
Yes, Arthur happens to go off his meds, but as he says over and over, What if it’s not just madness? Pretend it’s not just madness. Not just. What if that’s valid, regardless of whether or not I’m on my medication? I had forgotten how vulnerable Tilda Swinton’s character was. I remembered her as this villain, but there’s so much vulnerability in her attempt to be a villain. I love that opening shot where we first meet her, cramped up in the frame with her pits. I love seeing her rehearse her spiel and then carefully lay out her stockings on the bed. There’s this line, it may be one of her last lines in that last scene where he’s recording her, she gets out the sentence, “You don’t want the money?” But she says it with this kind of regressed language, like marble-mouthed. She sounds like she’s speaking a foreign tongue, and I just think it’s incredible how physical her performance is. I think she starts to shake almost, like an animal, and I hadn’t remembered how vulnerable that character is even though she does what she does. I loved watching her work, it was exciting.

Production took place over a few months, but you were on set for three days. How did the timing of it break down?
I think every scene was a separate day. I don’t think we banged out all three scenes in a day. I think I even had the good fortune of shooting those scenes in the order they exist in the script.

You’re one of the youngest people on set. What do you remember about the atmosphere?
My time there was so slight and really focused. I don’t remember Tony giving me a ton of direction, even over the whole three days. I do remember during that last scene in the hotel, my shirt — I don’t know what it is with my torso, but whenever I wear button-down shirts, it’s like I’m constantly choosing between being too buttoned-up and constricted, or being just slightly too unbuttoned. And I always opt for slightly too unbuttoned, that’s the way I’m most comfortable. But sometimes when I’m on camera like that and I slouch, the shirt just kind of falls open in the wrong way and a bra shows.

That wasn’t particularly appropriate, given the delicate optics for that scene. So I do remember people coming in and very quietly and respectfully being like [feigns whisper], “Just if you could make sure that this stays buttoned.” And I remember — I don’t know what’s more obnoxious, to call him George or to call him George Clooney [Laughs.] But we’re doing that serious scene and he almost went to make a joke and then caught himself and stopped, and I remember respecting him for that — and feeling respected by that. I could tell that it came from him thinking, “An actor is working right now, and I don’t know her, I don’t know what she needs. And so I’m not gonna do that on her coverage.” I remember him being, just as he is in the scene, sitting there with me, being a steady, attentive, still presence.

Arthur calls Anna perfect. He calls her a miracle.
I feel so uncomfortable hearing that.

Is it more challenging to play someone who’s described that way?
They’re not fun words. It’s so weird. I feel uncomfortable hearing them even now but I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s the young me, being 25 and bashful, or if it’s Anna. I think the breakdown says something like, “his dairy Madonna,” or something. And I’ve learned, as I’ve gotten older, to not pay attention to the way something is described in a script. I try to find my own way in because if I’m trying to play someone else’s description or idea, I end up playing something external. It’s not connected to what’s happening inside me.

But back then, when it’s all about trying to get a job, you read that breakdown and you start doing somersaults trying to contort yourself into whatever they’re saying. I’m sure that I was self-conscious when I read those words, not because anyone was doing anything wrong, but because his language is big. He’s ripping off his shirt, saying “I love you.” It is incredibly uncomfortable, scary, alarming. It’s an episode. I think that’s why when I watch her, she doesn’t seem like a miracle. Arthur in his current state is obviously projecting on her. But part of me in that scene is Merritt, who sees it and feels like I didn’t do a right enough job or live up to the task. So it’s that strange dissonance.

I grew up with a single mother and I didn’t have a dad, and when I was watching Michael Clayton this week, I realized I don’t know if I’d ever heard an older man say those loud words to me, and I wonder if that was just kind of startling, to be hearing that as an actor when you hadn’t ever really heard that in real life. I wonder if in retrospect that has anything to do with why the experience felt overwhelming, and maybe why I set it aside.

And listen, there’s always, always, always the element of what you look like, and it’s hard. I looked back on this, and felt a lot of sympathy and compassion and a certain amount of tenderness toward a person who was going in and out of those rooms, starting at a really young age. It’s very odd, but I was a child actor — I was just an unemployed child actor. I don’t actually know which is worse: to be the child actor who’s on set and absorbing all of that, or to be the young actor who’s just pounding the pavement, walking in and out of rooms. At the same time that you’re trying to get comfortable in your skin, trying to figure out who you are, having to contend with puberty and high school and the way people look at you. To then suddenly be getting breakdowns three times a week with character descriptions, and being told what you fit into and what you don’t — none of this is new, and it doesn’t make anyone a villain. But now that it’s been so long, I can have a lot of sympathy for that girl, who already had been doing it for over 10 years, because that’s hard. It’s hard at any age.

In the deposition scene, you stop talking and it’s clear that you’re staring at something. That scene really hinges on your reaction before we see what’s happening.
When I first turned on the movie and we got to that scene, I was like, “Oh, you look like a New York City high school girl. I don’t believe you for a second!” I remember that I was wearing an ill-fitting bra and it was a note to self: When you’re on camera, check that. All these things I still haven’t learned, frankly. I just remember sitting at the table and trying over and over again. You could really feel that this was about Tom, at the end of the scene, getting to where he needed to be. I can’t pretend to remember any more specifics than that. I’m sure I felt really intimidated, not because anyone was intimidating, but because, again, I was young and this was, for lack of a better word, fancy.

Merritt Wever in Michael Clayton.

There’s a moment in the scene where you side eye what’s happening on that side of the table. It feels like a very real reaction.
I hope so. But again, things like that, I thought, “Mmm, are you an NYC high school girl? Are you bored or are you sad, Wever?” When I watched that scene, I am a little like, [grimace].

I always read her as both: her family has died, and she has to give this deposition. Depositions seem boring!
That’s part of why it’s so excruciating — the next two scenes — because she’s over 18, but she’s a child. She is not prepared for that world. She is not prepared for that world.

Then the next scene is the phone call. Do you remember if you were on the phone with Wilkinson, with no one, with someone else?
I can’t remember who was on the phone with me. It may have been the grip supervisor, it tends to be. I don’t think that Tom was calling in for this, and he wasn’t on set. I don’t know. I think in my normal life — “normal life” [scoffs] — sometimes when I don’t remember something, it’s because the experience at the time was really overwhelming. And it’s almost as if it didn’t seep in all the way. The body was too tense to really absorb. Not because it was a hard situation, but because I cared and I wanted to do a good job. Maybe that’s why it’s like a soaked sponge: Nothing got in because it was so damn wet with fear.

In the scene with Clooney, when you mention the cost of the first-class ticket that Arthur paid for Anna, you whisper the cost, which I love as a choice.
I don’t know if this is true or not, but I feel like Tony liked that. Can you imagine, 800 whole bucks? She can’t even bear to mutter it. Tony did an excellent job at painting this kind of portrait. I went back and I looked at the script, and it’s all in there. The language is so devastatingly simple and young and open and plain.

Do people recognize you from Michael Clayton?
No one recognizes me from Michael Clayton! [Laughs] I think you’re the only one. That’s why getting this email invitation was a one-two punch of, “That’s so sweet!” and “Oh no, this is not gonna go well!” I think the first time that I noticed people recognizing me was when I was doing Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — that’s the longest title ever. Just as when Arthur is carrying all those baguettes, it’s simply the most bread that’s ever been in one place at one time in the history of the world. It’s remarkable. When I was doing that show, it was the first time that I could recognize a look in a stranger’s eyes. It was a look of, “Oh, wait!”

Do you think the role changed your career in any way, either how you approach the work or how people viewed you as an actor in the industry?
From a business standpoint — I wouldn’t have that perspective. I know what it’s like to do a job and have it change you as an actor. I know what it’s like to learn on a job, to look back and feel like you’ve climbed a mountain and built a certain degree of confidence. That’s a gorgeous feeling, and I miss it, I covet it, I actually kind of yearn for it. I don’t think I’ve had that feeling in a long time. Sometimes, maybe by the end of a job, I’ll have one scene where it’s always the same lesson. It’s always to let go. But I find that if I haven’t been working much, I forget it, and every job is like the journey to learn it again. I can’t pretend that this was the job. I’m so mortified.

But I’m also really proud of it. I respect the movie. I remember what a big deal it was to even go in for the audition. In watching it back this week, the biggest hit I got wasn’t about the job itself. It was about all the years I’ve been doing this, and all the years I had been doing this. And it was also about seeing all these lovely New York actors show up, from a certain time and a certain era. I felt a lot of tenderness towards them, and I felt really proud to be part of that company — weirdly more so than the George Clooney and the Tilda Swinton and the Tom Wilkinson of it. It was about feeling like I was part of a lineage somehow, being part of those people who know what it’s like to pound the pavement and show up and add texture.

You mentioned Arthur’s huge sack of bread. Are you a bread eater, and would baguettes be your preferred bread?
Oh God, making me choose! I certainly eat bread. I’m also certainly getting old enough that I can’t just eat bread whenever I want, intestinally, but baguettes are gorgeous. I don’t know why challah just came to mind. Who’s kidding who? I want a bread that’s almost a dessert. I don’t want a crisp; it’s fine with cheese. But I really am looking for something sweet and soft.

We learn that this was Anna’s first trip. She comes to New York City, you’re from New York City. If you were gonna take Anna out on a day in the city, where would you take her?
I’d take her to a play, and I’d also take her on one of the water taxis, one of the ferries, because it’s a great way to see the city, to cover a lot of ground at once. The scope of it, the breadth, it’s quite romantic. So, apparently, I’m buttering her up, too. This is terrible and somebody needs to protect her.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.