Martin Freeman Addresses Backlash Over 31-Year Age Gap with Jenna Ortega in Recent Romantic Thriller
“It’s not saying, ‘Isn’t this great?’” but Freeman said of Miller’s Girl, in which Ortega plays an
18-year-old student who has an affair with her older writing teacher.
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| from https://www.vanityfair.com/ |
In this time when
Hollywood moves is regularly grappling with onscreen age differences past and
present, the sordid teacher-student romantic thriller Miller’s Girl may have
been bound to spark some backlash, with the film centering on an affair between
Jenna Ortega’s 18-year-old student and Martin Freeman’s much older writing
teacher.
This film Is Written
and directed by the first-time filmmaker Jade Halley Bartlett, the film debuted
the in the month of January, but has opened itself up to more controversy since
arriving on Netflix in late April.
In a recent interview
with London’s The Times, Freeman called the movie “grown-up and nuanced,”
noting that any discomfort derived from the 31-year age gap between hero
and heroine “Ortega” was entirely the point. “It’s not saying, ‘Isn’t this
great?’” Freeman explained, adding that it’s “a shame” how stories
about complex situations can often can be misunderstood.
Pointing out that
Miller’s Girl does not endorse the lead characters’ relationship, Freeman
referred to Steven Spielberg’s best-picture winner, 1993’s Schindler’s
List, saying, “Are we gonna have a go at Liam Neeson for being in a film
about the Holocaust?”
After its initial
release, the movie’s intimacy coordinator, Kristina Arjona, told the Daily Mail
that 52-year-old Freeman and 21-year-old Ortega were never placed in unsafe
situations while filming racier scenes. “There [were] many, many people
throughout this process, engaging with [Ortega] to make sure that it was
consistent with what she was comfortable with, and she was very determined and
very sure of what she wanted to do,” Arjona said, adding, “I’m hyperaware of
both of my talent and making sure that we’re consistently checking in and that
at no point are any of their boundaries being surpassed.”
Arjona went on to say
that she, Ortega, and Freeman engaged in multiple discussions about the “level
of nudity” they were comfortable with showing. The two actors spoke to Arjona
about “different variations of how they wanted to shoot these scenes so that
audiences could watch them at test screenings to see what was too much.”
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