Katherine Waterston Breaks Through in Inherent Vice

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24th December 2014 by Anne Brodie

Inherent Vice takes us through the drug fueled labyrinth that is seventies ‘70s, a la Thomas Pynchon. Paul Thomas Anderson interprets that world’s chiaroscuro uncertainty as muddled, hazy and oblique, which describes the action from time to time.  But it’s the unique characters that make it work. Joaquin Phoenix is a barely coherent private eye looking for a woman he used to know.  Josh Brolin is a stuttering mess, fixated on bananas, in a corrupt LAPD, who’s after the same woman.  And she is Shasta Fay Hepworth, a waif, a wanderer and a curse apparently who doesn't say much. Katherine Waterston, the daughter of the great Sam Waterston, won the role of Shasta and brings it an uncanny sense of mystery.  She’s nude a lot, so get over it.  Waterston’s terrific understated performance is her breakout; she has just signed to play Steve Jobs’ first wife Chrisann Brennan in Universal’s Jobs opposite Michael Fassbender. Waterston’s on her way and we had the chance to chat in Toronto.                                                                                                            
Your father probably wasn’t fazed by your nudity because he came up on the 60s and 70s.  It’s nothing to him, but he is one of the most revered actors around and here you are coming up behind him.  Do you feel that weight?
I just feel so supported by him. I do think it’s easier if you’re the opposite sex of the famous parent. You just don’t get it as much the “spitting image” stuff.  We have people feeling like they’ve seen you before, which can be very difficult for people who are the same sex, famous parent. He’s just so cool and such a great person. I just remembered something.  I haven’t told anyone this, no one knows it. I had some of his hand-me-downs, stuff he wore as a young hippie, and I was going to a table read right after I got the job and we were just figuring out the costumes for the film. Paul was making notes, he half looked at me out of the corner of his eye and he said “What’s that? That’s good. You should wear that ion the film”. It’s my dad’s shirt and it’s in the movie.  When we do the Ouija board it’s a striped shirt, it’s his old hippie shirt. He helped me in many ways.

Shasta was a woman of mystery. You can’t play mystery, but you did it.  How?
That’s the general struggle of playing any scene in any story because we have all the words. You don’t know what you’re going to say and you don’t know what they’re going to say next. It’s a constant battle to seem like you don’t know what’s going to happen.  You can’t play mystery. It’s a thin line.  ....

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