Gone Girl legend Rosamund Pike is proud queer scammer Marla Grayson in Netflix's latest thrilling drama I Care a Lot. Alongside her business and romantic partner Fran (Baby Driver and Alita: Battle Angel's Eiza González), the suave and chic con artist makes an extremely lucrative living by bleeding elderly people's pocketbooks dry as their court-appointed legal guardian. But when she messes with the wrong woman (Dianne Wiest) and her powerful connections (Peter Dinklage), her world gets turned upside down, and it's an all-out, wild AF, alpha verus alpha showdown that is entertaining as hell to watch. And considering that the protagonist is an unapologetically queer businesswoman, it's also incredibly refreshing to see!
PRIDE got to sit down with Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike and her I Care a Lot co-star Eiza González, and we delved deep into what it was like portraying nefarious, cutthroat, and sometimes despicable characters on-screen, especially since those types of characters are almost always portrayed by straight white men.
"She doesn't ask you to like her, she didn't ask you to admire her, she doesn't derail the movie halfway through by giving you some terrible sob story and ask you for your sympathy. She's just unashamedly herself," Rosamund told PRIDE about what drew her to the role of Marla, the queen of all scammers in I Care a Lot. "Eiza and I talked a lot about it. These characters have no shame and it's a sort of curious thing, as women, to be so morally bankrupt and yet be doing it without seeming doubt or worry or moral compunction. It was a very interesting space for us both to inhabit."
"I don't think men or anyone on the set of The Wolf of Wall Street or the set of Goodfellas was questioning this to themselves when they were doing 10 times worse things," Eiza added, talking about being asked by people whether or not she thought her and Rosamund's characters were taking things to the extreme. "They're cheating on their wives, they're killing people, and everyone's on the wild ride, but somehow why is it because it's women that we are worrying about these things?"
She continued:
"If you use the word 'unlikeable' around this movie, it just says so much about you already as a person. It just goes to show that you have been wired in a way that the system has told you that if a woman is not obliging and complying to the norms of society, then she is unlikeable."
I Care a Lot is now streaming on Netflix!
