ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa about the holiday movie. The actor discussed his character’s development and getting to learn from an established actor like Paul Giamatti. The Holdovers is now playing in theaters.
“From acclaimed director Alexander Payne, The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go,” reads the movie‘s synopsis. “Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker (newcomer Dominic Sessa) — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).”
Tyler Treese: Grief is an inherently relatable theme. But what I love about what you did with Mary was that you were able to portray this very quiet strength but also show how powerful she was. How was it depicting that layer of grief of this mother going through just the worst type of loss anyone can get through?
Da’Vine Joy Randolph: It was uncomfortable. It still brings me to a quiet space now because there’s nothing like a parent losing their child. That’s unnatural. That’s not supposed to, in theory, happen, right? In regards to the progress of life, the child is supposed to survive the parent. So when stuff like that happens, you are literally cutting the umbilical cord. And I don’t know how people truly navigate that.
There’s a feeling where you feel lost. You feel disconnected from the world. You want to be alone. It feels like no one can truly understand you. It’s really…it’s hard. It’s really hard. And so I just wanted to really depict that and, quite frankly, all the different stages of grief. Because it’s not just one note, you know, it’s not just, oh, ‘I’m in denial,’ or, ‘I’m just sad.’ It’s a lot of different things that come at many different times and surprising at that.
We see that emotional dam burst open during the Christmas Eve scene in the kitchen. That was such a powerful thing to see as a viewer, where Mary finally lets out how she’s been feeling up to that point. How was it filming that scene? Because that had to be exhausting.
Throughout the whole process, I really tried not to lean into it, like from a method place, you know what I mean? I tried to do the opposite and surround myself with joy and brevity and lots of cartoons and, you know, speaking to people on the phone, like family that makes me happy, and try to find a good place and crack lots of jokes and stuff like that on set, so that when I had to, I could hit it and then leave it. But it was…it was a lot. And, I tried not to overthink it and just give unto that moment. And I’m glad that people connected with it and that it hit just the right tone because, a lot of times, you can do too much, right? And then it’s like too much for a person to handle. So it’s a balancing act for sure.
