Kate gave an interview to NY Times as part of the Chappaquiddick promotion. On this interview, she also talked for the first time about how was learning about Kevin Spacey’s sexual misconduct. Check in our gallery the photoshoot, and you can read the full interview below.
Kate Mara isn’t onscreen much in “Chappaquiddick,” John Curran’s account of the maelstrom surrounding July 18, 1969, when Senator Edward M. Kennedy drove his Oldsmobile off a narrow bridge into a pond on the Massachusetts island, leaving the scene and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, who died. And effectively killing his presidential aspirations.
As Kopechne, Ms. Mara was determined to find justice for a campaign aide who, after her death, was reduced by some to a groupie who was having an affair with the married Kennedy, played here by Jason Clarke. (“Chappaquiddick” opens on Friday, April 6.)
“Like a lot of people, I’m fascinated with the Kennedys and their history and their achievements and the tragic stories that follow them,” Ms. Mara said. But she insisted on portraying Kopechne “as the brilliant, hard-working woman that she was and not just some tabloid story.”
It isn’t the first time Ms. Mara’s character has suffered at the hand of politics. As the dogged D.C. reporter Zoe Barnes in “House of Cards,” she slept with the House majority whip, Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), who pushed her in front of a train once he was tagged for the vice presidency.
This summer, she’ll play a 1980s New Jersey housewife whose husband works for the Trump organization in FX’s “Pose,” which is currently shooting in New York.
As a snowstorm approached, Ms. Mara, 35 — chatty in bare feet in the downtown Manhattan apartment where she’s living temporarily with her husband, Jamie Bell, and her elderly Boston terrier, Bruno — discussed her harrowing scenes as Kopechne and the recent sexual assault allegations against Mr. Spacey.
Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Continue reading Kate Mara on Another Political Death