Da’Vine Joy Randolph Is Every Woman

In Alexander Payne’s new holiday film The Holdovers, Da’Vine Joy Randolph plays Mary Lamb, the trained chef manning the kitchen of Barton Academy, a prestigious all-boys boarding school in 1970s New England. But Mary is also in mourning. Recently, her son, Marcus, a former Barton student himself, died in the Vietnam War. So when the majority of Barton clears out for the winter holidays, the grieving mother opts to stay behind—both to cook for the titular students who aren’t able to return home and because doing anything else brings her great guilt. Instead, she puts her motherly instincts to different use: helping snarky student Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) and curmudgeonly classics teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) see eye-to-eye.

This has been a landmark year for Randolph. Before The Holdovers, she reprised her role as a detective in Only Murders in the Building, sang as gospel legend Mahalia Jackson in Rustin, and stood out as maybe the only good thing about HBO’s The Idol. The actor, who started in musical theater and already has a Tony nomination, has been one to watch ever since the back-to-back success of Dolemite Is My Name and High Fidelity. But as she’ll be the first to tell you, nothing could’ve prepared her for the emotional roller-coaster that was playing Mary Lamb.

What drew you to The Holdovers?

What makes an Alexander Payne movie an “Alexander Payne movie” is that he knows how to make the “mundane” or the “average Joe” special. He delves into ordinary people’s lives and magnifies them, with this fly-on-the-wall approach. And [I loved] that this lady is so completely different from me. She has an entirely different rhythm.

She has a different accent!

I’m from Philadelphia and lived in New York for many years, but I was like, I need to have that sound within me, because I felt like it gave so much insight into who she was. She’s a local. I love that she unabashedly takes up space, and that everyone respects her situation and allows her to roam the halls as she’s going through this grief.

From the start to the end of the movie, I charted where she could go through all the different stages of grief. The interesting thing, though, is that the stages aren’t so convenient. Even with a breakup, it doesn't always go in order. You can have two stages going at the same time!

One step forward, two steps back.

You could feel like, “Oh, okay, I’m at step four.” Baby, in the afternoon, you could be back at one. With that being said, I removed the judgment from it. It’s an ebb and flow, a wave. Emotion sounds close to “ocean.” When you look at a beachfront, how the waves come in and out, it’s consistent. When we stop those emotions from flowing naturally, that’s how we get mental disorders. That’s how depression comes.

What I admire about [Mary] is that she’s like, “I’m going to go through all of it and y’all are going to take it, one way or another.” It’s amazing that they allowed this woman, where she’s othered, to stand her ground. She’s running the show. She’s not “the help.”

I love that moment where she scolds one of the line cooks with, “Too much paprika!”

Right! Like, “You think you’re slick. I know you did two shakes too much. Don’t play me!” That moment, as much as it could seem frivolous, was so important to me. That’s why I said to Alex, “Can we have some shots of me cooking?” It was important to validate her, to show that this is not just some down-home cook. This lady is trained. In her mind, she’s running a Michelin-star restaurant in the basement of this school. For wardrobe, they wanted something a little more sweet and feminine. But I was like, “No. I want her to have a chef’s uniform.” The beautiful part was that we were able to have those conversations. There wasn’t any pushback. And that, I highly applaud, because they didn’t have to do that. I’ve definitely experienced situations where they don’t.

While watching, I asked myself: What keeps Mary here at Barton? Isn’t it a reminder of losing her son?

At the end of the movie, Paul asks her, “What are you going to do next? Leave?” And she’s like, “Absolutely not.” It breaks my heart, but in a good way, that she’s now decided, “I’m not going to give up. I’m going to learn from what happened in the past and apply it to the future with my nephew.” She doesn’t let the painful past stunt her. It’s beautiful that she has something new to pour into and love on.

How was it embodying that level of grief? How do you balance that pain with a sense of resilience?

There’s something viscerally that I connect with about the matriarchs and female figures within our cultural family construct, and that is how we could be heavy in our own stuff, silently suffering, yet you wouldn’t know. I don’t think that’s all that healthy, but I say this to say: I know that woman. We know that woman. That was something big that I wanted to pull on. I wanted people to feel very connected to her. I wanted whoever watched it to be connected to that sense of what it means to be a woman, how you’re consistently juggling all the balls.

Was that emotionally draining for you as an actor?

I tried to figure out ways in which, when I needed to go there, I could go there. But more importantly, I needed to [be able to] climb out. On set, I tried to keep it very jokey and positive between takes, so I had a reservoir available. Because if I’m sitting here, listening to sad music and staying in this place, my performance is leaking out but the camera’s not catching it. Then I have a half-baked performance.

Reverse method acting.

On High Fidelity, my adrenaline would be so [high after shooting]. Or when I was on Broadway, playing Oda Mae Brown, Whoopi’s character in Ghost, she was also a very frenetic-type character. But this was new: someone grieving. Part of my process was watching the hair and makeup team create this woman. When that wig went on, it was like, “Okay.” Once I put on my orthopedic nurse shoes and my little cardigan, I’m in it. Similarly, the taking-off was a process as well. It started the wind-down back to me. On the ride home, I’d listen to contemporary music and bring myself back to now. Whereas, when I would go to work, I’d listen to Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson. A process to get in, and a process to get out.

It’s interesting that you were listening to Mahalia, because you played her in Rustin, which started filming shortly after. What is the difference in how you prepare to play a historical figure versus someone you’re building from the ground up?

I’m a very detail-oriented person, and being a woman of color, I’m really into honoring the women that I portray. I do my due diligence in creating these characters, so if I’m honest, the process isn’t really that different. I’m a fashion girl, so the clothes, hair, accessories—I already give that much detail to a non-historical character. The only difference is that we’re just layering in the facts.

Music and singing was my start, so I’ve always loved dialects because of the musicality. It’s very helpful if a character [sounds] different from me. It can be daunting and scary, but I lean into it, because I know I’ll find more jewels that way. For The Holdovers, we watched Donna Summer interview clips, because she’s from Boston. And for Mahalia, I’d watch her concerts and look at her body posture and physical gestures. Her tics, if you will. There’s this beautiful thing that happens, almost magically, where the character takes over. Not to be too spiritual, but you’re summoning these people. I would say a prayer right before: “Have your way, Mahalia. Whatever it is that you want people to see or know about you, use me as a vessel to do what you got to do, sis.” That’s how I approach all my characters.

You’re one of the actors with the most awards buzz this season. Had you ever considered that The Holdovers could get you an Oscar?

No! I am deeply honored, grateful, and beyond humbled by the potential of what can be. I’m deeply moved that this is impacting people. You can’t predict or know [what will click]. I’m not like, “I’m going to choose Only Murders because I think it’s going to be a hit.” I actually thought the opposite. When I read that part, I was like, “This is interesting. How are they going to close this cross-generational gap?” Everything you think is going to be something ends up not something and vice-versa. You’ve got to do it because it makes you feel good when you wake up in the morning. And I have that. The rest, to me, is just all the sprinkles, whipped cream, and cherry on top.

Better yet, the cherries jubilee.

The cherries jubilee! Exactly.

The Holdovers is playing in theaters now.