Julianne Moore knew the moment in May December where her character would break down. It wasn’t exactly written that way in Samy Burch’s script, nor was it director Todd Haynes’s vision for the emotional scene. But Moore always comes onto a set—especially an independent one, where time is of the essence—fully prepared. She does the work, she understands what’s required, and she knows what she needs to give the camera and when. Then she gets it done. The Oscar winner’s process is so refined and streamlined she can make even the most epic of onscreen meltdowns look easy.

In May December, Moore plays Gracie, a convicted sex offender for beginning a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy when she was 36. As the film begins some 20 years later, she and that same (now grown) boy, Joe (Charles Melton), are married with kids of their own, living a highly dysfunctional existence as social pariahs in their Savannah, Georgia community. When an actress named Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) arrives at their home, set to shadow Gracie as she prepares to play her in a movie, Haynes deftly examines the cultural commodification of trauma and the ways in which we refuse to see ourselves for who we really are. Gracie and Elizabeth’s game of mimicry and mirroring ranges from comic to disturbing, with Portman and Moore turning in richly textured performances in both directions.

For Moore, it’s another example of the opportunities afforded by Haynes, with whom she’s been making movies for nearly 30 years. An actress known for her bold approaches to risky material, she’s right at home in the murky moral grey areas of May December, and traverses them with great finesse, from an ingenious lisp that hints at Gracie’s repression to her subtle masterstrokes of manipulation. As Haynes takes bigger swings behind the camera, so too does Moore as his remarkably versatile, always humane muse. She talks all about it on this week’s Little Gold Men (read on below, and listen the full interview above).

Vanity Fair: I’m really interested in the dynamic between you, Natalie, and Charles at events this awards season. Has there been any kind of mentorship, initiating him into what it is like to move in these rooms?

Julianne Moore: We have a tremendous amount of comaraderie, and we’ve leaned into each other really heavily, just in terms of keeping each other company and being together, offering friendship and support. For Charles, Natalie and I have been able to offer him some advice. I hope we have, anyway—primarily, the advice is to enjoy it, to try to, and also to enjoy meeting these tremendous people that you’re going to meet on the circuit. There were so many great films this year and so many great performances. It’s nice to put a person behind that performance. That’s what we all get to do.

One narrative that has emerged this season has been the underappreciation by the Academy of Christine Vachon, a producer on May December, and Todd Haynes, who’s never been nominated for directing. As someone who’s worked on their films over the years, why do you think that’s happening now?

I don’t know, but I’m glad about it! I’m overjoyed because I do think that the work that they have done over these last three decades has been really underappreciated. They’re extraordinary, iconoclastic artists, Todd and Christine. They have always pursued what is interesting to them artistically. They’re not looking to make a million dollars making a movie. They really just want to find a way to tell the stories that they want to tell. I’ve been the beneficiary of that, because I get to be in these amazing stories with them.

When you think that they both came out of school at the same time, and they both had these interesting, compelling artistic desires, and they’ve continued to follow them and to produce this remarkable work. Christine’s always very smart because she understands what it takes to produce a film. She understands the commercial pressures, but she doesn’t bow to this idea of profitability above all else. She works with a filmmaker to help them achieve their vision.

Has Todd’s style as a director changed at all from your perspective? From Safe and taking May December as a comparison point, how have you seen him evolve?

I want to say he was fully formed, I really do. The thing about Todd is that he does so much work, so much preparation. He does a tremendous amount of research, and when he’s written a screenplay himself, he’s done all of that work on it. In terms of how he frames something, how he storyboards everything himself—I feel like I can look at a shot, I can look through the lens and understand his storytelling by the way he framed something. He’s really, really specific. He’s specific in his camera moves, and his choices, and his editing choices, and his musical choices, and in tone. That stuff was all present when we made Safe, and also, of course, very present when we made May December.

As an actor, he gives me so much scaffolding for my performance. I understand the world that he’s contained me in. Within all of that, because I know how he’s telling that story, I have incredible freedom. His efforts are so tremendous. He’s so incredibly thorough. His knowledge of cinema is formidable, but it’s matched by his empathy for human beings, or what it means to be human.

The word you’ve used a lot in describing what Gracie has done in May December is transgression. Is there a way in which you think about transgression as an actor that changes the way you approach the character at all?

No, because I think that you can hold two ideas at the same time. You can approach a character or a story holistically that you can say, “How do I tell this story? And how do I represent this person from her point of view?”—which is what I’m doing as an actor. I’m also myself with my own thoughts and actions, and I’m separate from it. One of the things that’s really important with acting—and I think for me, film acting in particular—is it’s something that engages you emotionally as a person. You’re literally a conduit for these feelings and these words. But your intellect is there, and that intellect sees the camera, and they see all the other people, and they see the lights, and they hear the traffic. That’s what’s so exciting about filmmaking, there is this parallel experience that you’re having as a human being.

This came together fairly quickly, without a rehearsal period, which is interesting since Natalie’s character copies yours in the film. Were there things you were noticing, particularly in the beginning stages, along the lines of: “She’s picking up on this. She’s picking up on that.”

Absolutely. In real time, I could see what she was doing. I’m sitting in a chair with my legs crossed and my arms crossed, and Natalie’s sitting in a chair the exact same way, and she’s copying my cadence. Gracie is desperate for Elizabeth’s approbation. She wants Elizabeth to tell the story the way Gracie wants it told. And so, what Natalie is doing, by copying her and flattering her at Gracie’s most composed, most feminine, most presentational, most performative, is playing right into what Gracie wants. So, Natalie was able to do that, make me feel good as a character. And also, it was a lot of fun as an actor. Kind of wonderfully and devilishly, only when I actually saw the film, you realize the finer things that she’s copying, the things that Gracie the character wouldn’t want to see. It was intensely pleasurable to work with Natalie in this way. It was just a wonderful partnership where we built these women and their behavior together.

It is also so on the fly, as you’re describing, because you didn’t have that prep time. I wonder if that was maybe in hindsight, a kind of a blessing.

Well, listen… [Laughs]

Or maybe not!

As they say in preschool, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” You don’t know. You don’t know what would be better or not, but that’s what we had. I do think that people on this movie were incredibly collaborative, kind and open, and took the work very seriously. They don’t take themselves personally very seriously. So it felt easy.

One reason I had that thought is, one of the beauties of award season is you have lots of people coming together and both of your Kids Are All Right costars have been out there with new movies.

It’s amazing, I know.

I interviewed Annette Bening, and we had talked about the fact that you really had no rehearsal for that movie, which is so wonderful.

Right, yeah. That’s the nature of independent film. You don’t have enough money, so you don’t have enough time. That’s really what money equals: time. We would all like more time, but we don’t always get it. What we get is great material. That just lifts everything up.

So when you come into a movie like May December, and you’ve been in this industry for a bit, you know what is required, especially of a character like this. Are there things, say, in the costuming, in the technical aspects that you’re going to need, to maybe improvise with a little bit versus on a bigger-budget film?

Oh, gosh, yeah. For our wonderful costume designer, April Napier, there was one specific item that I wanted. There’s a dress that became wildly popular during the pandemic called the Nap Dress. It’s a dress that’s very, very feminine, made in lots of different fabrics with kind of smocking on it, and these little ruffles on the shoulders, and it’s so soft. The idea is that you could sleep in it, but it’s very feminine, and it’s a little infantilizing. I was telling April about this dress, and we were placing the dress. And I said, “I want to make sure that it’s in the scene where I’m on the bed when I’m crying, when Charles comes in. And in order to do that, it has to be in the makeup scene with Natalie before.” So that dress ends up playing in three scenes in a row. And we placed iy very specifically because of the physical actions of lying in the bed, moving around, and also being in that scene with Natalie, and having those little ruffles kind of being really prevalent while I’m doing my makeup.

This movie was categorized at the Golden Globes as a comedy, which sparked some conversation. There’s been a larger conversation of, How funny should the movie be considered? I’m curious how it felt on the set.

When people are communicating to one another, you have to make sure the stakes are high. That’s the way in comedy you ensure that it will be funny, right? To make people mean it. I think we were not playing it with an eye toward that. One of my favorite lines is, “You try going through life without a scale—see how that goes,” which I think is a really funny line. But of course, she’s not intending it that way. She’s dead serious about it, about the cultural imprisonment of weight and women. But it ends up being a funny line.

She’s devastated at the thought that there may not be enough hot dogs! She takes it very seriously.

Right. That line is also framed by the music. What Todd’s doing is, he’s saying, “Oh, wait, she seems to be saying something innocuous, but I’m going to put this kind of big piece of music on it so the audience knows right away.” That juxtaposition in and of itself is funny. It’s jarring.

The movie’s overlap with the Mary Kay Letourneau case is something that has been interesting to me. There was a clip going around of Letorneau in an interview with dialogue that is actually in the film, just in a different context: It’s the “Who was the boss?” scene. This script is fictional and original, but I am wondering if there were elements of that story that you did pay attention to in the creation of this character?

We did use it as inspiration, but we had to be very clear that this was a fictional creation of something that was similar. I wouldn’t dare say that this is based on those people. I mean, it’s just not. Tom Wolfe was somebody who was famous for writing fictional stories that sometimes felt reminiscent of something that had happened in the news or in society or culture. There is a tradition of people being inspired by stuff that’s happened in real life. What’s interesting about this story is that Todd is playing with narrative. Who gets to tell the story? How has the story been told? Who told it? Why? Is it the truth? Who knows the truth? Nobody knows the truth of what happened in anything except the people that were there. People just keep putting a lens on it and telling a story in order to generate money.

Your character has really, intensely emotional scenes. How easy is it for you to turn that on and off? You are an iconic crier on the screen, and this film is no exception.

Whenever I feel like I have to produce something that’s emotional, I always have some anxiety about it. And I’m like, “Oh, will I be able to deliver that? Can I deliver that at that moment? Is it going to work?” The thing that I’ve learned after all of these years is what really works for me is being relaxed. It’s being in a situation where I feel comfortable with my surroundings, I feel comfortable with the choices that I’ve made, I trust my collaborators, and I’m able to feel kind of free enough to breathe and let it happen. That sounds very actor-y, but there’s something you have to do.

I always say, “You need to do the preparation in film in order to let the emotion happen to you on camera.” That’s the beauty of film work: It could even happen to you for the first time, but you want to make sure it happens on camera, because you want the camera to capture it! When we did [one] scene, I just had a sense that she was going to cry much more than was on the page, because there was an earlier scene where she cries. I wanted that one to be smaller; this one, I wanted to be kind of huge, because it’s the middle of the movie. There’s the narrative that Gracie has told the world on one level, and then at the bottom there’s this transgression, and in between, there’s all of this emotion and volatility and guilt and shame. Here’s somebody who’s living with this kind of vibration of emotion constantly. So it ended up being very hysterical, because that’s also what Joe has been dealing with his entire life. He’s having to care for this adult woman who’s got this huge amount of emotion and need. She’s very needy.

This interview has been edited and condensed.