Amy Brenneman, star of HBO’s “The Leftovers,” sat down with HuffPost Live on Thursday to chat about the tough task she faced while filming her scenes for the show -- to evoke emotion in a character without speaking.
Brenneman plays cult follower Laurie Garvey, who has taken a vow of silence and resorts to a pen and paper to communicate with her peers. But as she explained to host Ricky Camilleri, her Twitter followers don’t always appreciate her hastily-written scrawls.
“It’s my penmanship, which is not great, so my Twitter followers were like, 'I didn’t understand what you wrote to her!’ and then I have to [tweet what I wrote],” she said.
She also explained how she keeps her part interesting without uttering a word.
“You also feel self conscious, like its really boring," Brenneman said. “You have to remember that the writing is part of the scene. ... it’s like, make it dramatic, make it watchable, because that’s what we’re watching.”
Despite the obvious difference between her mute role as Laurie and her past spoken roles, Brenneman said that her process for rehearsing is “fairly similar.”
“I obviously have no lines to work from, but I work in terms of beats and responses,” the actress said. “I’m a very lazy actor, I basically like to sort of understand the premise of the scene and then throw it all out and dance around in my trailer and just become responsive to what actually might happen.”
All in all, the key to getting into character for Brenneman is staying “loose as a goose" and absorbing inspiration from writer Damon Lindelof. “I’m not a very normally needy actor, but I’ve found myself a little bit more needy because I just need to hear him," she said. "It’s like he just talks and I listen and then I go."
To catch more of Amy Brenneman, check out “The Leftovers,” which airs Sundays at 10pmET/PT on HBO.
Watch the full HuffPost Live interview below:
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