Jennifer Lawrence on “Red Sparrow” and Times Up

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for her first Oscar at twenty, and since then she has balanced the biggest of big-budget franchises, like the “Hunger Games” and the “X-Men” series, with smaller, prestige films, including “Silver Linings Playbook” and “mother!” That has made her perhaps the most famous and the most celebrated actor of her generation. Lawrence has tended to shy away from nudity and sex on film, but in the new “Red Sparrow,” directed by Francis Lawrence, she tackles a role that combines two of today’s most critical issues: Russian espionage and sexual coercion at work. As a frequent target of tabloid journalists, trolls, and hackers, Lawrence is frustrated that so many people still want to punish successful women, but, she tells David Remnick, Hollywood itself is changing; and, despite the likely cost to her career, she intends to spend the next year off the set and working as an activist, speaking to young people about the importance of political engagement.Plus, a look at the lobbyist who helped make Florida one of the most gun-friendly states in America.

Transcript

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0:00.0	These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.
0:09.0	And I think it's interesting to really try to unravel what his ties.
0:13.0	There's this sort of country city divide for their own convenient, and then it's not clear where it goes next.
0:20.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production
0:24.6	of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:27.6	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I read the spy novel Red
0:33.6	Sparrow by the former CIA agent Jason Matthews not long after it was published in 2013.
0:40.7	Now, a film based on Red Sparrow, directed by Francis Lawrence, has just come out and the timing
0:45.4	couldn't be better. Russian intelligence directed against the U.S. is on the front page just about
0:50.6	every day, along with the national conversation about sexual coercion at work.
0:55.9	And somehow, Red Sparrow brings those themes together.
1:00.3	It's about a former ballerina pressured into joining a special branch of Russian intelligence
1:04.9	whose spies work by seducing men to get information.
1:09.9	And while the story is fiction, programs like this did exist in Soviet spy agencies and in our own.
1:15.6	Every human being is a puzzle of need.
1:18.6	You must learn to intuit what is missing, become the missing piece, and they will give you anything.
1:25.6	Take off your clothes.
1:30.7	You must learn to sacrifice for a higher purpose,
1:34.1	to push yourself beyond all limitation and forget the sentimental morality with which you were raised.
1:38.5	The lead character, the ballerina turns by,
1:41.4	is named Domenica Yegorovar.
1:44.1	And she's played by the unbeatable Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence has been a fierce, The ballerina turned spy is named Domenica Yegorovar.
	...

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