#Jason Isaacs Thought Mass Was ‘Never Going To Be A Film’ Despite An ‘Extraordinary Experience’ Making It [Interview]

I saw first saw “Mass” during the virtual Sundance Film Festival and wanted to see it again just for good measure before I talked to you and Fran Kranz. I absolutely loved it. And I just wanted to start off by finding out how you came to be involved with the movie.

Jason Isaacs: Well, Fran thinks that he got an email from my agent saying that I’d read the script and loved it. I think I got an email from my agent saying, “Fran would really like to meet you.” I think somebody arranged it. I got involved. I read it and thought it was both magnificent and a fool’s errand, because, clearly, no one was ever going to make a film like this. And it was an impossible task to make something watchable about four people in a room, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I read it in Starbucks. I was sobbing and heaving at the end. I felt both drained and smelling the flowers. I felt like the world was a better place and the possibility of change was in the air. And I looked up, and they were on the edge of calling the police, I think. I thought, well, I don’t know what this is going to be like. This seems like an insane adventure, but I’m in. 

We made this thing, and it was an insane adventure. It was incredibly emotional and very intense and never ending. We kind of stayed in this bubble for two weeks. When I left, and I don’t mind saying it now because the film is such a huge success critically, but I left thinking, well, that’s never going to be a film. We had such an extraordinary experience making it. We all went to places we never had gone to before. I didn’t know what just happened. It felt like it was some kind of blackout, but I didn’t think, I didn’t dare hope, that it would end up being as powerful an experience for audience members as it had been for us making it. And it turns out that it is.

I think that’s a testament to all four of you putting in these incredible performances. What was the process like preparing with your co-stars for such an intimate movie? What was the preparation like before you started shooting to really get into such an emotionally trying place?

I know that Martha insisted to Fran that there were some rehearsals, and then I had to screw that up, because I needed to go to Australia to make “Streamline.” So we only had two days in New York. The plan was, I suppose, to go through the script, and I don’t know what it was, because the plan just got kicked into touch, because we got there and we needed to know each other. In order to do what’s required in this film, we needed not to bring any of our normal bulls**t, no actor’s shtick. It just needed to be honest, and to do that, you’ve got to trust each other. So we just started instantly peeling the layers away and, I think, Ann got the ball rolling and told us what was happening in her life, which was quite trying at the time.

We all did that, and we just needed to really see each other and feel safe so that we could go to such extreme places. We did a little bit of work on the script, not really much. When I say work, it was Fran saying, “Is there anything you’re not comfortable with? Is there anything that you don’t buy? You just don’t think it’s truthful?” Which is a very generous thing for a man who had lived with the script for three years to do, to give agency to strangers who have just come in contact with it. But we all said, “Yeah, actually.” And I said, “I don’t think Jay would let any of this stuff happen here. It just shut them up. And I think he would want to talk about that.” And Martha went, “Well, I’d want him to shut the f**k up if he said that.”