RR: Well, that’s been the best thing about this, because I’ve kind of been so lucky that every production I’ve done, he’s been able to come there. Because I share him with my ex 50–50, they come to the city I’m in if I’m shooting somewhere, and we get that same 50–50. And then I try to be, of course, home as much as possible so that he can go to his school and do his thing with his friends. This was supposed to be my year off, and then all of this great stuff happened, and it’s very hard to say no to.
CM: Does he understand your job? Because it’s both hard and the simplest job for kids to understand.
RR: I was going to ask you questions because you come from that… how are you doing?
CM: This film was very specific for me. When I was little, I spent a lot of time on the set of Murphy Brown, and I just thought that that was sort of what most people did. But in the same way that everyone thinks their childhood is normal. I mean, my mom and my father lived in separate countries but were together, and I just assumed that’s what everyone’s parents did. But it is a very confusing and also relatable thing for a child to see someone whose job is to pretend, because so much of their world is pretend.
RR: Right. We do it since we’re kids, the acting. I just never stopped doing it. You try to understand the situation or a social structure you’re in through playing it out. And that’s also how I got into it when I was nine—really enjoying that. But my son has been, I think, discovering that this is a bit unusual, and there’ve been so many posters. Oslo is really small, so you really see the posters everywhere. They were having screenings of this movie, Sentimental Value, and Worst Person, and that was weird. And he was starting to get a bit anxious. And then, I don’t know if it was a good idea, but I took him to the Norwegian premiere, and I didn’t talk to anyone else but him, so he would know that he was the most important. And then he kind of actually stopped being anxious. Maybe I fucked him up even more, or maybe it was okay. It’s hard to know what to do.
