Whether she’s playing a brassy Hollywood starlet inCalifornication, a young nun in crisis inLittle Sister, or an artist hungry for connection in the new arthouse horror thrillerLike Me,Addison Timlinis an actor who disappears seamlessly into her roles. From the thoughtful construction of the character’s look to the finely tuned frequency of their energy, Timlin can be sneakily stealth as she moves from character to character.
InLike Me, Timlin plays Kiya, a lonely, reckless artist who broadcasts her art-project-via-crime-spree on social media, starting with a self-filmed convenience store robbery that goes viral, earning her the attention but not the connection she’s desperate for. From there, Kiya’s internet-famous journey earns her a YouTube troll and takes her along the coast, where she pushes the boundaries of her art and morality with the help of a kidnapped, paint-huffing loner played by genre stapleLarry Fessenden. Debut directorRobert Mocklerinfuses the film with bravura aesthetic, an avant-garde assault on the senses that turns Kiya’s lunatic art-spree into a topsy-turvy trip down the rabbit hole.
WithLike Menow playing in theaters, I recently hopped on the phone to chat with Timlin about the film. She talked about the art incorporated into Mockler’s unconventional script, creating Kiya’s physicality.
This is movie is pretty far out and almost like a video art installation at moments; it has a really distinct and creative visual flourish. And I’m curious, how much of that flourish was evident in the script when you got it?
TIMLIN: It was pretty evident in the script when I got it. The way that Robert had written the script was that he had links to visual references throughout the whole thing. So that was one way that made it easy for me to digest in the broader scope of what his palette was looking like, and what he was trying to make. Visual symbolism of certain elements, and it seemed like he had certain sizzle reels almost for different parts of the film. Different montage feelings, or different colors. I also have to say that from when I read that script, compared to what we made, it’s really so different. The narrative seems quite different, and I think Kiya changed quite a bit, and I think there was more of a blend of reality and that kind of surrealism. Initially, I think it was leaning towards a more hyper version of itself, if you can believe that. But I did have a pretty good idea what I was getting myself into, but mostly after I met Robert and we talked about it. But I knew right away that I wanted to do the movie, because there was a lot that wasn’t on the page, but the thing that was on the page was a lot of loneliness, and that was what drew me to Kiya and the project itself I think.
She’s a really fascinating character, and you get to go to a lot of interesting places with her. What were some of the complexities in her that you were excited to explore?
TIMLIN: Well, I think that she is really lonely and I think she’s really angry and I think that she was living in a world that she didn’t know how to fit into. I mostly think she’s an artist, and I think that a lot of … That’s what art is, is channeling your perspective to the world and your pain to the world, and I think that the kind of stuff she was doing and what she was making was really reflective. I think she was trying to hold a mirror up to her generation and her peers, and was fascinated by the attention it got her, and how that was her feeling of connection in the world. But it was all rooted in this thing that she thinks. That’s the root and the heart of it. That she wasn’t fond of who she was as a person.
You’re an actor who I don’t always recognize right away, which is definitely a compliment. It takes me a minute to realize that I’ve seen you in a bunch of stuff before, and that happened again with this film. What was your process in developing Kiya’s look?
TIMLIN: Well, thank you by the way. I’m really flattered by that and the way that a character looks is always a really big part of how they come to life for me. When I met Robert, I had platinum blonde hair and it was long. That stage in my life didn’t last so long, but it was platinum and chopped off for a significant period of time, and I think that that was kind of what we thought was going to be who she was a little bit, but then it kinda became more interesting I think for me to … There’s the implication that someone with platinum blonde hair is someone that’s really doing it. You know what I mean? It takes a lot of maintenance, so then I kind of wanted to get rid of that element of it, and I also had gone from doing this movie,Submission, and then I didLittle Sisterright afterwards, andLittle Sister… She needed to look the way she looked. Then it was kind of easier for Robert and I to talk about. We both pulled the same image from the internet with the same picture of Winona Ryder. I sent it to him, and he was like, “Oh, that’s the picture I’ve had on my desktop all week.”
So it kind of lined up that way, as my look had changed and we were supposed to shoot the film in the summer and then we shot it in the winter, and so to kind of keep her in more of a darker realm, and also I wanted it to be a hair color and style that didn’t require any maintenance, because I didn’t think that was what she was about. That’s kinda how we got there. And I also think that we dressed her in a lot of oversized clothes and all this stuff. I think that sexuality was for her something incredibly foreign and a real part that she was putting on, and the real childlike nature of how we made her look and how that’s who she really was. I think we did pretty good job. I thought our costume designer was great, and we all had a pretty similar idea of what we were doing.
A lot of the tension in the film comes from exploring that sexuality, and also other strange versions of power dynamics and unexpected power shifts. How did you enjoy digging into that element as a performer?
TIMLIN: I really loved that element of that character and how she’s exercising power over people that could very easily have power over her. I think men specifically, and I think it’s rooted in a lot of things and I feel like a lot of women are living in that world a little bit. I think that the idea that she’s using her body for sexuality in that first scene with Marshall, and then also, it’s looming all this threat over him because the way that she’s presenting herself – it’s illegal what he’s about to do and she’s filming it, and it’s that kind of … The threat that that has over him is really intense, and I thought it was a really interesting way to get that across, the way that that scene happened. And also, forcing him down this road in this absolutely, insanely aggressive way, but really just being this tiny, tiny person.
So yeah, that was really interesting for me, and also when I’m talking about her anger, I think that is a pretty fundamental part of Kya. I think that that comes from abandonment and loneliness, and we don’t really reveal anything of where she’s coming from or where she’s going, but the fabric of the character for me was how much pain she was in. And I think pain translates to anger more often than not. So when it comes to Burt, I think he’s a triggering presence and I think that her anger is so gigantic that the way that the movie ends is kind of like a catharsis in some way, but it was also something that she – That’s the element of her life that’s just not curated at all. And she doesn’t have control over it, and I think everything else is incredibly curated.
When it comes to curated lives, in everything fromBlack MirrortoIngrid Goes West, there’s all kind of stories centered on social media right now. What do you thinkLike Mebrings to that conversation?
TIMLIN: I don’t really view the movie as being a social media movie. I really think it’s more a movie about loneliness, but I think it’s a conversation that we’re bringing in. I think that there is something incredibly lonely in the fact that we are living in a world where we’re not experiencing anything unless we’ve documented it. I think that’s a big part of it, and I also think that she’s putting these really violent and really grotesque things on the internet and then people are enjoying it. I think that’s what she’s doing, is she’s … That’s what I meant when I said it’s very reflective. I think she’s kind of holding the mirror to people and going like, “This is really how detestable we truly are.”
Larry Fessenden is such a figure in genre movies and you can always count on him to bring a singular quality. You guys got to explore some really interesting dynamics together so I’m curious what your experience was like working on that relationship.
TIMLIN: I really loved working with Larry, and Larry to me is one of the all-time greats, and is truly a character actor and he’s an actor’s actor and it was wonderful to work with him because I think we both kind of understood that the movie was going to rely on the vulnerabilities of these two people, and this kind of unlikely friendship. My favorite line in the movie is when she goes, “Are you scared of me?” And he says, “You might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” I think there was just two people, two characters that were going through a similar thing and feeling really isolated, and are really misunderstood and however fucked up their journey is together, they’re together, which is better than the alternative. I just think that Larry as a person and as an actor was able to be so vulnerable and so honest in that character, and it was really magical to work with him.
Before I run out of time with you, I definitely want to ask about taking on the role of Hillary Clinton. What did you want to bring to her story and what did you like about how the script handles that part of her story?
TIMLIN: I don’t know exactly how to talk about that movie because A, I haven’t seen it, but B, the way that it was written was … It’s not a biopic of Hillary Clinton at all. It’s a hypothetical commentary, I think. In that way, the script isn’t based on anything exactly true, but it’s based on certain elements that we know about her life at that time and then kind of filling in the blanks of what we think a young woman might be like. Ayoung woman who is about to enter this career of being a public person, and being a public servant, which brought the intentions at 20 years old to become the President of the United States. It’s kind of about what personality that is, and how she’s kind of navigating that journey in that time in her life.
That was, to me, the hardest part. The hardest part was to play someone that was a hyper intellectual, because I’m not. And truly it was memorizing those lines and speaking in a way that was so clear and without anything um… like “um” or “like”. [Laughs] That was the hardest part, and also, I admire Hillary Clinton so deeply and I wanted to at least, if I was going to be doing a movie in which the implication is that we’re portraying her as a young woman, that I was playing a young woman that was incredibly poised and had a lot of potential of being the leader of the free world.
And it goes without saying that the results of last year’s elections were utterly devastating. Because I think I felt connected to that young version of her. It was really heart breaking. Because that’s the thing that draws me to any character that I play is that either that I recognize them in myself, or that I don’t recognize them even a tiny bit. And those are the two specificities that I look for. My job is to give them heartbeats and life and thought, and I think over the years, I’ve played a lot of young women that are incredibly complex and totally different from each other.
