Winona Ryder is celebrated for her renowned roles across television and film that span decades. In our new series 'Building Character,' Winona dives deep into her most memorable characters, exploring the stories, styles, details and impacts of each role. From revealing why Veronica Sawyer wore blue in 'Heathers' to sharing her one condition for playing Joyce Byers in 'Stranger Things,' Winona captivates with an inside look into her characters and films. Here, she reflects on relating to Lydia Deetz's goth look in 'Beetlejuice' and her experience working with the amazing cast of 'Girl Interrupted.’
Check out Winona Ryder's Harper's BAZAAR cover here: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/preview/draft/how-winona-ryder-survived-hollywood?content=d3f1bfff-a35e-4d9b-9720-6046f1ecd42a&type=longform-article
#WinonaRyder #BuildingCharacter #BAZAAR #StrangerThings #Beetlejuice #LittleWomen #Heathers
Check out Winona Ryder's Harper's BAZAAR cover here: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/preview/draft/how-winona-ryder-survived-hollywood?content=d3f1bfff-a35e-4d9b-9720-6046f1ecd42a&type=longform-article
#WinonaRyder #BuildingCharacter #BAZAAR #StrangerThings #Beetlejuice #LittleWomen #Heathers
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00To be clear, goth was a thing. It just wasn't very popular.
00:04I want to be careful there. I don't want to claim to be, like, the first.
00:08Hey, Harper's Bazaar. I'm Winona Ryder.
00:11I'm going to be breaking down some of the characters that I've had the honor of playing.
00:17Live people ignore the strange and unusual. I myself am strange and unusual.
00:25So this is Lydia Dietz, my character from Beetlejuice. I think we shot it in 87 and it
00:32came out in 88. I went to the sound stages to meet Tim Burton. This guy walked in, who I thought was
00:40from the art department, and we were just talking for a while about, like, Edward Gorey and a lot of
00:46movies and about half hour into it, I asked him, I was like, do you know, like, when this Tim
00:55Burton guy is going to show up? And he's like, oh, that's me. And I was sort of blown away.
01:00I had an image in my mind of what a director is. Usually they're a lot older and they're a lot
01:07more sort of traditional, at least at that time. There were some things so casual and sort of
01:13intimate about it. Like, I just felt so comfortable with him. By the end, he told me he wanted me to
01:20do it, which was very exciting. The style came very, very naturally to me. It was a little bit
01:29more extreme of how I dressed. I wore a lot of black. I still do. My whole life is a dark room.
01:37One big, dark room. It was a real game changer for me when it came out, because even though my
01:47character is this weird girl, she was sort of goth before goth. To be clear, goth was a thing. It just
01:54wasn't very popular. I want to be careful there. I don't want to claim to be, like, the first. But
02:00she was someone I really, really identified with. I remember the movie coming out and doing
02:08extremely well. And I was living in this town about 45 minutes north of San Francisco. I did
02:16well academically in school, but socially, not so well. And I really remember thinking
02:22Beetlejuice was going to change that because it's doing so well, but it didn't. People still
02:28call me weirdo and freak and stuff. But, you know, hey, to me, it's a badge of honor.
02:34There still is nothing like that movie. It's so singular. Every generation seems to be able
02:41to relate to some part of it. And what surprises me is that a lot of kids still come up to me
02:50and would say, oh, my God, are you the girl from Beetlejuice? There is this purity to Lydia. There
02:56is a reason why she sees the ghosts. There is something that people strangely identify with,
03:03even kids. I was always very moved by that. This is Veronica Sawyer in Heathers, which
03:12is, I think, a masterpiece, a very, very dark comedy that I made right after Beetlejuice,
03:19actually. I had been slipped the script by Michael McDowell, who wrote Beetlejuice,
03:24and was a friend. And it was such a brilliant script. It was sort of going around secretly. So
03:31to get slipped that early on was great. And I went in and I met, and they didn't think I was
03:37pretty enough. I was sort of the weird girl from Beetlejuice. It was very fair because on screen,
03:44I'd only played very weird characters. I went across the street to the Beverly Center,
03:52and I went to Macy's, and I had them do a makeover on me. And then I went back, and I was
03:58like, you don't have to pay me. I just want to say these words. I think they almost took me up on
04:04that. I don't think any of us were really paid. We probably just were paid scale. It was sort of
04:10stylized, and there were very intentional reasons for each of the heathers and the colors they wore.
04:19We picked blue for me. Blue is like a form of a bruise, and that she was sort of beating herself
04:26up emotionally. So it made a lot of sense. Veronica, you look like hell. Yeah, I just got back.
04:35It was sort of revolutionary in terms of like, I just never read anything like it. Very groundbreaking
04:41in a way. I really felt like teenagers were just being put into these boxes, and when you're a
04:52teenager, you don't feel anything less. In fact, you can feel it more. Things can feel like the end
05:00of the world, and things can be so vicious. And I really wanted to show that teenagers were a lot
05:08more complex in good ways and in terrible ways. And I think that that movie captured that. No one
05:17saw it when it came out, even though it got amazing reviews. It was a dark subject matter.
05:23I remember Christian Slater and I went on this sort of tour where we went to different places,
05:29and there were people protesting. Then it kind of became this cult classic that has become sort of a
05:37seminal film, certainly in that genre. To this day, if it comes on TV, I have to sit through it.
05:45It feels wrong to change the channel. Daniel Waters, who wrote it, has, I think, created an
05:52incredible, almost new language. And I think there's been a lot of movies that Heather's
05:58inspired. I have very, very fond memories of making that. It was a really special time.
06:05Some books are so familiar. Reading them is like being home again.
06:12Jill March, who I had the honor of playing in Little Women, that was the first time I took on
06:22a role that had been done, I think, at that point, three other times. I mean, once with Katherine
06:28Hepburn, once with Gene Allison. But the script was so good. The director, who I was so, so thrilled
06:37she agreed to do it, because I begged her, Gillian Armstrong, was so great that it didn't feel like
06:45a remake. It was a spec script. It was just something that Robin Sweicorn had adapted,
06:52and I just fell in love with it. I could be more reasonable than to marry you.
06:59We'd kill each other. The wardrobe was incredibly accurate. We went to a lot of warehouses where
07:06they have a lot of those actual dresses that have been preserved. This was during the Civil War, so
07:13people were very, very poor. We had to present that. So I think I literally have two or three
07:21outfits. Very thoughtful and very intentional, and the collaboration with everybody involved
07:29just made it really, really special and honored the time and honored the story. It was such a joy
07:37to work with all of the actors. Everyone was so excited to be there. I forged some really,
07:44really close friendships. I really felt like that movie just worked, and it touched on
07:52a lot of things that I feel like had been underrepresented in books and film. Boys got
07:59the great Holden Caulfield, and they got Lord of the Flies. But women, it was usually you're a child
08:06or you're a young woman, and no one had really captured that in between time in the way that
08:11I feel that that piece did. Susanna, four days ago, you chased a bottle of aspirin with a bottle
08:21of vodka. I had a headache. Girl Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen, that was an incredible role,
08:30an incredible opportunity. I read the book when it was still in galleys form because my father
08:39and mother are writers, so they have all these connections. So I actually read the book before
08:45it came out and just fell in love with Susanna. The story is sort of more of a chapter in this
08:55woman's life. This girl is going through a rough time and suddenly finds herself locked in a mental
09:02hospital. You know, she was a complicated person, and she was brave enough to write about it in a
09:08very honest way. So what is this borderline business you mentioned on the phone? Oh, look, um, I don't
09:16think that's useful to Susanna. I mean, not... What borderline business? The style was very accurate.
09:25Ariana Phillips was the costume designer. We had some pictures of Susanna. I really was struck by
09:32that striped shirt, and I wanted to repeat that a lot because I think you have a different outfit
09:40every day when you're in that situation. I just wanted everything to be as accurate and believable
09:47as possible. It took a long time to get it set up. Having that other role of a producer as well
10:04was new to me. I realized, like, how difficult that can be when you just cannot compromise because
10:14it's such a specific story. I had other opportunities to make it with different directors,
10:21but it just has to be someone who really gets it. You know, I found that person with Jim Mangold.
10:27It was an incredible cast. I mean, Angelina was just a powerhouse, obviously. I feel like all of
10:35our scenes together were intense. And Clea Duvall and Elizabeth Moss and Brittany Murphy, who I was
10:44very close to, a lot of people approached me about how much that movie meant to them. Certainly for
10:51women, you know, there's always been the narrative that the women, you know, are hysterical and need
10:57to be put away. People go through hard times all the time, and it doesn't necessarily mean they're
11:04crazy. Will, are you here? Okay, good, good, good, good. Joyce Byers. She is a character that I'm
11:18literally on my 10th year playing her. Absolute first for me to play a character for that long.
11:26It was a huge to say yes to, like, one episode. Like, they only gave me the pilot episode.
11:34I didn't, at the time, know what streaming was. It was terrifying in that regard. At the time,
11:41Tim and I were talking about the Beetlejuice sequel, and there have been moments over the
11:47last, like, 15 years that we thought it was going to happen. But again, like, that's a
11:53thing. Like, it had to be perfect with everybody in order for it to happen. But I remember at my
12:01first meeting with the Duffer brothers, I said, as long as if Beetlejuice 2 happens, you'll let
12:09me go do that. And they agreed. Luckily, it worked out. That was my one condition. Joyce has always
12:16been a struggling single mom. I've repeated a lot of the clothes. A lot of the clothes were, like,
12:25my mom and dad's, the jeans. It's always important to me to represent, like, what this character
12:33could afford to buy. My favorite part about playing Joyce is getting to watch these kids grow up.
12:41They started at the same age I was when I started, which was really interesting. And
12:46because it was taking place in 83, 84, which is when I started at that age, there was something
12:54really sweet about that. It's almost emotional. I mean, these kids have essentially grown up
13:00in public. When I was growing up, there was no internet, no social media. If you got photographed,
13:08it was like someone had to randomly happen to have a camera on them. It was just very,
13:12very different. I will miss Ben, Charlie, Joe, Noah, Sadie, Maya, obviously Dayton, and Caleb.
13:21I feel like I learned so much from them. Thanks so much for watching, and be sure to check out
13:28my Harper's Bazaar cover.