Pay Attention Now: Gretchen Mol and Juliana Margulies on “Millers in Marriage”

Ed Burns wrote and directed “Millers in Marriage,” the story of three middle-aged siblings and their complicated relationships. Burns plays a recently divorced man beginning a relationship with his wife’s former boss. In an interview, Gretchen Mol and Juliana Margulies, who play his characters’ sisters, Eve and Maggie, talked about the scene they shared, why they did not hug, and what they think couples should discuss after seeing the film.  

Juliana, your character wears soft winter white or cream throughout the film, and Gretchen, dark, very textured clothes. What are we to take from that about the story and about your characters?

Juliana Margulies: Ed and our cinematographer wanted my character, Maggie, to always be in cream colors. Gretchen’s character was in the reds and blacks, and then his character was to be in blues. It’s the first time I’ve ever actually worked on anything where the costume color design was so specific. I don’t know about you, Gretchen, but I loved that. So it was a little tricky.

A lot of the wardrobe was my own because it was an independent movie with not a big budget. And so I think maybe three things in the film had been bought from an outlet store in New Jersey, but the rest was mine. I mined my wardrobe and took pictures of everything for the costume designer, Rosemary Lepre Forman. And then she and I are the same size. So I wore a lot of her clothes.

Gretchen Mol: My palette was gray and black, and a lot of it had to do with being a part of the world of my husband, Patrick Wilson’s character, who manages rock bands. You can see it in their loft, which reflected probably more his taste than Eve’s taste. It was very kind of gray, black, and red, which are not the colors that I gravitate to normally.

Rosemary is amazing. She would take things off of her body. She’d have sunglasses on, and she would say, “I think she’d wear sunglasses in this scene.” So, she’d take them off and give them to you. Or leather gloves. She had a great trove herself, vintage stuff or secondhand stuff or some from Zara, but the way she put it all together was so good. She figured out the silhouette for Eve, which was still hearkening back to her ’90s rock days. Then it became easy to put on a scarf or whatever to give it that extra flair.

You play sisters, and your conversations bookend the movie, but the first one is a phone call and the only scene you have together is a crucial turning point just before the end. What did you do to create a shared history and sibling dynamic to make that work?

GM: It’s not like we had a ton of time on this to rehearse, but I think because of our experience we all got on set and we knew already what the dynamics were, just based on how well written the script was. And then it was fun to chat about it and acknowledge it, but we didn’t have to do a ton of work to capture it. It was in the scene. You could feel it as soon as we stood side by side. You could just feel that that older-sisterly presence.  

JM: It was on the page but also we’re all at a point in our careers and our lives where you really don’t have to guess much when you see the writing. One time, I did have to ask Ed why I wasn’t hugging Gretchen when she comes to my house. I can see she’s upset, so why wouldn’t I throw my arms around her? I know I would do that for my sister even though I’m the youngest and here I’m playing the eldest. He said, “You always were taking care of your two siblings because your mother died early. You have to stop Maggie from doing that because now it’s her turn to take care of herself.”

GM: Eve is needy in that moment, for sure. It’s huge, it’s like my life has completely been thrown out of whack. I tried something and it didn’t work, and now here I am, and I’m going to try to open up to my sister. But I very quickly realize that that’s not to get what I need. I always imagine that after that scene plays out she probably went up to the bedroom and cried like crazy into the pillow, but it’s not something that could happen in that room, when they are together. She has to find her own strength.

JM: What’s fascinating to me is that we have made up the narrative of what we think are each other’s lives. The first thing you hear when the movie opens is Gretchen’s character, Eve, on the phone asking, “Have you seen Scott?” her husband. And I roll my eyes and make a joke to my husband, or he makes the joke because this has been the narrative for years. “Where is Scott? Have you heard from him?”

I think my character has already put her in a box. “I’ve told her a million times to leave that alcoholic husband of hers. And here we are again.” It’s not that she hangs up or says, “I have no idea.” She says as sweetly as she can, “If we hear from him, we’ll let you know.” You make up the narrative and you don’t trust that they’ll change because they haven’t in the past 20 years.

Julianna, you and I both went to Sarah Lawrence College. What meant the most to you about your time there?

I think the most meaningful thing for me at Sarah Lawrence was the classes are so small that you really got individual attention, and you got one-on-one labs with your teachers once a week to do your own independent work, you know, adjacent to the classwork. That made me really dig deep into a subject. I’m not sure I would have gotten that anywhere else.

What do you think couples should discuss after seeing the movie?

JM: I’m so glad that it’s not us. Yeah, or let’s make sure we don’t get to that point. Yes. Let’s pay attention now so that we don’t have regrets later.

GM: What do you want for your second act or next chapter? What do you want? I would hope they would ask each other that.