| By Fred Topel
In Theaters October 14
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Woody Harrelson has spent a year with the ladies, as shown by the two movies coming out within a month of each other. With The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio in theaters, he’s also got North Country coming out. In the latter film, he plays a lawyer who takes on a class action sexual harassment case, inspired by the one woman to stand up for her rights.
“I grew up in a matriarchal family, so of course I’m drawn to women’s stories,” Harrelson said.
An activist for many causes, he could also relate to the little person fighting for what’s right against a powerful authority. “I do relate to that. I think it’s a great theme, a timely theme. What’s going on in the world, it’s like we gotta get up, stand up. So it’s a great message. I love the message of this film.”
The first women allowed to work in the coal mines of Minnesota faced more than resentment from their male colleagues. They put up with groping, innuendo and in some cases molestation. Harrelson learned of some cases that were worse than even those depicted in the film.
“They showed several incidents but there were some incidents even more egregious that are not in the movie. Like for example a couple of girls were picked up by the guys. You’ve got to imagine the size of those pits and where they’re at. It’s so huge, there’s just so much space. You can be someplace in part of the mines and nobody’s around you. Nobody can see you. They took these girls in the pickup truck and they tried to rape them, these guys. So there’s a lot of extreme things that happened and I’m really glad that these ladies stood up and fought them and one.”
Harrelson has dealt with sexual harassment in his own life, unfortunately as the victim of a frivolous lawsuit. “I actually had an oxygen bar and unfortunately I wasn’t there very much, but while not being there, two of the people working for me were then charged by some of the waitresses or something with sexual harassment. They sued me even though I wasn’t even there and had nothing to do with it. It was a money thing. I think they were just gouging. I know they were. They were just gouging for money. So I had to pay them off undisclosed sums that I thought was really unfair. You have to know the specifics of the case, but I felt like they were gouging. I do think that there are times when people go over the line and certainly in the case of this film, that’s true. But there are time unfortunately where it’s just people going for some money.”
Still, Harrelson hopes that the modern reality of lawsuits does not negate the impact of the landmark case depicted in North Country. “I still think it’s very important. I think a lot of times it is really legit. Just because I didn’t think [my case] was legit, that certainly in this case I think that it was.”
As an actor in such intense films as Natural Born Killers, Harrelson could relate to the actors who had to portray the sexual harassers. As mean as it was their job to be, he found his costars able to keep their characters in context.
“They were really able to deal with it and move on. Because of the nature, how intense this movie is, everybody would blow off steam after work and really hang together. So I don't think it built up in a negative way for them.”
Most of Harrelson’s scenes are with Charlize Theron, who plays Josey Aimes, the leader of the lawsuit. “We built a rapport pretty quickly because we just right away hit it off. We have kind of a nice back and forth, needle her a bit and she’d needle me. She always had the upper hand, little more clever, better zinger thrown my way than I could return but we were neighbors in Minnesota. Like I’d walk out my door and from here to that wall was her door. So I’d come over for a cup of sugar, whatever I needed. She’s a very cool neighbor, one of the coolest neighbors I ever had for sure.”
While there was never a major romance developed between the two characters, Harrelson did contribute to giving them a more personal relationship. “I wanted initially when we were first hanging out and we went to get chili, just before the woman comes up and yells about stay away from my husband, the scene was written totally differently, so me and [screenwriter] Michael Seitzman were talking and [director] Niki [Caro], that’s where the thing came of ‘So, what do you do?’ She says, ‘I work in the mines.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, you don’t smell like a miner.’ So that there would be a little bit of that, not too overt a flirtation but something there. Which anyway, Niki and Michael liked that. But then like at the end, the last thing was, in the last version of the film I saw, right at the very end when I come up and I say, ‘Your kid was just telling me how rich you are’ and they walk out together. There was a thing where she would turn back and I say, ‘So I’ll see you later?’ She looks back and she goes, ‘Yeah.’ But I guess Niki thought that was even a little bit too over the line. So it was interesting how it was Niki’s more idea of how to tread that so it wasn’t too much like a flirtatious thing. But it was never very forceful, the dynamic there.”
North Country opens October 14. |
