SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
In the new film "The Weight," a felonious warden gives a group of convicts an offer they just can't refuse.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE WEIGHT")
RUSSELL CROWE: (As Warden Clancy) If I can get you out here for the end of the month, you like that?
ETHAN HAWKE: (As Murphy) Can you do that?
CROWE: (As Warden Clancy) Son, out here, I do what I want. I sign the paper saying your time is done, your time is done.
SIMON: But his freedom in exchange for a mission - a 100-mile trek through the Oregon wilderness, bearing the weight of stolen gold bars on their backs. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? The film is set in 1933, deep in the Great Depression. Man leading the mission is Murphy, who was ripped from his young daughter after hitting a police officer and being sent to a labor camp.
"The Weight" premiered at Sundance. It stars Ethan Hawke as Murphy, Russell Crowe as the warden and Julia Jones as Anna, an Indigenous woman who joins their gold-bearing party. Julia Jones, one of the stars of the "Twilight Saga" series and from "Dexter" and "Westworld," joins us now from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
JULIA JONES: Well, thank you, Scott. So nice to be here.
SIMON: Full disclosure - our family's known you for a long time, haven't we?
JONES: (Laughter) Yes. I think - I was just told it was 2002, give or take.
SIMON: All right - friend of my wife Caroline's, and we've spent holidays together. This story, though - no holiday.
JONES: No.
SIMON: So many of the scenes look arduous. Did you actually carry gold bricks, or at least bricks?
JONES: In the beginning of filming, there was a real concerted effort to see who could carry the most. They wanted it to feel real. They wanted to not have to act and sell that they were carrying these things. Every week that went by, I think that plan went a little more and more out of the window as the reality of carrying these big, heavy - I don't know what it was - became clearer and clearer. I never got on that train.
SIMON: Ah. The - course, the film brings the Great Depression back into our minds again. And I'm struck by one line especially - when a character says, you take away someone's ability to feed their family, and they get desperate.
JONES: Yes. and I think that that is the ultimate theme of the film in a lot of ways. You have a group of people who are desperate, and they are tasked with completing a mission together. And you see that these characters, who come from very different worlds, find that they have a lot more in common than they thought. And I think that nature, the challenges that the journey presents, caused this group of people to bind together and get through their trek.
SIMON: What's Anna's story?
JONES: Anna went to a boarding school. I mean, I have a very, very specific and extensive backstory for her, more so than I do with a lot of my characters, in part because she doesn't speak very much. So I really wanted her story and that particular slice of American history to play in some sort of visceral or emotional way, even though it wasn't on the screen. She's a loner. And she's kind of out there, and she has lost ties to her family.
And she has found herself working in a mine as a cook, and she is stuck there because they are essentially taking money out of her pay and making it impossible for her to get ahead. So when she sees this group of men sneaking out of the mine, she recognizes that that's her way out. She follows them. And she is fearless, and that makes her very helpful to the men. And I think she stands out in that way.
SIMON: She carries her load - Anna - and saves lives. But it's hard not to notice that the men are always saying, cook something now. Aren't they?
JONES: (Laughter) There is definitely an element of staying true to our ideas of what was happening at the time and what it would have meant for a woman like Anna to be on a journey with those men.
SIMON: Rains a lot in this film, and perilously so. Is it a kind of - I don't know - metaphor for America in the Depression being beset and battered?
JONES: I think that was a very happy accident. We were filming in Bavaria in the summer. And everyone was expecting it to be, you know, 90 degrees, and you have to feel like "Apocalypse Now." And instead, it was cold, and it was rainy every day. And we were grateful for that because I think it made the journey - everything was harder. Everything was more challenging. It was less work to do as an actor. And I think that tying that to the weight of the Great Depression and what these characters are withstanding - I think that the weather, the rain, the damp, the dark - all of it really fed that.
SIMON: And I have to ask - why make a film set in Depression America in Bavaria?
JONES: (Laughter) Well, money, tax incentives. It was - when you're trying to make an independent film, you are going to do it come hell or high water. And that was the only way that we could get it made in the period of time that the filmmakers had and the cast had, and so off we went.
SIMON: We note, of course, you play an Indigenous woman. I have to ask - does being a multiracial actor in films affect the number and kind of roles you're offered?
JONES: Oh, absolutely. It does. It has evolved. The landscape changes constantly. And I will say, when I compare the landscape now to what it was when I started acting 20-something years ago, it is a different planet we're on right now. It's still a struggle. It's a struggle for so many people for so many different reasons. And what I have come back to over the years - it seemed impossible for so long. But it's always - you wake up, and you have a choice every day of, do I want to sit into how difficult this is and how impossible it is and how few examples there are of people doing what I want to do? Or do I want to use that energy and try to make it happen? I think that's a universal - a choice that everybody has to make.
SIMON: What would you like moviegoers to take home in their hearts about Anna?
JONES: I hope that they feel a closeness to her that they didn't expect that they could feel. And I hope it's not necessarily surprising, but I hope that it's dear. I hope she's dear to them.
SIMON: Julia Jones, who stars with Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe in the new film "The Weight." It's in theaters now. Thanks so much for being with us.
JONES: Thank you so much for having me, Scott.
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