Marianne Jean-Baptiste Reunites with Mike Leigh 28 Years Later for Hard Truths

Jean-Baptiste is in town for the New York Film Festival premiere of Hard Truths. Last time they worked together was in 1996’s Secrets & Lies, in which Jean-Baptiste played a young, upwardly mobile woman trying to reconnect with her birth mother after the death of her adopted mother. Jean-Baptiste is a successful theater actor in the UK, and the film marked her international screen breakthrough. For Leigh, she says, “It was a departure into a film that was acclaimed on a global level. And for me, it was a film whereby people started saying, ‘OK, there’s this woman out there. That’s an actor.’ So, it was the start of my film and television career.” When asked about the 28 years between films, she laughs: “Well, not a lot has changed in the process, the way in which he works. I’m older, more experienced. I’ve worked in the conventional way of telling stories for a long time. And for me, it was the opportunity to go back to a very pure, organic way of working, which I loved.”

As Pansy, a grumpy Londoner always ready for a tirade, Jean-Baptiste enters Hard Truths like a hurricane. She picks fights with everyone in sight and monologues to no one about how hard her life is and how everyone else is horrible. Little by little she bracingly reveals Pansy’s pain and how she became this way. Jean-Baptiste developed the character with Leigh. “You work out the character from their first memory to the time when you see them in the film,” she says. “All their history, what school they went to, who their neighbors were, who lived across the street, their grandparents, their parents, their names, what jobs they did. It’s so detailed. He guides you through that whole process and does certain things or says certain things to create challenges or disappointments or opportunities for that character—and that’s when it starts to be molded.” 

Hers is not just an emotionally rich performance; it’s also an intensely physical performance. With a body always knotted unto itself as if Pansy doesn’t have control of her limbs and movements, Jean-Baptiste manages to externalize the character’s pain. “You imagine this person as a kid,” she says. “Let’s talk about certain backgrounds. If your mom says go outside and play, and you are scared. You have the type of mother who’s divorced from her husband, raising two kids, needs a bit of a break. You’re forced to go outside. She doesn’t go to the doctor and say, ‘My kid doesn’t like going outside.’ That doesn’t happen to Pansy. Pansy has to go outside. So then Pansy has to develop a way of being outside, of hating it, but going there nonetheless.”

Another aspect that makes this performance singular is that Jean-Baptiste is almost always alone with Pansy. Actors always talk of acting like a tennis match, giving and receiving from scene partners. Pansy simply monologues her way through, never listening to anyone. “Pansy is also somebody who constantly has voices and notions in her head,” Jean-Baptiste says. “She’s got that tennis match going on with herself—her observations of the world and what she thinks about them. She’ll just keep going. It’s just exhausting.”

Eventually Jean-Baptiste finds a rapport with Michelle Austin, who plays Pansy’s sister Chantelle. Austin was also in Secrets & Lies, and Jean-Baptiste’s face lights up when speaking about Austin: “Oh my God, no one listens like Michelle Austin.” The two actors have known each other for so long that they’re able to recognize when they’re in or out of character. “I remember we were doing the scene where she’s doing Pansy’s hair, and I could tell when Chantelle, the sister, was laughing or if it was Michelle that was laughing,” Jean-Baptiste says. Despite their characters being at odds with each other and the emotional toll of their characters, Jean-Baptiste and Austin relied on their friendship to make it through the difficult shoot.

For a long time after Secrets & Lies, anyone wanting to watch a Marianne Jean-Baptiste performance had to watch TV procedurals like Without a Trace or Broadchurch. Those roles weren’t as challenging, she says: “I remember doing Without a Trace for a while and thinking that I’m gonna have to find a way to do it, because I’ll go a bit nuts otherwise.” What she did was broaden the character beyond just the case of the week. All by herself. “Okay, she’s in this interrogation, but maybe she’s doing her shopping list at the same time,” she says. “No disrespect to the work of an FBI agent, but surely they’re thinking about other things. Like maybe I’ve got to pick up the dry cleaning on my way home. I did that just to keep the character alive for myself.” Jean-Baptiste had to find creativity elsewhere. She talks about taking up painting to fill that creative void. Ever the talent, Jean-Baptiste even composed the music to Leigh’s first film after Secrets & Lies, 1997’s Career Girls. “I do a lot of creative things outside of acting to feed that beast,” she says.

However, people who fell in love with her in Secrets & Lies wanted more of a film career for her. You could hear those expectations in the audible gasps of the audiences at the New York Film Festival when that old photo of her with Leigh appeared. “I think things happen as they should,” she says. “I trust my life. I know that there are certain things that I would not have that are invaluable if I had had that career that people think you should have. The reality of the situation is there are still very few roles for women with this type of substance. For Black women, even less opportunities. I think that I’m incredibly fortunate to have had two of them.”

Always peppering her answers with a questioning but endearing “Yeah?” at the end of sentences, Jean-Baptiste slyly turns the table on the interviewer: “Just go outside, look at what’s on at the festival.” She’s right. Her film is the only one with a Black female lead playing at NYFF. She burrows even further: “Last year? The year before?” The only film this interviewer could remember was Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, which played the festival two years ago with a central performance by Danielle Deadywler. 

What ultimately comes through is that Jean-Baptiste remains in control—if not of film opportunities, then definitely of her creative side: “I’ve survived. I’m still hungry and seeking the next challenge. I want to transform myself again and become somebody else.” When asked what that challenge could be, especially after a fulfilling experience like Hard Truths, she says: “It’d be great to do another film.” Let’s hope audiences don’t have to wait almost three more decades. Take notice, Hollywood.