Kate Winslet is one of our favourite actresses for a million different reasons, and her latest leading role is no exception. She’s truly blown us away with her performance in ‘Mare of Easttown’, which feels like quite a departure from her usual roles.
This show sees Kate starring as a troubled, moody detective who loves vaping (and solving crimes, obviously). Her character Marianne, also known as Mare, is investigating a murder in her small Pennsylvania town, and there’s more twists and turns than you could possibly imagine. Along the way, she finds a love interest in Guy Pearce, who plays a charming writer named Richard.
Speaking to the New York Times about the show, Kate revealed how hard she fought against airbrushing on not one, but several occasions. During a sex scene with Guy, the show’s director Craig Zobel ‘assured her’ that he would airbrush a ‘bulgy bit of belly.’
Kate’s response? “Don’t you dare!”
The actress also shared that she rejected the show’s promotional poster twice because they were retouched too heavily.
“They were like ‘Kate, really, you can’t,’ and I’m like ‘Guys, I know how many lines I have by the side of my eye, please put them all back,” she told the New York Times.
“Listen, I hope that in playing Mare as a middle-aged woman — I will be 46 in October — I guess that’s why people have connected with this character in the way that they have done because there are clearly no filters. She’s a fully functioning, flawed woman with a body and a face that moves in a way that is synonymous with her age and her life and where she comes from. I think we’re starved of that a bit,” she continued.
In the same interview, she also spoke about the pressures of living in the social media age, and the issues we face around filtering.
“What worries me is that faces are beautiful,” she said. “Faces that change, that move, are beautiful faces, but we’ve stopped learning how to love those faces because we keep covering them up with filters now because of social media and anyone can photoshop themselves, and airbrush themselves, and so they do. I feel for this generation because I don’t see it stopping, I don’t see or feel it changing, and that just makes me sad because I hope that they aren’t missing out on being present in real life and not reaching for unattainable ideals.”
Despite her concerns, the actress is doing her best to lead by example, and people are certainly sitting up and paying attention. It’s not the first time she’s fought back against having her image retouched, either. In 2015, she made sure her contract with L’Oréal stated that her photos would not be retouched. Kate Winslet, we salute and applaud you.
Mare Of Easttown is streaming on Binge now. For more information about Binge and what else you can watch on the platform, head over here.
