Julia Roberts Says After the Hunt Role Is ‘Opposite’ of Her Real-Life ‘Very Hen-Like Personality’

Julia Roberts found it difficult playing a woman who does not have a nurturing personality in her new movie After the Hunt.

When Roberts, 57, her costars Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield and director Luca Guadagnino spoke with Variety about their new academia-themed drama in an interview published Thursday, Sept. 18, the Academy Award winner said the “hardest part for me was not being sympathetic and empathetic.”

“For me as a person, it’s like, ‘Oh, how can I hold her?’ And she was not to be held. This was not the time,” Roberts said of playing a steely university professor named Alma, who navigates a sexual assault accusation levied by a student named Maggie (Edebiri, 29) against Alma’s colleague Hank (Garfield, 42).

“I have a very hen-like personality; I want to gather, and I want to feed and care. And she’s just the opposite of every instinct I’ve ever had in my life,” Roberts said of the role. “And I think there were times where I just found it really exhausting; the mental gymnastics of the way she lives her life is very unfamiliar to me.”

Roberts added in the interview that working with director Guadagnino, 54, allowed her to stay “on the right rails at all times” and complimented her scenes with costar Michael Stuhlbarg, who portrays her husband in the film.

“I don’t mean to single you out, Michael, but I go into these scenes with Michael, and I just turn to Luca and I’m like, ‘Are you f—— kidding me?’ ” she said of those scenes. “What he’s doing is so unexpected and original, and I’m just watching him. I’m not even in the scene anymore, because it’s so fucking unreal what you’re doing right now.”

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After the Hunt made its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Aug. 29, where Roberts notably fielded questions from reporters about whether the film’s tackling of sexual misconduct on a college campus “undermines feminist principles and undermines the feminist struggle” in a post-#MeToo world.

“I made a meal of it,” Roberts told Variety, when asked about her impression of the reaction to the movie in Venice. During the film’s press conference, Roberts said that the movie’s cast and crew want audiences to leave the movie “with all these different feelings and emotions and points of views and things that you realize what you believe in strongly.”

“I mean, everybody’s going to have their own opinion,” Roberts added to Variety. “That’s what’s so great about it.” 

After the Hunt, which also stars Chloë Sevigny, is in theaters Oct. 10.