WASHINGTON — She hunted Osama bin Laden in “Zero Dark Thirty,” fostered civil rights in “The Help,” and saved Matt Damon in “The Martian.”
Now, Golden Globe winner Jessica Chastain takes on a powerful historical role, playing an Oskar Schindler-style savior during the Holocaust in the film “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” in theaters Friday.
“This is a true story just recently discovered,” Chastain told WTOP. “Not only did she save their lives, but she bolstered spirits and fostered hope. It really is a story about the goodness in humankind.”
Based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Diane Ackerman, the movie follows the true story of Warsaw zoo operators Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who saved the lives of 300 Jews by sneaking them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and hiding them in the zoo after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.
Chastain said she was taken by the true story the second she read it.
“They sent me the script and that was the first time I started to get to know their story,” Chastain said. “I Googled them and then I read the book, which was so illuminating for me.”
From there, it was time to do some in-person research with the real-life descendants.
“I went to Warsaw and met with Teresa, Antonina’s daughter who’s still alive,” Chastain said. “She showed me a lot of pictures [and] I just asked her questions about her mom. One thing that really surprised me — she told me that in her whole life, she never saw her mother in a pair of pants. She was taking care of all these animals in all these feminine dresses. A very different time!”
While she was there, Chastain also got to see the actual physical locations.
“We were at the zoo, because the Warsaw Zoo is still standing,” Chastain said. “It wasn’t destroyed in World War II — one of the few things in Warsaw that wasn’t destroyed. The house and the villa is still there where they lived in, the basement where they hid everyone and the tunnels are still there.”
However, there are no drawings on the walls of the basement as depicted in the movie.
“That was Niki Caro, our director, her visual way of telling the story,” Chastain said. “Antonina … created an atmosphere of love and music and art, so that was Niki’s way of demonstrating that.”
Thus, Antonina routinely plays the piano to signal safety or danger to the refugees hiding down in the basement below. In addition to music, Antonina is a devout animal lover, to which Chastain can relate.
“I like animals more than people!” Chastain joked. “They’re just more authentic. They don’t lie to you, they don’t manipulate, they’re so pure in their love and emotions. I wish people were more like that.”
Her love for animals fuels her compassion for mankind.
“Antonina believed all living creatures were valuable miracles,” Chastain said. “She understood the healing power of animals. I don’t know if you have any animals at your house, but for me, if you’re feeling sad, your dog is the first one there. It senses it and wants to be around to make you feel better. Animals are very pure. There’s this unspoken language and they can feel your feelings. So, she was able to use her gift with animals, and through animals, got to learn more about the human ‘animals.'”
The most dastardly of these “human animals” is Nazi antagonist Lutz Heck, played by Daniel Brühl.
“He’s a brilliant actor,” Chastain said. “It’s tough because Antonina is very pure herself. She doesn’t lie and doesn’t manipulate. She sees the good in everyone. … At the end, she says, ‘I know you. You are not like this. This is some uniform or some wave of power, but this is not who you are.’ In most of the scenes with Heck, she’s just trying to use honesty to help her cause without blatantly lying to him.”
It gets both steamy — and emotionally complex — when Heck makes increasing, unwanted advances.
“She’s not trying to seduce him [as] this femme fatale to make him fall in love with her,” Chastain said. “The first time it gets a little sketchy, she embraces him, but in doing so, she’s trying to cover his ears.”
These moments are some of Caro’s finest tonally. Lesser filmmakers would play these moments for superficial sensuality, but Caro maintains the humanistic subtext beneath the simmering tension.
“Niki Caro is a fantastic director,” Chastain said. “She’s incredible, really spiritual, earthy, strong, super sexy. She’d be on set with her all-black outfits and sunglasses — really an incredible, kicka** lady.”
Not only does she film ashes falling like snow — recalling Steven Spielberg’s imagery in “Schindler’s List” (1993) — she uses the familiar image of animal cages to symbolize the plight of human prisoners.
“There’s a scene where people outside the ghetto are on a date and snap a selfie as people suffer behind them behind bars,” Chastain said. “That, to me, was a very strong visual. I went to Auschwitz in preparation for this film and I felt so disturbed by all the selfie snapping. Things are becoming tourist attractions instead of understanding, ‘Where am I now? What happened?’ It wasn’t that long ago.”
Indeed, our Chastain interview happened in a hotel down the street from the Holocaust Museum.
“You learn from history,” Chastain said. “It’s important to learn what society did, what your country was involved in. Anne Frank’s family was denied a visa to the United States twice. [‘The Diary of Anne Frank’] is required reading in schools … but the teacher didn’t say that she was denied entry into my country and this little girl who was searching for safety from violence — we didn’t protect her. It’s heartbreaking! We need to know that; children need to learn that when they’re reading this book.”
In this way, Chastain isn’t afraid to take on these controversial roles. Last year, her title hero in “Miss Sloane” tried passing an “impossible” gun bill, earning Chastain her fourth Golden Globe nomination. At the ceremony, she sat next to Octavia Spencer, her Oscar-winning co-star from “The Help” (2011).
“I love the Golden Globes; it’s a really fun party,” Chastain said. “I got to sit next to my girl Octavia Spencer. So fun! We worked together on ‘The Help,’ and whenever we see each other, we’re always [happy]. Usually people don’t sit us next to each other, because we end up talking the whole time!”
This year was extra special, as Chastain and Spencer got to watch their fellow “Help” co-stars Emma Stone (“La La Land”) and Viola Davis (“Fences”) win Globes en route to their first Oscar victories.
“Viola and Emma! I don’t know if I have anything to do with [them winning],” Chastain laughed. “We all made that movie [‘The Help’] when we were all unknowns. I mean, Bryce [Dallas Howard] was a big actress because she had done … ‘Spider Man’ and ‘The Village’ … and Emma had done ‘Easy A’ but she was just kind of breaking out. Octavia, Viola and I, we were all really excited to be a part of that film.”
You could say the same for most of her movies, particularly Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012), which made future stars of Joel Edgerton (“The Great Gatsby”), Chris Pratt (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) and Jason Clarke (“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”), not to mention Chastain herself.
We wrapped our interview by quizzing Chastain on her previous rapid-fire Q&A from last November, comparing her answers from 2016 and 2017 in a sort of “Newlywed Game” against herself. Enjoy:
“The Help” (2011)
2016: “Drinkin’ moonshine in Mississippi.”
2017: “Love.”
“The Tree of Life” (2011)
2016: “Playing tag with three boys.”
2017: “Butterflies.”
“Zero Dark Thirty” (2012)
2016: “Kickin’ a**.”
2017: “Bada**.”
“The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” (2013-2014)
2016: “Super depressed in New York.”
2017: “Perspective.”
“Interstellar” (2014)
2016: “Saving the world one equation at a time!”
2017: “Murph saves the world.”
“A Most Violent Year” (2014)
2016: “Emasculating Oscar Isaac every day.”
2017: “The Female Godfather.”
“The Martian” (2015)
2016: “If it wasn’t for me, Matt Damon would still be on Mars.”
2017: “Saving Matt Damon.”
“Crimson Peak” (2015)
2016: “Don’t worry, dear. Drink your tea.”
2017: “Incest murderer.”
“Miss Sloane” (2016)
2016: “Changing the world … one pantsuit at a time.”
2017: “Miss Smith Goes to Washington.”
‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ (2017)
2017: “The interspecies love story.”
Click here for more on “The Zookeeper’s Wife.” Watch our full video chat at the top of the article.
