The Oscar winners lead the Watergate drama in a portrait of a marriage that crumbled over scandal.
I just looked at him and ran from the room and cried and cried and cried.
John Mitchell, who stood for law and order!")
Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell in ‘Gaslit’.Starz
“Because if Julia doesn’t want to do anything, she don’t have to do anything.
Luckily, “she went so deep with this role,” Pickering says.
You’re getting a thriller, ‘female in trouble,‘Sleeping With the EnemyJulia Roberts.
Sean Penn as John Mitchell in ‘Gaslit’.Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
It brings her to this very dark, raw place by the end of it.”
“And he took it on with such predictable vigor.
If Pickering also had reservations about Penn, they vanished quickly after he met with the Oscar-winning actor.
Sean Penn and Julia Roberts in ‘Gaslit’.Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
“The thing I was concerned about with Sean was, I wasn’t writing a political diatribe.
Meeting with Penn over dinner, the writer thought he’d want to talk politics the entire time.
“He didn’t,” Pickering says.
“He just discussed the marriage between these two people.
It was pretty fascinating, the things he accomplished.
I was really in awe all the time.”
Martha died of a rare form of cancer in 1976.
“I think it’s all sort of connected.
Maybe if he had chosen her over Nixon, her life would have been very different.”
Gaslitpremieres Sunday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Starz.
