Marianne Jean-Baptiste knows her Hard Truths character, Pansy, is a tough pill to swallow. But Pansy’s history and personal traumas have created someone who feels like the world is against her.

“She has all these things going on. But at no point were we trying to say this is about a woman with mental health issues or what have you—that would have been irresponsible, and you actually would need to kind of add the whole film over to dealing with something like that,” she told Blavity’s Shadow and Act in a recent interview “Where I went with it is you’ve got this person of a certain age, it’s kind of well before the Oprah generation of self-help and trying to get analyzed and get closure for all your stuff.”

“This is somebody who has had these issues as a kid growing up and been told to get on with it. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you go outside? Don’t be silly.’ And so she’s learned to compensate,” Jean-Baptiste continued. “And the way in which she compensates is by striking out at people, for example, you know, ‘Why can’t you just leave a cup on the side?’ you know what I mean? ‘There’s something wrong with you.’ You’re uptight, you know. It’s somebody who’s heard all that stuff their whole life. So she’s almost at war with herself. So I mean, it was exhausting to play, as you can imagine, but at the same time, it was really rewarding to be able to play something that intricate and that detailed.”

Reuniting with her ‘Secrets and Lies’ director Mike Leigh

The film reunites Jean-Baptiste with director Mike Leigh, who previously cast her in his 1996 film Secrets and Lies. Jean-Baptiste explained that Leigh’s process involves creating characters “from scratch.”

“The core of the character is based on about five people that I know from real life. We take characteristics from each of those people and we merge them into one character at that point, and that’s the basis—that’s just to ground it in reality,” she said.

“The next stage is developing or giving birth to that character. So you start from really young, from their first memory, from, you know, going to school and what that was like, who the friends were, who the teachers were—anything that you can decide for yourself,” she continued. “I would decide anything that is outside of your control, Mike decides. So all of the successes, all of the disappointments, the heartbreaks, the rejections—Mike decides those things. So you build a character up that way until you end up with a personality like Pansy. You know all her fears and anxieties—we discussed all of that stuff and talked it into existence. Getting into her, you know exactly who this person is, [and] what all their triggers are. Not to say that it’s easy to get into the character, but it’s very, very well laid out.”

Drawing from personal experiences to portray Pansy

A significant part of Pansy’s trauma stems from being the oldest child and assuming a motherly role after her father left. Pansy constantly felt criticized by her mother, creating a lifelong tension. Jean-Baptiste drew from her own family dynamics to portray this aspect of Pansy’s character.

“I’m actually the youngest of four, and my older sister is six years older than me, but I could see that she had a lot more responsibility. I also saw that by the time I came to the age [of] certain milestones, my parents were more relaxed because they’d gone through it with her, been stricter, and then realized, ‘Oh, I didn’t have to be that strict.’ So with the next one, you kind of get away with a lot more,” she said. “I think if we weren’t in a loving family and didn’t get on so well, that could drive a wedge between us, and you can look at it and start to sort of go, ‘You had it easier than me.’ And I think that my sister probably does think that I had it easier than her in some respects. But I certainly think that in the case of Pansy, she’s just like, ‘You had it so much easier than I did.'”

The challenge of letting go of Pansy

Jean-Baptiste said Pansy was also distanced from her sister and mother due to contrasting personalities. Chantal and their mother were “fun-loving, very jovial, enjoying life, enjoying company,” while Pansy was more insular, anxious, and angry. Jean-Baptiste used a disciplined process to detach from Pansy’s intense emotions after filming.

“Getting out of character,” she said, “was part of a very disciplined process, including doing things Pansy wouldn’t normally do, such as listening to music, dancing, and more.” Despite the difficulty, Jean-Baptiste emphasized how rewarding it was to work with Leigh.

“It was amazing. It is a really fantastic way to work,” she said about creating characters with Leigh. “You have real agency when you’re working with him; you’re writing it with him. He’s writing it with the actors. Obviously, you can see from the piece, this is a family from a Caribbean family living in London, of which he has no experience. Obviously, he’s lived in London for many years and has lived around Caribbean families… but you know, he trusts you as the actor to bring all your experiences and your observational skills to the table when you’re working. And you just don’t get that [on other sets].”

The reward of creative freedom

Jean-Baptiste highlighted the uniqueness of Leigh’s collaborative style. “You’re not handed a script, told where to stand. You don’t come in the morning, and somebody says, ‘Oh, this is the guy that’s going to be playing your husband, all right, action.’ You sit down with that actor and you work out the relationship piece by piece, year after year. So it is such a rich experience and you see it. When you watch his films, you see the characters, and you’re kind of like, these are like real people. They sound like real people. They act like real people because of the amount of work that goes into building those characters.”

Jean-Baptiste added, “I’m not saying that you can’t get great characters and stuff the conventional way, but I think that there is a certain magic that happens when you work in this way. … I was just like, you know, you roll up your sleeves because you know that you’re going to be in for some really good, hard work [with Leigh]. You know, it’s terrifying, but it’s great.”

Hard Truths is now in theaters.