Rachel Brosnahan is already ᴅᴇᴀᴅ going into The Amateur. The actress plays Sarah, the wife of Rami Malek’s Charlie Heller, who is revealed to have been killed by terrorists in the film’s trailer. While Sarah’s death is the catalyst for The Amateur‘s entire story, it still leaves Brosnahan with very little time to flesh out the character.

As a result, this makes all of Brosnahan’s first-act scenes opposite Malek all the more pivotal. In just a handful of minutes, audiences need to believe that Sarah and Charlie’s relationship is so strong that it falling apart would send Charlie on a globe-trotting espionage plot to avenge it.

ScreenRant spoke with Brosnahan and co-star Caitríona Balfe to discuss how Brosnahan approached a role with such limited screen time, the ways in which Balfe’s character’s actions speak to the grief she’s feeling, and the approach each actor has to “filling their silence.”

Rami Malek’s Game-Changing Phone Call To Rachel Brosnahan

“He was talking to me about wanting to bring out a softer side…”

The only person that understands the character of Sarah better than Rachel Brosnahan is Rami Malek. The Amateur‘s leading man’s entire motives are a byproduct of Charlie’s relationship with Sarah.

“When Rami called me about this project, he talked about how important the foundation of this relationship was, not only for the audience’s buy-in to the film, but also for his emotional journey,” Brosnahan shared. “We’d known each other for a number of years, as I know Caítriona had as well and had talked about working together. Specifically, he was talking about wanting to bring out a softer side of Heller, somebody who can be really in his head. [He’s] somebody who sits behind a computer, so we’re needing to see a really different side of him with Sarah.”

Brosnahan added that it was important to both herself and Malek that the audience feels themselves in Charlie’s shoes as he seeks retribution.

“When you go on this kind of morally ambiguous journey that he does, whether it’s revenge or like, ‘revenge justice,’ you’re there with him,” Brosnahan continued. “We got to spend a lot of time building this together and got to hang out in London.”

Caítriona Balfe Dissects Inquilline’s “Needing To Connect”

“The basic thing about humanity is feeling seen…”

The only other character that has some semblance of what Charlie is going through is Inquilline (Caitríona Balfe). Late in the film, one moment sees Inquilline request companionship in bed, not for anything intimate, but rather solely for the purpose of feeling a connection.

“I thought that was such a beautiful scene,” Balfe recalled. “I think in maybe another film, that would’ve turned into something that was more Sєxual, but this was just about humans who have a shared experience of loss, and now they’re just needing to connect. The basic thing about humanity is feeling seen or feeling understood and how important that is. Her character is this very solitary person who has retreated from the world, but yet at the same point is doing this very kind of heroic thing of exposing corruption and speaking truth to power.”

While Inquilline is bent on some bigger-picture motives, Balfe found comfort in the fact that her character came with such emotional levels.

“I thought that that was such a beautiful dicH๏τomy within her. It’s great to be able to get a character that, again, has these moments in the film that maybe aren’t a huge amount of time on screen, but they’re really filled with such depth,” Balfe added. “The character is given such consideration. It was great to sort of have that coupled with something that was also great action and quite fun too.”

One of those moments of depth comes in a conversation Inquilline has with Charlie about navigating grief, in which she notes that the struggle comes in “filling the silence.” Occupying that quiet time exists on the opposite end of the spectrum too, as it can be a similarly hollowing effort to sit in solitude after the big highs of cross-country press tours and filming on blockbuster sets.

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“It’s such a strange industry in that, you’re right, you can have these really big highs and, so much of the time, you’re surrounded by so many people, but it can sometimes feel like those relationships, especially in certain experiences, lack depth,” Brosnahan noted. “I feel like it’s really important to have the people in your life who ground you. I’ve had the same group of friends since college and even before. It’s a great gift to have people to pick up the phone too, but also sometimes silence is good.”

“I don’t fill the silence because I have a three-and-a-half-year-old,” Balfe laughed. “Silence is filled for me, but that’s actually my great balance. I go home and I get to do that and that’s such a nice way.”

Source: ScreenRant Plus