Interview: Octavia Spencer Talks Working with Guillermo del Toro on THE SHAPE OF WATER

An unforgettable and gorgeous fairytale about the most unlikely of romances, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a visual triumph, a beautiful testament to the power of film, and the director’s biggest cinematic achievement to date (which says A LOT). At the recent press day for The Shape of Water, Daily Dead had the opportunity to take part in a roundtable interview with one of the movie’s co-stars, Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer, about her involvement with the project and how she would have done anything for the opportunity to collaborate with del Toro.

Spencer also chatted about how she was immediately hooked on the romantic aspects of The Shape of Water, the unique experience of working against a character that cannot speak, and more.

You’ve mentioned recently in other interviews that you would have done anything to work with Guillermo del Toro. What is it about him that makes you so willing to collaborate with him?

Octavia Spencer: Well, he has become a legendary filmmaker. He is known for the horror genre. If you're a horror person, you know Guillermo. You know he loves monsters and creatures, and you know he's very effective in that genre. When I heard that he was doing a fairy tale, I was excited because I thought it was going back to that genre, but this film is unlike anything he's ever done.

But yeah, I would have been a potted plant had he asked me to be in Michael Shannon's office in the background as a plant that comes to life. I would've done it to work with Guillermo.

Did you discover his work by watching it or was it through some other means?

Octavia Spencer: I discovered his work by seeing it. I saw Mimic first. I'm always fascinated by movies from that era, because that was before everybody was doing all the CGI stuff, so I was like, "How the hell did they make this giant bug creature?" I didn't realize he was a puppeteer, too, so it was all of that information, and how he was able to be effective making a creature when he didn’t have the budget. I was in. I was in from that point on. I went to see all of his movies. I even remember when I saw Hellboy at the theater.

Guillermo has said that he wrote this role for you especially. How does it feel to hear something like that as an actress?

Octavia Spencer: He's seen me play this archetype before, and I think he wanted to basically know that I could do it, but hoping that I would bring something fresher to this role at the same time. He's the one who actually brought something fresh for me to do here, because I've played this archetype when I played Minny Jackson [in The Help], but I've also played another woman from this era, Dorothy Vaughan from Hidden Figures, too.

So, to have Zelda be a woman from this era with the same circumstances—no civil rights, basically no agency as a woman of color—it just made my day that I never had to play those circumstances in this film, whereas as Minny, I had to play the circumstances. As Dorothy, I had to play the circumstances. I had to talk about it. It was a part of my narrative.

In this film I got to do what most women get to do, and that's complain about their relationships, and it felt very contemporary. That was exciting for me, to have someone that you admire know your work. The thing about Guillermo is that he's a true cinephile. He has seen everything. I've seen everything he's done, but he's seen everything. That is exciting and scary, because I know he’s seen my work, too, but it was mostly exciting.

The thing about Guillermo is that he is love incarnate. He treats everyone with the same amount of respect, from the lowliest to the highest in regard. You can tell he's a cinephile, and the love that he has for the industry and some of the homages that he pays in the film, but also to love itself and being a member of the other. It's his love story to people. It's his love letter to people and his love letter to filmmakers everywhere.

Touching on what you said, this film takes place in the '60s, yet there's something with the situations with your character and Richard Jenkins that feels very timely with things that are going on today in this world. I was curious if that had resonated with you as you were initially looking at the script and realizing that some of these things are things we're still dealing with today?

Octavia Spencer: Sure, but first and foremost, I'm a hopeless romantic. I know all too well, because I can't ever change my gender and I can't ever change my ethnicity, what it's like to be a black woman in America. Those things stuck out at me, but I really loved the fact that I got to suspend my belief and fall in love with this very unlikely love story. The rest of it was just food for thought for me, and not so on the nose.

Afterwards I was thinking, "You know, it's very subtle that you have two main characters who can't talk." Who does he choose to speak for them? People who represent disenfranchised groups, an African American woman and a closeted gay man, but you don't think about it. You're so engrossed with the story and the narrative. I love that.

What were some of the challenges or even benefits of acting alongside a character that’s mute?

Octavia Spencer: Well, it's interesting because my brother is a deaf mute. Sally's character isn't deaf, but she is mute. The funny thing is, well, it's not funny exactly, but the irony of it is that it felt very natural to me because my brother didn't want my siblings and I to learn sign language. He wanted us to talk to him. He reads lips and he makes sounds and we understand him, but I don't know that other people would.

A person who can't necessarily speak words can always convey emotion. Sally with that face, she definitely conveys emotion and her feelings and everything, so that part was easy. But learning the dialogue for me was a challenge, because I'm dyslexic and I have to learn things a certain way, I need the audio cues to get to your next line, and then you learn all that and you throw it away so you can exist.

So the difficulty for me this time was actually learning the material. The other thing is when you work with Guillermo, it's all about authenticity. I mean, usually it is for everybody, but he sent me home with a mop from that era, because my character, we talk and we mop the whole time. You're mopping and these mops had these giant metal clasp things. I had to figure out how to do it so I wouldn't make noise and everything, where it was like, "Oh my god. This is stuff I actually have to think about."

But we mopped halls. We really did mop, we really did fold, we really did push carts, and all this stuff. It's funny because as an actor you're used to props, but it's different when you're actually being busy and doing chores while you’re acting. You don't think about it in real life, but oh my god. I had to figure out how I folded this, and I have to fold it every single time the very same way, and I had to learn all of that dialogue, too. It was crazy.

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In case you missed it, check here to read our previous coverage of The Shape of Water, including an interview with Guillermo del Toro.