Steven Soderbergh's latest film, Presence, takes a unique approach to the haunted house genre, telling the story from the perspective of the ghost inhabiting a suburban home. The film explores the fractured relationships within the family as they grapple with grief and the unsettling presence of the supernatural. Vogue spoke with actress Lucy Liu and Callina Liang about their roles in the film and their personal connections to the paranormal.
Presence , the latest film from Steven Soderbergh , is a haunted-house story told from the perspective of the ghost—and set in the new suburban home of Chris, Rebecca, and teenagers Chloe and Tyler, played by Chris Sullivan, Lucy Liu , Callina Liang , and Eddie Maday, respectively. (Pulling double duty as the camera operator, Soderbergh renders the film’s images with distorted fishbowl angles and juddering movements, underscoring their subjectivity.
) Yet Presence is more a domestic drama than a tale of paranormal activity. From the ghost’s perspective, we see the characters’ lives fractured by grief: While Chloe struggles with the death of her two friends, Rebecca coldly favors Tyler, Tyler mostly ignores Chloe, and Chris tries to help everyone. The already tense atmosphere only intensifies once the presence begins to fixate on Chloe. Shot in under two weeks, with little to no rehearsal time, the film thrives on the strength of its cast—particularly Liang, who gives a tremendous performance as the emotionally bereft Chloe. “There’s something very corrosive about what’s happening within this family,” says Liu. “Corrosion is not something that you necessarily see. It’s something you see after the fact. There’s only so much that a person can hold before everything collapses.” With Presence now in theaters, Vogue spoke to Liu and Liang about preparing for their unconventional film—and their own relationships to the paranormal. Vogue: When you first read the script, what was your reaction to its conceit—the story being told from the ghost’s perspective? Callina Liang: I have never read anything like it. I had to go back and reread it, and then read it again, to fully be able to imagine what it was going to look like. Even then, I didn’t know what to expect until we started filming. It was a huge surprise when I saw the whole thing. Steven just really made it come to life, bit by bit. I’ve read that Steven sometimes uses an actor’s personal history to inform and recalibrate a role. I’m curious if the character Chloe evolved after you were cast? Liang: That’s interesting, because I think Chloe was pretty similar on the page when I was cast and actually filming it. But maybe that’s related to me having a few similarities with the character herself. What were some of those commonalities? I know that in the TV series Tell Me Everything, you also play a character around the same age as Chloe, but she seems very different. Liang: Totally. Chloe is very obviously a lost teenage girl who has never felt settled in any of her homes. I relate to that feeling because I moved around a lot growing up. I’ve also experienced some paranormal activity in my life a couple of times, but the most prominent one was when I was in drama school in New York. The dorm I lived in was a former senior home converted into student housing. I wouldn’t say it was haunted, but there was definitely a spirit. I would wake up from naps to writing on the wall, phones would be taken out of their chargers…stuff like that. At first I was really scared, but I kind of learned how to coexist with the spirit, which was interesting because Chloe was never afraid of the presence either, the other characters in the film. Lucy, do you believe in ghosts? What’s your relationship to the paranormal? Lucy Liu: For me, the paranormal is kind of normal because it’s about souls. We are all souls that exist in these corporeal bodies. Even when our bodies are no longer able to hold us, those souls still exist, and they need to go somewhere else. Sometimes, not unlike in Presence, they may not have found a home, or they’re not willing to leave so they stick around. There’s a feeling that people get when they walk into a space that they say is haunted, but it‘s really because of . Your characters’ relationship is quite fraught. I read that Steven was inspired by living in a house in LA where previously a girl murdered her mother. That made me think about Rebecca ahd Chloe’s’ dynamic differently. How would you describe it? Liu: I think the relationship between Rebecca and Chloe is complicated. I think Chloe is open to receiving love from her mother, but she never really has because Rebecca’s poured all of her hopes and dreams into her son. There’s such clear favoritism, and it’s strange. I don’t want to call it disinterest. It almost feels like a casual abandonment of her daughter…who is actually there. It’s fascinating to know that Rebecca doesn’t realize how unkind and damaging it is to be emotionally dislocated from her daughter like that, especially when she’s lost two of her friends. Lucy, I know that you have a son. Did you draw on anything from your personal life for your portrayal of a “boy mom”? Liu: It’s funny—I didn’t, because was in a very different age range. I just worked off of script because it was all there. It was hard, because she’s not necessarily a character that is really easy to understand; there’s a lot of mystery and smok
Film Steven Soderbergh Presence Ghost Story Haunted House Lucy Liu Callina Liang Domestic Drama Paranormal Activity
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