‘What connects us is so much greater than what divides us’: Matt Damon on challenging his own perceptions in new role
Matt Damon’s new film, Stillwater, sees him playing the father of an American student who is in prison in Europe for murdering her flatmate.
It sounds familiar because it is loosely based on the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, in 2007 and the subsequent imprisonment of Amanda Knox.
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were placed under suspicion. Both were initially convicted, but after a series of different decisions Italy’s highest court threw out the convictions in 2015.
Ms Knox is never named on screen but Damon says the case was an initial “jumping off point” for Stillwater, which focuses on his character – an oil-worker or ‘roughneck’ from Oklahoma who has struggled with addiction and spent part of his life in prison.
Matt Damon stars as Bill Baker in Stillwater. Pic: Focus Features
Damon, 50, told Sky News: “The Amanda Knox case – Tom [McCarthy – director and co-writer] and I never talked about that because it served as kind of a jumping off point for this story, It’s really about what happens to this father and his daughter after all the cameras go away and how they move on with their lives.
“They’re both kind of broken and they both need each other very much – he’s carrying all this anger and pain and grief and regret and shame for having been an absentee father, for having been an addict, for all the ways in which he failed her and he’s trying to redeem himself and he’s trying to help her in any way he can, and yet he has none of the skills or tools that one would need to do that – yet he’s still trying.
The film is inspired by the murder of Meredith Kercher. Pic: Focus Features
“I just thought there was something beautiful and heartbreaking about it – you can feel that it’s probably not going to go well, and it’s a story about what feels to me like real people.”
The film invites us to challenge our preconceptions about others, and the Bourne star admits that’s exactly what happened while he was researching the role.
He says he spent time with real roughnecks in Oklahoma and found plenty of common ground.
“I come from a very different culture within America. I’m from the northeast and Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a very different place from Stillwater, Oklahoma, or some of the smaller places outside Stillwater where these guys live,” Damon explained.
“And so I had my own ideas about what I was going to see when I went down there, and as always, as happens literally every time in a world in which we’re constantly being told by, particularly by politicians, how divided we are and who are stoking those flames in order to kind of self-promote – you get past all that and it’s what connects us that is so much greater than what divides us.”
While Damon didn’t dwell on the real case that inspired the film, his co-star Abigail Breslin, who plays his daughter Alison, says she did research it, and even went as far as contacting Ms Knox.
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“I didn’t want to do anything that was mimicking or copying that trial because Alison is a very different person, and I was not trying to portray Amanda in it, but it was an amazing source of reference material,” she said.
“I had a brief Twitter conversation with her, but I don’t feel out of respect to her that it would be appropriate to share what we discussed.”
The film has divided critics, though many have praised Damon’s performance.
But the actor hopes that the movie will ultimately unite audiences.
He says that if we take the time to get to know those we are politically opposed to, we may come to understand them – as he did with the roughnecks he spent time with while preparing for his role.
Damon spent time with real roughnecks in Oklahoma to prepare for the role. Pic: Focus Features
Damon said: “We’re very different, politically we’re very different.
“Kenny Baker was this guy that was our consultant on the movie and we named Bill Baker [Damon’s character] after Kenny as a nod to him because we were so grateful for all his help.
“And he’s got unbelievable values and he’s such a good family man and such a good person, and, you know, you understand suddenly his political decisions in the context of that.
“I hope [the film] just blows up some of those kind of caricatures that we have about each other in ourselves.”
Stillwater is out in cinemas on 6 August.
Entertainment
Harvey Weinstein accuser says film mogul ‘took her soul’ during alleged sexual assault
An ex-model has tearfully told a court that being sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein when she was 16 was the most “horrifying thing I ever experienced” to that point.
Warning: This article contains references to sexual assault
Kaja Sokola told the film producer’s retrial that he ordered her to remove her blouse, put his hand in her underwear, and made her touch his genitals.
She said he’d stared at her in the mirror with “black and scary” eyes and told her to stay quiet about the alleged assault in a Manhattan hotel in 2002.
Ms Sokola told the New York court that Weinstein had dropped names such as Penelope Cruz and Gwyneth Paltrow, and said he could help fulfil her Hollywood dream.
“I’d never been in a situation like this,” said Polish-born Ms Sokola. “I felt stupid and ashamed and like it’s my fault for putting myself in this position.”
Weinstein denies sexually assaulting anyone and is back in court for a retrial after his conviction was overturned last year.
Read more: Weinstein is back in court – but what has happened to the #MeToo movement since 2017?
Weinstein denies the allegations. Pic: Reuters
The 73-year-old is not charged over the alleged sexual assault because it happened too long ago to bring criminal charges.
However, he is facing charges over an incident four years later when he’s said to have forced Ms Sokola to perform oral sex on him.
Prosecutors claim it happened after Weinstein arranged for her to be an extra in a film.
“My soul was removed from me,” she told the court of the alleged 2006 assault, describing how she tried to push Weinstein away but that he held her down.
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Ms Sokola – who’s waived her right to anonymity – is the second of three women to testify and the only one who wasn’t part of the first trial in 2020.
Miriam Haley testified previously in the retrial. Pic: AP
Miriam Haley last week told the court that Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006. The other accuser, Jessica Mann, is yet to appear.
Claims against the film mogul were a major driver for the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and abuse in 2017.
Weinstein’s lawyers allege the women consented to sexual activity in the hope of getting film and TV work and that they stayed in contact with him for a while afterwards.
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