‘Roar’ star Merritt really enjoys making love with a duck

On the iPhone, there is an autocorrect feature that tends to turn a certain confusing word into “duck”. Many, if not all, of us have faced this dilemma: “I’m so angry” on radio.

RoarApple TV+’s new women-centric anthology from creators THE LIGHT, mash up this autocorrect nonsense into one episode and throw Emmy-nominated Merritt Wever into the mix. A lonely woman making love to a duck. (Don’t worry: Having an encounter is also cute.) In an age where new nonsense pops up on the timeline for hours, you shouldn’t skim this one. Reality: a small mallard flies into the vicinity of a woman while she screams with joy, writhing in delight on the kitchen floor. Serious.

“I don’t want to think about it,” Wever told me, with a sigh – although a few minutes ago she had only affectionately said of the raw duck used on set: “I feel like we’ve made pretty early progress. Justin the duck was amazing to work with. ”

But there’s more to “The Woman Who Was Fed By A Duck” than sex scenes and Justin. The duck, named Larry in the episode, whom Wever’s Alisa meets in a park, actually becomes her abusive boyfriend. Their affair begins with a charlatan chatting her up by blowing away the lack of attraction in everyday men, putting himself on a duck-sized pedestal to raise his level of understanding. me to women.

Clearly, Chloë Sevigny is not alone when, in The last days of the disco, she stated that “there’s something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck.” For whatever reason, there’s a certain allure to those ducks, and Wever is ready to break them all.

What was your initial reaction when you read it? short story And the script?

When I received the script, I received a note saying it was about a woman in an emotionally abusive relationship with a duck. So I knew it was going to happen. I already have that framework in place, so I don’t have the experience I’m assuming or hoping someone watching the episode has. Like, “Oh, she’s talking to a duck. Oh, now she’s dating the duck. Oh, now the duck, you know. “It’s like lifting your head.

This is the original story, but why do you think one duck works well, and not another?

I know! That is a good question. The purest and truest answer is that it is based on the story in the book, which is “The Woman Who Was Eaten by a Duck”. The story in the book is very different. It was just a woman sitting on a park bench lamenting aspects of her life, and the duck came over and started talking to her and giving her his thoughts. Our great writer, Halley Feiffer, had a specific response to that and a specific aspect, or take, and use it as a starting point. The truth is I think that’s why it’s a duck.

It’s always the duck.

But letting her show off a relationship can sometimes be very delicate, difficult… the dynamic can develop slowly over time. It can make you wonder if it’s happening, if you’re right, if you’re wrong. It can make you question what you know, what you think, what you feel. It can eat you and kill you, just like this personality. The fact that she went through it with a duck made her doubt herself in her own mind even more.

How does it feel to be rooted in the dynamics of an abusive relationship while also having an element of fantasy?

It’s about playing things as realistically as possible and trying to remain as believable as possible in an unbelievable situation. Well, I guess all these episodes have something in common. And then just hope that if I treat this as if it were the most normal thing in the world, the viewers will be invited to participate in this normal as well. But yes, more than I did, I couldn’t pretend to imagine what it was like to see it with new eyes.

How did you find chemistry with a duck? The chemistry you guys have in the episode is really there, right from the start.

[Laughs] That is fun! I’m very happy. I think working with an animal would the challenge of the episode. And, all of a sudden, I feel like we made a pretty early move. Justin the duck was amazing to work with. It sounds like I’m bullshitting, but he’s actually amazing. I think the whole episode would be us summarizing a sentence or two of a scene here and there, you know, between the duck waddling or squirming.

He cooperated!

It was set up for Justin Kirk, who voiced Larry, to be there with us every day, just turn off the camera, close every scene with me. So I’m going to watch this live duck — a living, breathing creature looking at me and listening and moving its head and everything — and then I’ll let Justin Kirk act. Having those dual focal points actually worked. That ends happily and feels very alive, because I don’t know! The duck can start talking at any time. The duck can leave at any time.

Do you think you two are a good pair? Are they the same?

Justin and Justin? By the way, the duck was named after Justin Timberlake by Justin. The rest of them are also named after the Backstreet Boys. Well, I think they complement each other quite well.

Is it easy to work with ducks?

The duck is there every day. Like I said, I expected it to be this crazy, wild, difficult time, but it wasn’t. The first time I spent time with Justin duck, I didn’t realize that my hands had a startle response. Whenever he moved his head really fast, the speculum, I always felt the need to get my hand out of the danger zone. But that has subsided. At the end of the day, the hardest part of an episode is always the hardest part of any job—any acting job—that is acting.

I have to ask. How do you shoot the duck sex scene?

I don’t want to think about it. That’s just part of the job, and so we have to get it done. And done it, we did! But I’ve seen it, I haven’t seen it.