Elizabeth Olsen Uncovers a Career Best in “His Three Daughters”

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Elizabeth Olsen On “His Three Daughters”, Working With Azazel Jacobs, And Finding Space In A Small Apartment

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As a fan of His Three Daughters even before its 2023 Toronto International Film Festival debut, it’s been a long wait for the rest of the world to finally see it. Not only has Azazel Jacobs’ sublime drama ended up as one of the most acclaimed films released in 2024, but it had a very strong debut on Netflix this past weekend, landing at no. 5 on the streamer’s movie top 10 list in less than a week of views. And, as expected, awards buzz is growing for the film’s impeccable trio, Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen.

We caught up with Olsen, who arguably gives one of the best performances of her career, late last month.

Set mostly in a Manhattan apartment tower, Jacobs’ fictional tale follows Katie (Coon), Christina (Olsen), and Rachel (Lyonne) as they reunite in their childhood home as their father enters the final stages of hospice. As the days grow longer, long-stewing resentments between the three sisters start to rise to the surface.

Of course, the scene can also be interpreted as not funny, which is one of the masterstrokes of Jacobs’ screenplay and direction.

Throughout the rest of our conversation, Olsen reveals the secret nature of Jacobs’ project, how the legendary Diane Wiest influenced her performance, why Christina makes a specific choice at the end of the film, and much more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was the one thing about the screenplay that made you say, yes, I’m going to do this movie?

I think there are so many reasons why I was going to do it. I think primarily my relationship with Aza [Jacobs]. He directed me in two episodes of a show I did called “Sorry For Your Loss,” and we continued a friendship through those two different seasons. And then after, and he and I have had other projects that we’ve thought about developing, and then he just said that he wrote this really quickly, and he had never felt so clear about a story and these characters in this world that at this point in his career. And so he shared it with me saying, “I’m going to hand deliver you this script, and I’m going to also do the same for Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne, but I don’t want to send it on an email, but I will share it with your team or whatever your agent, your manager, but I will give them their own hard copies.”

And I think from also the first page and then the second page, you’re kind of blown away by the confidence of having these characters speak for a page and a half with no interruption. And it says in the screenplay that we are not cutting away. We don’t know who she’s speaking to. We don’t really know even the context of the space. And there is such a confidence in that kind of storytelling, and there’s so much language. And then there are these relationships that unravel as we go. And so there are so many reasons to say yes to this project, and it really feels like this strange little film miracle that it actually came to be and worked and [was] outside the system.

I just watched it again and it feels like a very personal story for him. Was this inspired by events from his own life?

No, they were women who he just created, and they’re kind of this amalgamation of people in his life. For instance, the idea of someone loving a Deadhead and it kind of being surprising to their character is that I do know that he has a friend who he’s had for 20 or 30 years. His friend goes through a divorce, and he learns that this guy had been throughout the entire 20, 30 years of knowing him was a Deadhead. And Aza knew nothing about that until his divorce…

What did you think Christina was reacting to at that point? Did the script say why she does that?

Not really, but I talked about it with Alex a lot. I was like, “Are we doing a screwball comedy moment here?” I assumed I was going to be in a closet door, sitting in a chair or something. I was trying to understand the dynamic of what that looked like. Everyone thinking that something was wrong with her. Throughout the film, her coping mechanism for dealing with any of this is to find her own space. She so isn’t allowed to take up space in this family, and she retreats into herself through habit. The only way she can take up space is by putting down a yoga mat and trying to stretch in a corner or finding a chair to just sit and be alone and hide. But there’s nowhere for her to hide. So, she’s hiding in plain sight, which in itself becomes this comedic moment. But that was the intention of, “How do I find space when there’s no space?” It was funny tonally. You’re like, “Aza, we’re this far into the movie, is this when we become a screwball comedy? What’s happening?”

Also, at the end of the film, after their father has died, they’re sitting on the couch and the only one of the three who gets up and decides to go and sit in his chair is Christina. And why do you think she does that?

There’s this thing that we discovered only because we were filming an order. It wasn’t indicated in the script how we were all supposed to react to the loss or what the outcome of what Aza wanted us to all feel or portray. But it was through the journey of making the movie. I just decided that this is the woman who has been most honest about her father’s passing the whole way she’s spent the most time with him. She’s looking at death every day. She’s reading to him, she’s singing to him, she’s spending time with him. She doesn’t fear entering that room in the same way her sisters avoid it. And so I feel like by the time that happens when he does pass, she has a bit more, not a sense of ease, but she has more of a strength than they do at that moment. And then they follow suit, and she kind of becomes the mama bear at the end in that way to them while they’re having their own experiences of heart-open moments for them that we hadn’t seen by that time in the film.

It feels like Rachel and Katie may be able to form sort of a bond as sisters moving forward, but do you feel like Christina will also form that bond? Or do you think she will go back to the West Coast and sort of always be distant?

I think she’ll go back to the West Coast and continue the life that she was proud she created outside it. But there is something that I learned from doing press with my first movie, Martha Marcy May Marlene, that kind of ends with no real answers delivered. What I love most about the restrictions in the construct of film is that it begins and ends in a very specific framed space and what happens after. There’s something about answering that question. I remember Sean Durkin saying, “I don’t want to say because I ended it right where I wanted it to.” And so, I’m always kind of hesitant to answer what happens after a film because I do believe that the structure of the piece is framing something that is all we’re supposed to be analyzing.

“His Three Daughters” is now available on Netflix worldwide.

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