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Of all the characters in Project Hail Mary, none are as enigmatic as Eva Stratt. The head of the Petrova Taskforce — the international team trying to save humanity after the Sun begins to dim — has nearly limitless power. She wields it ruthlessly, including against the story’s affable protagonist, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling in the movie). In Andy Weir’s bestselling science fiction novel, she sometimes seems to have a dark sense of humor about the amount of power the world’s governments have granted her, but she’s still no-nonsense about taking control in any situation she encounters. The book never gets into her head, though, and there are a lot of different ways to interpret her behavior.
That made portraying her in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s smash hit adaptation a potential challenge for Sandra Hüller (Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall), who had to decide how much to humanize Stratt, and whether to play her blunt, uncompromising affect as unfeeling, calculated, desperate, or something else entirely. She tells Polygon that Lord and Miller largely left that question in her hands.
“They gave me a lot of freedom in the decisions regarding Eva Stratt,” Hüller says. “I think we mainly talked about responsibility and enabling somebody else to believe in themselves, and about what it means to be professional and to be a leader. But how she would move or how she would talk — all of these things, we found on set while playing with each other.”
Lord and Miller encouraged in-character improvisation on the Project Hail Mary shoot, asking Hüller and Gosling to wear earbuds during some scenes so the directors could whisper prompts and ideas to them on set. Hüller says she “loved” that method, which let her and Gosling experiment around with their characters and try different dynamics to see what would play well.
“Ryan Gosling — and that’s the case for me too — we like to find out how [to play a character] with other people,” Hüller says. “We don’t figure out things before [shooting].”
She says she doesn’t like to do a lot of advance preparation for her characters: “What counts is the script and what happens on set. I can think about a lot of things before, but they will be proven when we start working. And I like watching people a lot. I love to observe.”
Mostly, her research involved analyzing the script and watching reference footage of powerful women — particularly politicians like Angela Merkel, the longtime chancellor of Germany, Hüller’s home country. Hüller wanted to convey a character who spoke with natural authority and was believable as a leader.
“It’s very important that people trust her, and that they would believe what she’s saying,” Hüller says. “She would have to be very serious and believable and warm at the same time. I think a true leader is not somebody who would brag about their position and would show off with powerful moves or anything — I think they’re very quiet people. That’s what I imagine. I watched a lot of female leaders in this world beforehand, and found their approach very appropriate. I was thinking about a leader I would want to follow.”
Hüller says she took ideas for Stratt from a few fictional authority figures as well.
“There were some characters, actually, that were very inspiring,” she says. “Agent Scully in The X-Files, Gillian Anderson did such incredible work with her. I think she’s the first female scientist in a leading role on TV — she set a lot of standards with that work. I found it, when I was younger, very inspiring and motivating, encouraging to [see a woman] do these jobs. My child is a big fan, so she even works for younger generations, still.”
Another useful fictional character for her was William Somerset, Morgan Freeman’s character in David Fincher’s Seven.
“He’s this detective who’s very present and warm, but he would never talk about his feelings or anything,” Hüller says. “He’s just very present and helpful and guiding.”
The movie version of Project Hail Mary softens Stratt a bit from the book version, with less focus on how she wields her power, and a humanizing (and improvised!) sequence where Hüller performs a karaoke version of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” at an emotional going-away party. But Hüller didn’t want to bring too much to the character that she didn’t see already written into the script. While some actors build elaborate secret backstories to help enrich their enigmatic characters, she says the only off-the-book element she added to Stratt was a secret spouse and children we don’t see in the book or film.
“I’m not a backstory person,” Hüller says. “I think there’s a reason why certain things are in the script and others aren’t, so I should honor that. But in her case, I did want to give her skills that she had learned over a long period of time. She wouldn’t be in [an important leadership role] for the first time. I think she has probably gradually earned this position just through her professional approach and the skills she has, and she is dedicated.”
Project Hail Mary is in theaters now.