Director Justin Kelly was surprised how quickly Kristen Stewart agreed to star in his film "JT LeRoy." His experience dealing with actors had been that a decision like this one would be best measured in months. That Stewart and costar Laura Dern agreed within less than a week to be part of the project based on the life of Savannah Knoop was a simple matter of wanting to play such complicated and textured roles.
The fact-based film looks at the real story of a hoax in the 1990s by best-selling author Laura Albert (Dern), who wrote under the made-up literary persona JT LeRoy. Albert had created a hermitlike character as a way of avoiding having to put herself into the world. Efforts to stay out of the spotlight got so difficult, Albert enlisted the help of her sister-in-law Savannah Knoop (Stewart) to pretend to be the mythical JT LeRoy for a few public events. The events turned into global appearances.
Stewart says what she loved about playing Knoop was this was a person who was allowed to come out of a shell through the life she could live when pretending to be LeRoy, but at the same time was closeted because the life she was living was a lie.
"It was a painful experience for her because she was acquiring all these life experiences that weren't allowed to be hers," Stewart says. "She was 'working' and preforming a character but rarely getting the credit for it from the person she admires so much. And, there was a rivalry that developed."
The most intriguing part of the story for Stewart and Dern that the film would have them essentially playing the same character simultaneously. The onus fell on Stewart to create the physical aspects of the literary persona through Knoop, while Dern would present the psychology and emotional elements of the character as presented by Albert.
"The symbiotic nature of that relationship (between Albert and Knoop) meant that they did complete each other," says Dern. "That was the part of the narrative that was true for Laura. She had created this thing and she needed a host for her invention. That narrative was heartbreaking and beautiful and odd and funny and weird and all the things that made us so drawn to the story."
Along with the challenge of giving life to the fictional LeRoy, both actors had to deal with playing their main characters. In Stewart's case, that meant showing how Knoop was growing as a person _ especially in her love life. Dern had to portray Albert as both a brilliant and mixed-up writer plus Albert's flighty persona as a loud British agent.
Stewart had immediate access to Knoop whenever there were questions about how to play all the facets of the character. While Albert gave notes on the script, Dern did not get to talk to the author directly, but that didn't end up being a problem because the story is told from Knoop's point of view.
"As we discovered very quickly, this is a love story," Dern says. "Savannah was such a generous host of that story. I don't think Laura could be so generous about herself in the ways that Savannah let me inside for a deeper understanding of what Laura was walking through."
The ruse perpetuated by Albert and Knoop went on for six years. After the truth was revealed, Albert produced a documentary to tell her side of the story and Knoop wrote the memoir "Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy." The book served as the basis for the script, written by Knoop and Kelly.
Because she was involved in writing the script, that meant Knoop would be telling the story of a small piece of her life first through the publication and then on the canvas of a movie screen. The tale remained generally the same, but the process did have an effect on the final product.
"Form informs the experience so from having lived the experience and then translated it in the memoir and then translating it into the film, highlights different things," Knoop says. "So, in some ways, it is different every time, but then through the distance, creates new understandings of the experience."
The experience of making the movie was different for Knoop because she had a co-writer in Kelly, plus she didn't have to worry about any of the logistical matters because he was directing the project. Having Kelly as a partner made it easier for Knoop to deal with how her story in the book had to be compressed into a feature film.
One place where both Knoop and Kelly were on the same page from the start was wanting Dern and Stewart to be the stars. Kelly thought at the beginning that getting them both was a long shot, but those fears died when Stewart and Dern said yes so quickly.
"I feel very lucky," Kelly says.
