Director Matt Ross Complicity, Truth, and Humanity in ‘Gaslit’

Whether you realize it or not, you know director Matt Ross.

You may have caught him in two seasons of FX’s American Horror Story or in HBO’s Big Love, but you most definitely recognize him for his brilliant, hilarious work on HBO’s Silicon Valley as Hooli founder Gavin Belson. However, his celebrated career choices did not stop in front of the camera. After directing a handful of short and full-length features, Ross received critical acclaim and several critics prizes for his 2016 film Captain Fantastic in which he directed Viggo Mortensen to a Best Actor Academy Award nomination.

This year, Ross’s directorial attention shifted to historically familiar territory. Based on season one of the acclaimed podcast Slow Burn, Starz’s Gaslit, starring Julia Roberts and Sean Penn, looks at the Nixon-era Watergate scandal through a previously unseen lens. It focuses the bulk of its narrative on lesser-known figures in the political tragedy.

But that isn’t what necessarily drew Ross to the project.

“I thought it was a way to talk about the previous administration in this country. To talk the kind of seismic political shifts in our country without talking about them explicitly. That’s what personally attracted me, but that may or may not be what you get from watching the show,” Ross explained, “but I thought it was parallel and relevant without making a show about Trump. I don’t want to over emphasize that because I think the show is more apolitical, and it’s not a diatribe against the Trump administration or him personally. It’s a way to talk about the Right and Left in our country and about complicity and about truth.”

Among its varied perspectives, Gaslit offers Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell, who was privy to a great deal of information regarding the Watergate scandal. The series follows her struggles as one of the first people to publicly discuss the wrongdoings of the Nixon administration. Along with John Dean (Dan Stevens) and G. Gordon Liddy (Shea Whigham), Gaslit reveals in the stories we don’t know, the perspectives not captured in previous classic films such as All the President’s Men or Nixon.

But in looking at all perspectives, Ross and team carried one mantra above all else: respect the characters regardless of their actions.

“Whoever sees the show, they can judge themselves, but we endeavored to portray them without judging them. I thought if they’re cartoon villains or if they’re just silly and buffoons, then you’re commenting on them,” Ross remarked, “and you’re not really putting yourself in this situation. The show does make some tonal shifts, but I hope that it’s always grounded in a kind of reality and non judgmental.”

Gaslit‘s tonal shifts are perhaps best seen in its treatment of G. Gordon Liddy (Whigham) whose fervent dedication to the Nixon cause runs the gamut from comedy to drama to comic horror. It’s a brave, complex, and outstanding performance — the very best of Whigham’s brilliant career. Both Whigham and Ross felt it was incredibly important to humanize Liddy without passing judgment on him.

Several scenes in the limited series explore Liddy’s relationship with his wife and children and how they’re impacted by his actions in the Watergate scandal.

“Liddy does pretty outlandish things, and we were endeavoring to show that he’s also a loving father and genuinely cared about this country. We can make judgments about the extremity of his behavior or the criminality of his behavior or the amorality, but he has a philosophy and a point of view. It’s our job to illuminate that with as much nuance, authenticity, and humanity as possible. Shea and I talked about that a great deal,” Ross recalled. “There are some scenes that are funny. For example, when he’s talking in the janitor’s closet about taking a bullet for the team. There’s the extremity of that position and his belief in it, but we can also read it as a funny scene. You can never play into it. You can acknowledge it as an actor and as a director, but you don’t acknowledge it when you’re performing it if you’re playing the truth of it. Shea has a real truth meter, so I didn’t think we were ever in danger of making him a cartoon.”

Ross and the Gaslit script put Whigham and Roberts through their paces with emotionally complex and exacting sequences. The series finale shows Liddy’s decent into madness while imprisoned, and Roberts brutally illustrates Mitchell’s own imprisonment earlier in the series in a California hotel to keep her from speaking to the media. As an actor turned director, Ross worked with each actor during these intense sequences, ensuring they felt safe enough to fully explore the scene.

Due to the sheer nature of filmmaking, actors often have to repeat sequences dozens of times to capture the right take or the right angle, regardless of the intensity of the scene.

“I think every actor needs someone to be apart from what they’re doing and to comment on it. I think there’s a misconception about what directing is, that the director tells the actor what should be done. That’s not what the endeavor is. Largely, it’s a conversation about what is possible. You’ve done this. This is what I’m seeing. Here are some other things that maybe it could be. Let’s amplify something you just did or let’s diminish it. It’s about modulation,” Ross explained. “For Julia, it was painful. It was a exhausting couple of days emotionally because she was being brutalized, and it was terrifying. I just wanted to make sure that she was okay. You may not want to experience it 12 times, but from a technical point of view, you kind of have to because, as you’re orchestrating how to illustrate it pictorially, the camera obviously has to be from a variety of angles. So, ultimately, directing is about taking care of people.”

Gaslit also explores the tragedy of the Watergate scandal through the prism of two marriages. Or rather, it explores the impact of the scandal on two marriages: one that survives (John and Mo Dean) and one that collapses (the Mitchells). Ross and series creator Robbie Pickering wanted to explore the Watergate scandal through the prism of these two couples, one within the administration and one outside of it.

Ultimately, what the series shows about these two couples is how they’re either undone or thrive by the choices they make. Dean, after extensibly dragging his feet for far too long, eventually testified and admitted to his role within the scandal. He did serve time in prison, but the truth, and it’s a cliche to say, did set him free within his married life with Mo Dean (played by Betty Gilpin).

The Mitchells, however, saw a very different path.

“I hope that people see the cost of lying and the cost of complicity through these people’s eyes and their own individual journeys because they all have a different journey. In the Mitchell’s case, you can make the argument that it destroyed their marriage, and it destroyed her life. Ultimately, she died of something else, but she definitely suffered more than anyone for it. [John Mitchell] certainly made the choice to support Nixon administration over his wife,” Ross said. “I think the show makes the argument that telling the truth and being honest will set you free. Being honest about criminality… that will save your soul in the end.”

Gaslit is available on Starz and Hulu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ-uyTbsWJw