Kate Mara Puts Twist on Alien Invasion Movie in The Astronaut

Kate Mara knows a little bit about being in space. As one of the stars of Ridley Scott‘s 2015 hit, The Martian, Mara continues to carry parts of that experience with her, including the costuming. “I have my flight suit from The Martian,” she admits with a smile while inside the Den of Geek studio.

But where that Scott movie focused on a man abandoned in space, Mara’s new movie The Astronaut is about a space traveller feeling abandoned at home. “For a lot of the film, I am solo,” Mara says of her character, the titular astronaut Sam. “It’s just me and my imagination.” Well that, plus whatever really is out there going bump in the night after Mara’s Captain Sam Walker returns to Earth. It was a remarkable homecoming, too, since she survived something penetrating her space capsule. Afterward she was discovered in the ocean with luminescent liquid on her face and no memory of what happened. Nonetheless, she is aware that something is going on during her quarantine in the woods when shadows move out of the corner of her eye.

Mara did plenty of research to prepare for her role as Sam, but she didn’t need to go far to replicate the feeling of being separated from everyone that she loves. That’s just part of being an actor.

“There’s always sort of like a re-entry period after you film something intense, especially if you’re not filming where you live, which is really 99 percent of the time. Even if you have your family with you, I had my kids with me in Ireland while we filmed this, when you go back home, there’s always just adjusting to what life is like when you don’t have a very specific place to go every day and you have to become somebody else. I can relate to that aspect of an astronaut’s work, but everything else is just way more intense and way cooler than being an actor.”

Writer and director Jess Varley adds to Mara’s own experience with the real-world research she did into the space oddities and “anti-gravity” dreams real astronauts have experienced after returning home.

“I looked at real symptoms that astronauts have,” Varley tells us. “Sam crash lands in the beginning of the movie, so I felt like there was some license we could take with bruising, spreading on her body, while trying to keep everything as grounded as possible… I wanted her condition to feel organic, like it was unfolding before our eyes in a real way, so that it never felt prosthetic-heavy or overly-stylized. I tried to keep it as grounded as possible.”

That said, Varley did draw inspiration from other films, namely one about women undergoing a crisis of identity, and the men in their life doubting them every step of the way.

“I love Black Swan,” she says of the 2010 Darren Aronofsky movie. “That actually was a bit of an inspiration for The Astronaut. We have this unreliable narrator, and some other elements that may be a little spoilery, so I won’t say. But it’s fun creating these red-herring moments where we’re not sure if we can trust [Sam].”

Lest it sound like The Astronaut is another movie about people mistrusting a woman, Varley adds, “She’s not sure if she can trust herself and it helps us to sort of enjoy the ride, but also leaves enough room for us to hopefully be shocked at where the movie ultimately goes.”

Producer Brad Fuller notes that sense of a thrill ride as one of the main appeals to a genre film like The Astronaut. “People go to the movie theaters to have a shared experience,” he explains. “And genre movies really offer an incredible opportunity for everyone in the movie theater to scream.”

Fuller also notes that The Astronaut isn’t pure escapism thanks to the level of realism that Mara and Varley described. “It’s about something that could actually really happen. When [Fuller and his producing partners] are looking at scripts, we’re looking at things that are not so outlandish that the audience says, well, that could never happen. Horror is scarier if you think that this could happen to you.”

The relatable element also helps drive the performance of Gabriel Luna, who plays Sam’s husband Mark.

“To me, the story is about families that are built on a love that goes beyond blood,” Luna explains. “You take this leap to embrace something other than you. You see how strong they truly are at their core. Our relationship roots the entire story in the human experience,” Luna explains, pointing to the difficulties Mark and Sam have before the sci-fi element comes in. “There’s a lot of turbulence in their relationship, just because of the distance and having to deal with the separation and raising a child.”

The commonplace relationship struggles that Luna describes get at Varley’s goals for the movie and its reception. “I hope that people relate to the messy things that we all go,” she says. “We don’t always get to see that on screen and there’s something very human and often very private about that. Hopefully The Astronaut puts it out there more so people feel a little bit less alone in their transformations and struggles in their own journeys.”

And what of Mara’s journey, going from playing an astronaut in space in The Martian to an astronaut at home in The Astronaut? “It’s always nice when you have information from another film that you can use in whatever way,” she confesses. “I definitely carried some of that stuff with me, but there was a lot more to learn for sure.”

But at least she didn’t need to learn how to wear a flight suit again.

The Astronaut premiered March 7 at SXSW.

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