Even the most awarded and esteemed of actors can get pigeonholed in a certain type of role. Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a lot of awards, but they're all for comedy, and Hollywood hasn't provided a lot of chances for her to leave that lane. Asked in a new interview for W Magazine's Best Performances issue whether she's gotten "other offers for sadder or more serious roles" since her dramatic turn in Tuesday, Louis-Dreyfus says, "No, I really have not. People usually come to me with comedic bits." In fact, the movie was so out of her usual wheelhouse that "I did think, Why me?" she admits.
Louis-Dreyfus' preternatural comedic talents combined with a truthfully spotty filmography may have something to do with the industry's reluctance to let her go dramatic. (Or, to indulge in conspiracy, it's the Jennifer Lawrence problem where her team isn't even letting those offers make it to JLD's desk.) "But I would argue that the films that I've made with Nicole Holofcener have melancholy," she adds. "Certainly, there’s dramas baked into her stories."
With Tuesday, "I was looking for something, I’m not going to use the word ‘dark,’ but dramatic, and it came at the right time, and this exact role, I felt like I had a way into it. I had an emotional understanding of what the task was before me," Louis-Dreyfus told IndieWire in June 2024. Praising the film's director Daina O. Pusić, she said, "This movie required me to go to a place … I have not gone before as an actor in such a big way. Perhaps when I was younger on stage, and I did dramatic parts, but to do a film that explores this kind of dramatic material, I needed to make sure I was in safe, tender hands."
As The A.V. Club's Emma Keates has argued, however, the best hands to guide Louis-Dreyfus' immense talents on the silver screen remain Holofcener's. Luckily, that's a relationship both director and actor are keen to continue: "We’re trying to come up with something, but it’s not for lack of trying. We’re working on it. I’m going to see her soon. I’m definitely going to work with her again, but I can’t tell you what it is yet," Louis-Dreyfus shared with IndieWire. In the meantime, if any other directors want to test out her dramatic abilities, she's interested!
