Gracie’s Backstory In May December Ending Gets Clarifying & Intriguing Explanation From Julianne Moore

May December star Julianne Moore provides a clarifying and intriguing explanation regarding her character Gracie’s backstory. Released on November 17, the new Netflix film follows Natalie Portman as an actress studying the subject of her next movie, Gracie, a woman infamous for her relationship with her husband (played Charles Melton) which began when he was 13 years old. Throughout May December, Gracie’s backstory begins to unravel, including a rumor that she was sexually abused as a child.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Moore addressed whether Gracie’s backstory is true:

I don’t know if Gracie even knows. That’s the insidious thing about our pasts and trauma. This is a personal opinion, but I don’t behavior is created out of a vacuum. There’s cause and effect with everything. But with anybody’s history, people are also not aware or even conscious of what happened.

When people say, “Don’t judge your characters,” what they mean is you can’t be inside commenting on your character while you’re playing them. As a human being, I can say that her actions are reprehensible. I would be crazy if I didn’t think that. But as a character, she feels that she made a choice out of love and that she was rescued.

I don’t know. People’s behavior, often, they want to be some way and they end up being another. Are we in control of our actions? Or is some subconscious thing taking over? Gracie is incredibly mysterious, maybe even mysterious to herself, but I also know that she has constructed a very elaborate story that she’s absolutely desperate to hang on to. Her whole life hangs on the telling of this story. But I do think that she’s quite aware. There’s a deliberateness to a lot of things. She tells Elizabeth that Joe will take her home. So, you really do wonder. You’re like, “Wow, is this somebody who’s conscious of everything?”

More to come…