Rosamund Pike had to strike right tone with ‘awful but fun’ I Care A Lot character

Rosamund Pike and writer/director J Blakeson worked hard to achieve the right tonal balance in their new film I Care A Lot.

In the upcoming Netflix movie, the Gone Girl actress plays cunning Marla Grayson, a legal conservator who runs a money-spinning scam on elderly clients with her partner, played by Eiza Gonzalez.

Both Pike and Blakeson set out to make sure audiences still enjoyed watching Marla, even though she’s a nasty person.
"We were trying to work out how to achieve that tonal balance where you can play somebody who's awful, but they're still fun to watch," she told Entertainment Weekly.

They took inspiration from films such as The Last Seduction and To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman, with Rosamund adding: “When a director has commanded the tone, these things are very, very delicious… I just knew I had to push Marla, and I wasn't trying to win any admirers with her."

They also looked to Martin Scorsese's 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Street, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as a morally corrupt stockbroker who makes his fortune by defrauding wealthy investors out of millions of dollars.

"That sort of wonderful rise of Leonardo DiCaprio's character, where you just see them just taking everyone for a ride and you just think, 'Well, you know, it's a brilliant scheme. Yeah, I have to give it to him.' I felt a bit like that when I read Marla," Pike added. "And I haven't seen a modern film with a woman (doing that) and running it sort of like a business."

I Care A Lot, also starring Peter Dinklage, Chris Messina, and Dianne Wiest, debuts on Netflix on 19 February.