Of the actors slated to star in Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy when Justin Kelly first got the production’s wheels turning in 2016, only Kristen Stewart saw it through to shooting. She plays Savannah Knoop, a young woman who posed as the invented literary persona JT LeRoy in the early 2000s, and thank the gods of cinema she stuck around. A fascinating synergy runs both ways between Stewart and the unlikely story of Leroy’s ascent to stardom in the publishing world. The actor’s intensively documented public life adds one more layer to a film that already has a lot on its mind regarding celebrity, constructed identity, gender and authenticity.
Both Stewart and LeRoy, a 19-year-old street kid created by Knoop’s sister-in-law Laura Albert (Laura Dern) as an avatar for her writing, have appeared to be uncomfortable with their fame. Each resisted the attention heaped on them, which only made the public hungrier for details. They’ve toyed with androgyny, using short-cropped haircuts and loose, body-masking clothing. And they each, in their own way, made a career of pretending. Stewart has described herself as a bad liar in interviews, suggesting that honesty paves the way to summoning truth in a performance. Laura and Savannah are united in the belief that a lie from the heart can be more real than a reality foisted on them by fate. The main difference is that Laura and Savannah just played it a bit faster and looser with their ethics.
Dern plays Laura as a master manipulator, who can talk anyone into anything with the right melange of new-age platitudes. (“I felt JT leave my body and enter yours!” she says, convincingly enough for Savannah’s satisfaction.) When her lover/bandmate Geoff (Jim Sturgess) introduces her to his sister, Laura immediately recognises the ideal collaborator in Savannah, a lump of clay she can mould in an image incompatible with her own.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
