Austin Peters on directing Elizabeth Banks in Skincare
After getting his start in the industry as a music video director for the likes of Bastille, Haim, Orville Peck and Diplo, Austin Peters has made his feature directorial debut with the thriller Skincare.
Set in Los Angeles in 2013, Skincare follows celebrity facialist to the stars, Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks), as she prepares to release her own line of products. After aesthetician Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens a rival studio across from hers, Hope becomes increasingly paranoid and convinced that he is sabotaging her. She turns to a life coach named Jordan (Lewis Pullman) to help save her reputation and career, with dire consequences.
During the London Film Festival in October, I hopped on Zoom for a chat with Peters about working with Banks, shooting in LA and filming the Lewis Pullman scene that everyone will be talking about.
Elizabeth Banks is perfect as Hope Goldman. I can’t think of anybody better. What did she bring to the role? Did she have any creative input in her character once she came on board?
She has a ton of creative input, of course, because she’s performing in every scene. When she came on board, we sent her the script and she really responded to the material, responded to the character. The nature of our first conversation was, ‘I want to play this woman, I want to play this character, I know who this is, I can do this.’ I, of course, knew that that was the case because she had always been my first choice for the role.
We worked before the film, just going through the script together and talking about each scene and what she’s going through and talking about the character… She had little things, she knew that when Hope saw (her client) Jessica at the coffee shop that she should really press on her about the products… She embodies characters super fully in everything that she does that I think that once she finds the character and knows who it is, she’s just reacting. There’s moments in the film that weren’t in the script that she just did and those are some of my favourite moments of her performance in the movie.
Can you give an example?
On our second day of shooting, in the scene where she’s screaming at Jeff on Sunset Boulevard. Jeff said this thing: ‘You’re harassing Angel’s clients.’ And then I think that I said to her that would be really triggering for you – because that wasn’t in the script – that would be really triggering for you… that was someone (a client) that you used to see. And so she has that moment where she’s like, ‘That’s my client! That’s my f**king client Jeff!’ and I was at the monitor blown away by that. That was our first day (of dramatic scenes). The first day we shot stuff in cars, super softball stuff, and then the next thing you know Elizabeth’s in this bright red outfit on Sunset Boulevard screaming at John Billingsley. It was one of the first times we felt like, ‘Oh, this here, this is the movie.’
It blew my mind when I read that you shot all this in 18 days. How did you do that in so little time?
It was fast, you know, it was very very fast. We just prepped a lot and worked with amazing actors who show up and their first take is good. We never used just the first take, we’d always try to let it grow. Basically, we prepped as much as we could to design as much time as we could to have shooting that day and to eliminate all these decisions (on the day). You know, everything in prep was really designed for a movie that was going to be centred on performance. We knew that what was so critical more than anything else was the performance of the cast… and so many of their schedules were limited that we just had to make sure that we created enough time that we could give them as much time to discover and find things on the day and in the actual playing of the scenes.
I wanted to talk about the Lewis Pullman scene where he’s flexing in the mirror in his pants. It’s very exposing. Was he nervous or self-conscious before shooting that? How did you talk through it beforehand?
That was one of my favourite scenes to shoot and remains one of my favourite scenes in the film. We have a really amazing costume designer, Angelina Vitto, and they tried on a couple of things and they had boxers and whatever and Lewis was like, ‘I want to do the Speedo.’ He felt like that was right for the character. He had the idea of the nipple ring and the tattoo on the stomach and all that kind of stuff.
I cleared the set and me and Chris Ripley, the DP, got into a closet in the room and we had a little monitor and then our camera operator George, it was just George and Lewis in the room together, and he just put on music and we did this thing for 25 minutes or something takes that would last so long where he’s doing it. He would work out before so his veins would be bulging.
Lewis and I had talked a ton and worked a lot before shooting the film and he has a very in-depth process where we’re constantly talking about the character and this was obviously such an important scene. Me and Chris were in the closet squeezing up against each other watching what was happening with George and Lewis in the room next to us.
What was happening felt very strange to everyone but we were so excited because it also felt magnetic and felt like what you see in the film. I remember walking into the next room where all the producers were and everyone was standing at the monitor and everybody was kind of just standing there shocked. But it was a really amazing way to kind of say, ‘This is the movie that we’re making.’ The producer was like, ‘This is what you want?’ And I was like, ‘This is definitely what I want.’ It was a great way for everyone to get on the same page early on.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length
Skincare is available on digital release from 11th November. You can read my review here.