Jessica Chastain Directly Called Out A “Shady” Headline That Implied She Shopped At Target To Get Into Character As A “Normal Person” With A “Simple Life”
In a recent interview, Jessica talked about preparing for her new movie by purchasing her character’s costumes from Target.
Jessica Chastain is setting the record straight on a “shady” headline.
After securing an interim agreement with the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists amid the ongoing Hollywood strikes, Jessica and her costars are currently promoting their new movie, Memory, which just premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.
According to the IMDb description, the movie follows a “surprise encounter” between two former high school classmates, played by Jessica and Peter Sarsgaard.
Jessica’s character, Sylvia, is described as “a social worker who leads a simple and structured life” — which apparently gave the Oscar-winning actor a “fun” opportunity to go back to basics while shooting the movie.
In addition to wearing no makeup and having no trailer on the shoot, Jessica recently told IndieWire that one of her favorite aspects of getting into character was buying her own costumes from Target.
“I was in Nashville at the time, and I went to Target,” she told the outlet. “We were moving quickly. I think I spent like $130 and I brought it back, and we did a fitting.”
After her shopping spree, Jessica said that the director, Michel Franco, still felt that her Target picks looked a little “too chic” for the role.
“There was a lot of 'Let’s try and just scrub Jessica of any kind of movie star feeling that we can,' which also I appreciated,” she said, adding that she styled her own hair every day on set too.
After the IndieWire interview was published this week, numerous outlets picked up on Jessica’s quotes, including the Los Angeles Times, which ran a headline focused mainly on the actor’s trip to Target as a means of getting “into character as a normal person.”
The headline read, “Jessica Chastain Shopped at Target to Get Into Character as a Normal Person ‘Who Leads a Simple Life’ for Her New Movie.”
Soon after the story was published yesterday, Jessica took to X — formerly known as Twitter — to criticize the way her quotes were presented.
“Such a shady & click bait headline,” she wrote, emphasizing that the experience of going to Target wasn’t a Method acting ploy to help her feel “normal” but is actually something she does “all the time.”
“The interesting part wasn’t that I shopped at Target (I do it all the time- best holiday decorations & school supplies),” she wrote. “it was that I got to get into character by shopping for my own costumes. That’s the not normal part.”
Since hitting back at the headline, Jessica has been praised by fans for taking matters into her own hands.
Just last week, Jessica admitted she felt “nervous” about promoting her new movie amid the ongoing strikes in Hollywood, revealing during a press conference in Venice that “there were actually some people on my team who advised me against it.”
Despite this, she still found a way to support her striking colleagues by giving a powerful speech and rocking a black “SAG-AFTRA on Strike!” T-shirt on the red carpet — proving once more that she isn’t afraid to speak up.
