Da’Vine Joy Randolph is generating buzz and picking up awards for her performance in The Holdovers.
The actress co-stars in the holiday dramedy as Mary Lamb, head cook at a New England boarding school in the 1970s, who is grieving the loss of her son after he died while serving in Vietnam.
It’s a role that’s earned Randolph awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
The actress previously had parts in Dolemite Is My Name and The Last O.G.
At a virtual press conference for The Holdovers in November, she said director Alexander Payne specifically asked her to play Mary.
“Alex called me and described this beautiful character,” Randolph recalled. “I was given the script. And we kind of just walked through what his ideas were and what he thought this could potentially be.”
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Although she admits there was an awkward moment with Payne before she joined the film.
“At the end of our first meeting, [laughs] I said, ‘Okay, so yeah, this sounds pretty cool. And, if there’s any of your stuff that you want me to see, that you think could be [helpful], just so I can get to know you better,” she said.
At the time, Randolph didn’t realize Payne directed The Descendants (2011) and Sideways (2004), and won Oscars for writing both films.
Payne gave her a quick lesson on his background.
“He was like, ‘Well, you know, there’s Descendants,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, that one where George Clooney’s running down the hill in flip-flops.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, that one, and then there’s Sideways.’ I go, ‘Oh my God, Paul Giamatti and the wine!’”
Randolph got a chance to work with Giamatti, who leads the cast of The Holdovers as Paul Hunham, a grouchy and eccentric history teacher at the school, who’s forced to spend the holidays on campus with a troubled student who has nowhere else to go.
Giamatti was attracted to the story, in part, because it visited a topic very familiar to him, having gone to a private school himself.
“The character was fantastic,” Giamatti said. “I mean, I would do anything [Alexander Payne] wanted me to do. But I thought the story was great, the setting was great, the characters were great.”
Newcomer Dominic Sessa, who recently graduated from a boarding school himself, plays Angus Tully — a student dealing with the loss of his father who doesn’t quite know how to process his emotions.
Sessa had previously only acted in school plays and soon realized working with the award-winning team on the film would be much more serious.
“I think the movie was a little bit more challenging than what I’d done in the past. I think just because of the pressure of it, and you just don’t know what to expect,” Sessa said.
Payne revealed Sessa was chosen out of hundreds of young actors who auditioned for the part.
“I just knew I’d know it when I saw it. And you may know that the casting director, well, she and her staff had seen 800 submissions by the time we found Dominic,” the director explained.
The film is not flashy; but thanks to the cast’s strong performances, it delivers an important message about what it means to be left behind.
The Holdovers is playing in select theaters and is available on demand. You can find details on how to watch the film here.
