Karen Gillan Is Hiding in Plain Sight

As soon as we meet Laura, we suspect she’s up to no good. She’s a crucial peripheral character in “Sleeping Dogs,” a “Memento”-like thriller in which retired homicide detective Roy (Russell Crowe), who is in the grips of Alzheimer’s, decides to revisit a past case, worried that he may have sent the wrong man to death row. As part of his new investigation, he crosses paths with Laura, a brilliant researcher in the field of psychology who worked with the murder victim, an arrogant professor. Did she have something to do with his brutal killing? “Sleeping Dogs” will reintroduce audiences to an actor they already know pretty well. Karen Gillan has been the star of two very successful franchises, “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Jumanji,” and before that was part of the “Doctor Who” universe. But as the brittle, mysterious Laura, she’s in a new guise, playing with the conventions of the femme fatale while also playing a woman who is, herself, perhaps putting on a performance. There’s something unknownable—alien, even—about Laura, which makes you distrust everything she says, even when she seems sincere. For a detective who has trouble remembering his past, she’s one more riddle Roy has to solve. For Gillan, it’s another chance to be a scene-stealer. I recently had a quick Zoom chat with the 36-year-old Scottish actor, who has an easy laugh and a modest demeanor. Despite her fame, she has managed to avoid being defined by any one blockbuster role—and, at the same time, is effortlessly able to slip into a low-budget whodunit like “Sleeping Dogs.” Just don’t expect Gillan to expound on her process—or to take any credit for “Guardian’s” massive success. Below, we talk about Cate Blanchett, winning the parent lottery and the luxury of being able to hide in plain sight.  When I watched “Sleeping Dogs,” a part of me thought that your character was a twist on the femme fatales you see in noirs. There’s something dangerous, seductive and untrustworthy about her. Or am I imagining that connection? I definitely took that from the character when I first read the script. But when I started diving into all my preparation of how I’m going to do this, that [approach] left my mind a little bit—I wasn’t like, “I’m going to be a femme fatale,” but that’s a totally valid takeaway from watching it. So what models were you thinking of for Laura? One of my first decisions about her character is that she’s a little bit performative—she probably watched other people that she deems to be intellectual or classy, and she would emulate them a little bit. I wanted to do one section in a little bit of a Cate Blanchett-style voice because I was just really enjoying listening to her voice—and she played a very intellectual classical-music character in that film “Tár”—so there was a bit of inspiration there. And then also a bit of Jordan Peterson, because she’s a psychology student—I don’t know if these timelines line up, but there’s a world where she was watching him going, “I’m going to emulate him because he’s receiving a lot of attention for being in the psychology space.” In her real life, Laura is actually putting on a performance—she’s trying to convince others she’s someone she’s not. I imagine that’s fun to play as an actor—a character who is herself a kind of act.  That was the thing that really made me want to play the role—I figured that that mask would change depending on who she’s with, becoming who she needs to be to get what she wants out of the situation. I think everyone does that to a very mild degree, but I just cranked it up with her. I wanted her to feel a bit disingenuous and performative, which was quite a nerve-racking thing to do because it could so easily veer into just looking like bad acting—and it quite possibly does. [Laughs]  Not at all. But how scary is that feeling: “Will audiences get that there’s something mannered about Laura? Will they just think I’m a terrible actor?”  It’s hard when you can’t see what you’re doing until it’s finished—I just had to take a stab at it. I remember actually filming myself on my phone just to check how it was coming off, and then adjusting it. I have my theories on [how Laura got this way], but we could totally disagree on who she is. Is there an authentic self with her? Is there something under all of the masks? That’s a genuine question, because there’s some personality disorders where there are masks and they don’t know what’s underneath because of the trauma that they’ve dealt with in their childhood. Actors wear a mask—they can get lost in a character. Is that separation between you and a role easy for you to navigate? I’ve never really thought about that, actually. I’ve never struggled with [that] separation. This is sort of my process: “Okay, [my character] is doing this—why would she do that? Oh, because she wants this. When’s a time that you felt like you wanted something like that?” Then I can be like, “Oh,” and just genuinely do it.  Because most of your biggest roles