Pieces Of Her star Toni Collette on how she learned to deal with the emotional trauma of acting

Toni Collette thought her roles had no effect on her mental wellbeing, but she reveals what changed her mind and how she deals with it.

Toni Collette admits she might have bitten off a little more than she could chew in the new Netflix thriller, Pieces Of Her.

Initially she thought she would be in for an easy ride playing a seemingly ordinary mother with a shady past in the eight-part drama, adapted from the Karin Slaughter novel of the same name.

But the more she dug into the deeply repressed trauma of Laura, whose wild younger days begin to catch up with her when a random act of violence shatters her fragile world and thrusts her into the spotlight, the more she realised she was fooling herself.

“To be honest, most of the scenes in the story are more intense than I ever thought they would be,” she says over Zoom from New Orleans, where she is filming the comedy The Estate.

“I think I was kidding myself. I kind of thought all the kids in the show have all the emotional kind of heavy lifting and it was going to be really cruisy for me. But that wasn’t the case at all.”

Toni Collette as Laura Oliver in Pieces of Her.

Collette says there was an element of “self-protection” about her sense of denial. The Oscar-nominated Aussie has been applauded for deeply emotional performances and her ability to disappear into characters. This skill was on display in her mesmerising role in The Sixth Sense, as well as her Golden Globe winning turn as a woman with multiple personalities in the United States of Tara, and more recently as a grief-stricken mother in the horror hit Hereditary, and a detective investigating a rape case in the Netflix drama, Unbelievable.

But after years of believing otherwise, the mother of two came to realise that sometimes acting comes at a cost.

“Over the years, I’ve kind of denied the fact that roles have affected me but it’s inevitable,” she says.

“Even if you’re watching something, or thinking something, your body doesn’t know if it’s your experience or your imagination.

“You actually have a physical reaction to things, whether it’s in reality or not, so it is affecting me. And I’ve had to figure out a way – I’ve got tools now – how to shake things off and to clear them away and to come back to myself because I can’t carry all that stuff around any more. I just can’t do it.”

The intensity of Collette’s performance in Pieces Of Her has been compared by some with her extraordinarily brave (and wrongly overlooked at the Oscars) role in Hereditary. Both characters are trying to maintain a calm exterior and veneer of normality while trying to suppress and deny the power of their seething emotions and indeed it was Hereditary – one of the most terrifying and disturbing movies of recent years – that helped bring things to a head for her in terms of self-care.

Toni Collette’s role in the horror hit Hereditary had a profound effect on her.

“Absolutely,” she confirms. “It really was. Because it was the first time I was aware of how I was being affected as I was making it. So I just dealt with it in a really healthy way.”

In Pieces of Her, fellow Aussie Bella Heathcote plays Collette’s daughter, whose life is turned upside down when she discovers her mother’s life has been a lie. The discovery she has been unknowingly living in witness protection after her mother fled from the cult that indoctrinated her as a youth leads to some powerful confrontations between the two, and Collette has nothing but praise for her younger compatriot.

“I hadn’t seen a thing that she’d done,” says Collette. “And the first scene we had together, she was absolutely petrified and I just thought, ‘Oh, little thing’. I just wanted to hug her.

“I really don’t like it when actors are forced together, you know, ‘go out and do this’ and create this false sense of whatever together, and start living that dynamic. It’s bullshit and I just don’t like it. It feels forced but thankfully didn’t happen.

“We just very organically and slowly got to know each other and we got to relax around each other. It was just like any kind of normal relationship of getting to know each other. It didn’t feel like two actors slammed together. I just really grew to love and respect her and care for her. I’m really fond of Bels and we both really hope we get a second season out of it.”

Toni Collette loved working with fellow Aussie Bella Heathcote in Pieces of Her.

An added bonus for Sydney-based Collette was being able to shoot in her home town. Pieces Of Her was one of the very first Covid TV casualties, with shooting initially due to start in Vancouver in March 2020, just as productions were being shut down around the world.

Australian producer Bruna Papandrea had already had a hand in bringing the Nicole Kidman drama Nine Perfect Strangers to Bryon Bay and was able to repeat the relocation feat, with filming for Pieces Of Her taking place in the Harbour City and the Central Coast standing in for the southern US state of Georgia.

“Man, it’s a luxury to be able to work at home,” says Collette. “I absolutely loved it. Not just for being able to sleep in my own bed and be with my family and have some normalcy on the weekends. But our crews are great – I love working in Australia. There’s just so many capable talented people, real people and that just creates the best atmosphere on set. It doesn’t mean it’s any less focused, it’s just that there’s just a different vibe that feels good.”

Pieces Of Her is now streaming on Netflix.