Betsy Brandt, ‘Breaking Bad’ Star, On New Film ‘Claire In Motion’ [EXCLUSIVE VIDEO]

Betsy Brandt, who is best known for starring on Breaking Bad, now stars in the dramatic thriller Claire in Motion, which premiered at the SXSW film festival earlier this month.

Betsy Brandt On ‘Claire In Motion’

In Claire in Motion, Brandt plays the titular character, whose husband disappears under circumstances that reveal themselves to be stranger by the day. As an ornithologist, Paul often goes off on brief adventures into the wilderness, but never fails to return home when he says he will. When Paul misses the date on which he was to arrive back home from an excursion, Claire spearheads efforts to locate him that ultimately uncover a number of surprises about the husband she thought she knew.

“I think Claire really thought she knew all the variables in her life, and then realizes that she didn’t,” Brandt told uInterview of her character. “Maybe she didn’t know her husband so well, maybe she didn’t know herself so well. And it’s a really beautiful story. I’m very, very proud of it.”

Brandt is wary of putting herself in Claire’s shoes and making definitive statements about what she would have done in her situation. And, if Brandt could hazard a guess, she imagines that Claire would have had trouble predicting her own reaction to her husband disappearing and leaving a trail of secrets in his wake.

“I don’t think that Claire would have guessed that she would have struggled in the way that she did, or maybe couldn’t even let herself grieve in the way that she struggled with grieving, and how she reacted to the information that she learned about her husband, things that she didn’t know,” Brandt mused. “I love that moment in the film when he leaves in the morning and he says, ‘You know me.’ And it’s like, that comes back, those famous last words, right?”

For Brandt, one of the most profound moments of filming the emotionally weighty Claire in Motion came during a physical day of shooting. It was on this day that Brandt was led to a significant decision as an actress; she decided that Claire no longer had any remaining hope that she’d find Paul alive.

“I remember there was a moment, we were hiking, it was a really long day, and we were shooting in the woods, and fighting the rain. And, you know, it was not an easy day. And I just had a feeling that like I know that she knows he’s in there,” Brandt said. “It just became crystal clear to me that she knew where he was and that he was dead and… And I think that realization was so difficult because I realized the hope was over for her. And then I had to play that the rest of the movie.”

Claire in Motion, written and directed by Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson, also stars Chris Beetem, Zev Haworth, Anna Margaret Hollyman and Sakina Jaffrey.

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