Jackie Weaver stars in Woody Allen’s latest feature Magic in the Moonlight in which she plays a wealthy older widow with a fondness for the supernatural.

Living alone in the South of France, Grace becomes consumed by thoughts of the afterlife and the mystical prophecies provided by a seer. Weaver understands the character as someone with so little that she clings to the supernatural to give meaning to her lonesome existence.

“She’s very needy. Mourning her husband, she’s lonely and she’s grasping at any opportunity for comfort,” Weaver explained exclusively to uInterview. “And combined with that, she’s quite a naive, gullible, innocent. So she’s ripe for that sort of swindling — for that sort of trickery. And they’re the sorts of people that get preyed on by people who take lots of money to predict things.”

To play Grace, Weaver said she was able to imagine her mindset by channeling older, gullible women she knows in her life, adding, “I’m an older woman, but I’m not gullible.” Weaver doesn’t share Grace’s resolute belief in an afterlife either, saying that she tends to sit on the fence. “I wouldn’t say I’m a believer, but I’m not a disbeliever,” she told uInterview.

Though Magic in the Moonlight deals with the supernatural, it’s really about romance, according to Weaver. “I think it’s about romance and love. Like all Woody Allen movies, it’s quite philosophical,” she said. ” I think it’s the chemistry, that inexplicable chemistry that happens between two people.”

Working with Allen, Weaver didn’t have much direction – but she did receive some praise. “ I’ve got little bits of direction here and there. He doesn’t say a lot,” Weaver revealed. “A couple of times he said, ‘That was perfect!’”

Magic in the Moonlight, which also stars Colin Firth and Emma Stone, is currently in theaters.

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