June Squibb received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod for playing Bruce Dern’s wife in Nebraska, which received a nomination for Best Picture. A first-time nominee at 84, Squibb couldn’t be more proud of being a part of the Alexander Payne-directed family drama.

June Squibb On ‘Nebraska’ Role

As Kate Grant, Squibb played a woman, whom she believed practiced a commitment to candor throughout her entire life, is unfailingly loyal and unbreakably strong. “I think that she’s a woman who… she has no filter. She probably never had a filter. I mean I can see her being like that at 15, and she just says what comes into her mind. It all comes right out her mouth,” Squibb told Uinterview exclusively.

“I think she’s very faithful, she’s loyal to that husband and I don’t think she would ever leave him and she will protect those two boys to her dying breath,” the actress added. “This is the kind of mother she is and I think she’s had a lot to contend with – his alcoholism and now the beginning of a dementia setting in – so she’s a very strong lady.”

Squibb Talks Bruce Dern, Alexander Payne

Squibb had a tremendous experience working again with Payne – who’d previously directed her in About Schmidt – and with Dern, with whom she shared certain on-set habits. “We work very much alike, so it was great ’cause we sort of knew what the other one, how the other one was going to be on set and we didn’t talk about it at all,” Squibb revealed, talking about Dern. “I mean we just sort of went on the set and worked with each other. It was great.”

Thankfully for both Squibb and Dern, Payne knew exactly how to get the most of them as actors. “He’s a director that understands actors and that’s always great. He’s really a brilliant filmmaker, but on top of that he knows how an actor works,” Squibb told Uinterview. “What he did with me anyway, I would come on the set and be bringing what I feel [Kate] should be, and [that] scene where I told the family off and that wonderful word was yelled out, he didn’t know how he wanted it, so we did it over and over and over.”

The version of the scene Squibb and Payne settled on must have worked, seeing as her performance has earned her nominations at all of the major awards shows this season. “I was thrilled,” Squibb said about her Oscar nod. “The film had done very well with the Golden Globes and SAG and critics but I think we all feel the Oscars is the big one, and I was just thrilled to be included in that.”

Nebraska will be released on DVD Feb. 25.

– Chelsea Regan

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