In The Presence Of Lucy Liu

Lucy Liu believes in ghosts — though she hasn’t necessarily had a supernatural experience herself.

“I do think there are energies that exist, and I don't think that's always obvious, but... when you get an epiphany, or when there is a near miss, I don't think that's a coincidence,” Liu tells Inverse.

But it wasn’t a belief in ghosts that drew her to Steven Soderbergh’s unusual new horror movie, Presence. A ghost story told exclusively from the ghost’s point of view, Presence follows a family, led by Lucy Liu’s Rebecca and Chris Sullivan’s Chris, who move into a new house after their teenage daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) experiences a traumatic event. It’s not long before Chloe starts to sense a presence in the house, one that she’s convinced is trying to communicate with her.

“This business or this career or this passion, it's already a risk.”

It’s a unique approach for a horror movie that excited Liu as soon as she heard about it, especially since Steven Soderbergh was attached. To be given the chance to work with the iconic director for the first time, and on such a novel idea, was just the kind of risk she’d long wanted to take in her career. So when given the chance, she took it.

“Steven has always been somebody who challenges himself continually,” Liu says. “This business or this career or this passion, it's already a risk. But then to be in a relationship with somebody who's willing to jump off the cliff that’s even higher than you thought, it gives you this reinvigorated energy.”

Inverse spoke with Liu about collaborating with Soderbergh for the first time, why she likes to take creative risks, and what it’s like working with a camera that becomes a character.

How did Presence come to you? What drew you to the script?

I got a call that Steven wanted to have a meeting with me, and so we sat down and just had a conversation about ourselves and our lives, nothing to do with the project. And then, at the end of the meeting, which I think was over three hours, he sent me the script by email, and I read it, and I read it again as soon as I finished. There's so many things that are not explained, which I loved, and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. So I was intrigued. That's how it all started.

Rebecca is a complicated character who's almost hard to like because of her obvious preference for one of her children. As an actor, is it challenging to find empathy for flawed characters?

There's so much complexity in people. I sometimes find that when you look at the final product of somebody, you don't know the history of where they've come from. And I often think that it becomes so limiting when you look at it that way.

For Rebecca, she has obviously had love before in her life between her and her husband, and something changed along the way that made their relationship and their communication less dignified. And it could have been because of having children, or it could have happened before then or even after. But what I'm trying to say is that I don't think everyone is so black and white.

I think the beauty of this script that David Koepp wrote is that the transformation that the characters have as a family are not so obvious until the end. The decisions and the choices that she makes are so clearly uncomfortable for the audience, but at the end, the loss and the grieving a person has changes the way that they perceive the world. And that's what ultimately had to happen to her and for her to understand what her daughter was going through.

And sometimes, life gets in the way of your senses, and I don't mean your common sense. I just mean your ability to connect, see, hear, taste, smell. All of it becomes so lost when you get so busy or when you get so hyper-focused on something. And I think she really had a plan, and it didn't work out according to how she wanted it to go. Oftentimes, that happens in real life, where you really have a goal, or you're so myopic about something and you lose your way because you let everything else fall by the wayside.

So I think it's not about being likable or not likable, it's more about the history or the hidden history that a character has that we don't know about. We don't know the whole story, and that's something that I find fascinating.

“We're all on board to discover the next thing, and I don't think that that is something everyone can be invited to.”

This is your first time working with Soderbergh, who is such a prolific and distinctive director. What kind of expectations did you have going in?

Steven has always been somebody who challenges himself continually. And if you look at the breadth of his work, you see that he's always experimenting and that curiosity is what makes him so inventive. I think a lot of people think, "OK, this formula worked for me and it's really popular, and I know how to do this well. Let me continue doing it like that." And he's not really satisfied with that. I can't speak for him, but he's always doing something different and trying new things because he's curious about them. And he did say on the first day of filming, "This is either going to work or it's not. There is no plan B."

I think we were all quite excited about that because we were chosen to be part of this project that was a risk. And who doesn't want to be the first one to say that the world is not square or flat? It's like, "Let's go." We're so used to the traditional way of making a movie, like a wide shot and then a close-up and then a two-shot, and then a coverage over the shoulder. This person has a vision and he is going to carry it out, come hell or high water. There's no mutiny. We're all on board to discover the next thing, and I don't think that that is something everyone can be invited to. Even once in their career, it's a gift.

So I loved the idea. This business or this career or this passion, it's already a risk. But then to be in a relationship with somebody who's willing to jump off the cliff that’s even higher than you thought, it gives you this reinvigorated energy. And frankly, it gives you a new perspective on where you were, like, "Wow, I didn't know I could keep going." I'm encouraged by it, I'm very inspired by his mind and the way that he enjoys working. You can feel that from him. It's just contagious.

The movie’s unique viewpoint of the movie, from the ghost’s perspective, must have made shooting tricky. Did you have to make any adjustments as an actor working with a camera that was a character?

I think the only thing we needed to do was be aware of it with one another in terms of the choreography and not getting in [Soderbergh’s] way. He was there, but we didn't sense that he was there. And I love that the camera would move to another room, even though we were having a conversation. It made it feel alive and somewhat voyeuristic, I think, because ultimately, you, as the viewer, have the front-row seat to what's happening in this family and in this house, and you become The Presence.

Do you personally believe in ghosts?

I think that there are other entities involved, and I know that my other castmates believe the same thing. Some of them actually have had real experiences where they saw and witnessed, and I don't know that I've had that, but I feel like that's definitely out there.

Presence is playing in theaters now.