RUN — They say you can never escape a mother’s love… but for Chloe, that’s not a comfort — it’s a threat. There’s something unnatural, even sinister about the relationship between Chloe (newcomer Kiera Allen) and her mom, Diane (Sarah Paulson). Diane has raised her daughter in total isolation, controlling every move she’s made since birth, and there are secrets that Chloe’s only beginning to grasp. From the visionary writers, producers and director of the breakout film Searching, comes a suspense thriller that shows that when mom gets a little too close, you need to RUN.
A few weeks into the Covid pandemic, I sat down with a childhood friend, Kiera Allen, for a wide-ranging conversation about happiness, the day-to-day translation of a global pandemic, writing, and her approach to acting. Keira is a writing student at Columbia University, and an experienced actress. Run, Kiera’s feature-film debut, premiers on Hulu later this month. We dove into our conversation by talking about school and about how her professors made adjustments. Enjoy!
12TH STREET: So how are your writing classes going? Smoothly?
KIERA ALLEN: Yeah, God—what am I even taking this semester? My school made everything pass-fail so most of my classes have morphed into kind of group therapy situations.
My hardest class this semester is Contemporary Civilization. [It’s] like a survey of philosophy. It’s a year-long course [and I’m] in my second semester. We just kind of show up and talk about philosophy and it’s pretty chill—that’s my hardest class. [The professor for Contemporary Civilization] has said that he wants this to become a place where we can escape all that’s going on in the outside world and just talk about really interesting texts—so we just show up and have conversations. Then in one of my writing classes, [that professor] went in the complete opposite direction. [That professor suggested that we] remodel [the] class to process everything that’s going on. [The writing professor] replaced our weekly reading responses with a collective journal—where we share our impressions and how [they’re] impacting us. Then I’m in a psychology class called Happiness Studies.
(Laughter)
ALLEN: Like, I’m just studying happiness. That was the easiest [class] to transition. We talk about how we’re happy and how we’re unhappy; that’s the whole class.
STREET: That sounds like something you would do on a retreat!
ALLEN: It is! The class is a bit of a retreat. It’s so interesting because it’s a psychology class and it is science and [supported] by studies and hard evidence but, in practice, it’s mostly just us talking about what makes up happy. I like it a lot.
STREET: That sounds excellent. I wish I was taking that class!
ALLEN: Honestly, I’d recommend any psychology class. [I think psychology] is really interesting—especially for actors. [I was just] watching one of the assigned lectures on the value of validation versus intimacy. It was about how everyone seeks validation in relationships when we really [ought] to be seeking intimacy.
STREET: How has your writing been? Any isolation-based writer’s block?
ALLEN: Oh yeah. I’ve had many panicked calls and email threads with my writing professor about that. It’s just because there’s so much noise. How can you give your brain space to think—that’s been my challenge.
STREET: What is one of the first things you’ll do as things begin to open back up?
ALLEN: The thing I’m most excited to do is go to the theater. [Pre-covid] I had tickets for like five shows then of course all the Broadway theaters closed.
STREET: Five shows! What were you gonna see?
ALLEN: How I Learned to Drive, and Company, and Hangmen. Dang, so many. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Laurie Metcalf, which was gonna be once in a lifetime, then they completely canceled the show. They’re not gonna do the performance at all, which is heartbreaking because that would’ve been incredible to see. But, you know, it’s obviously the right choice to close theaters; especially in New York.
STREET: I wanna talk a little about your writing—do you have a particular piece that inspires pride in you?
ALLEN: I’ve been lucky enough to produce a lot of work, some that’ll probably never see the light of day, but [the volume of writing] has been really formative for me and it’s something I am really proud of.
STREET: What is something that has helped bring out your voice or helped you stylistically?
ALLEN: I took a workshop [at school] with a writer named Heidi Julavits. [She is] a really, really incredible fiction and non-fiction writer and editor—who is just so brilliant and has this kind of x-ray vision on stories where she can see the skeleton and get right to the structure. [She] can see what you’re trying to do and where it’s coming through and where maybe it needs some adjustment. She [gives] some of the most amazing, insightful feedback. I just started coming into [her] office hours all the time just to hear her think out loud and to bounce things off her. She’s become a mentor to me, and a friend, and someone whose opinion I really value. Being in her classroom has definitely been impactful on me as a writer.
STREET: Can you talk about process and your relationship to school and personal projects amid the circumstances of Covid and quarantine?
ALLEN: I told my mom recently that I feel like I’m living in a kind of parallel universe where school has become my stress relief. Everything that’s going on in the world right now is so stressful that to just work on schoolwork feels relatively low stakes and low stress. It’s really been soothing to have that routine and to have something to work on. I’m honestly a little nervous for when summer comes and I don’t have that structure. I’m gonna have to work on building that structure for myself [because], you know, in quarantine everything can start to feel like one long day. School has been helpful as a training ground for trying to be creative under [different] circumstances and trying to be communicative, which I’m able to use in my personal projects. It’s been a series of experiments both in and out of school on figuring out how to adjust to these circumstances and still create.
STREET: Speaking of creating, I want to talk about your feature-film debut. In another interview that you did, when Perry Nemiroff asked you about portraying the character, you responded “She’s really kind of a hero, and is her own person and has her own mind and journey independent of her disability.” I was wondering if you find the character Chloe in Run as a symbol of empowerment or if you think the focus is on her wheelchair-use more than other aspects of her identity?
ALLEN: K: I’m very proud to be able to say that this is going to be the first studio movie ever starring a female wheelchair user since 1948*. So it’s a historic moment, and there’s excitement over that and probably some confusion and surprise and interest and curiosity as well. So I absolutely understand why people would be interested in that angle. But I’m very excited for people to see the movie, and to be seen and known for the work, because it is a groundbreaking and exciting moment , but it’s a great movie, and it’s something that I’m really proud of, so I’m excited for that to be a whole new angle that people get to discover.
STREET: Can you tell me about your acting process and any methods you prefer?
ALLEN: I’ve studied Meisner a bit but no conservatory experience. [In addition to Meisner,] I’ve done a bit of research on different actors and different methods and the way they make things work in their performances. Something that I find interesting is that two different actors may have wildly different processes but they [can] both produce excellent-quality work. Meisner really [works] for me … it helps me to free myself. The class I did at Maggie Flanigan was influential for me so [I feel free to] take things from other techniques and other schools of acting. My motto is anything that works. I will welcome anything that works for me. So it changes sometimes depending on the role and depending on the demands of any given scene. Sometimes I have a very structured approach and a set of questions or a diagram of the scene. Sometimes I need something a bit looser like free-form journaling on the character or the scene. Sometimes I feel like prep work would get me too much in my head and [in that case] I would just [keep the character] in the back of my head, in a less defined form, and let it come out that way. I experiment and it’s always a risk to experiment but I was lucky to be in a position with Run, where freedom of creative impulses [and freedom to take risks] was allowed.
STREET: Was there anything in particular that helped you to develop your performance of Chloe?
ALLEN: I did a lot of preparation. I spent [many] weekends at home writing—about the scene, about the characters. [I spent time] reading, doing research, and just figuring out how. That definitely continues to be a very important part of my [approach] as an actor. [Once production began,] I was shooting all the time, like, I was on set every day of the shoot. [I got] the chance to learn how to prepare and constantly be ready. [In order to be ready] for any scene, any part of the story, you have to [stay] connected to the character. [The experience of filming and preparation for filming] was extremely educational and helped me to grow as an actor.
Editor’s note: Run is the first feature-film post WWII to feature a wheelchair-user in a leading role (1). Academy Award nominee Susan Peters was the first wheelchair-actress to star in a major studio picture, The Sign of the Ram (Columbia Pictures, 1948) (2)(3).
Run premiers on Hulu, Friday, November 20.
Official trailer:
You can follow Kiera Allen on Instagram and Twitter.
Sources:
- https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/sarah-paulson-thriller-run-
- Academy Awards “Best Supporting Actress” nominee, 1943. Susan Peters, 1921-1952. https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1943
- https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0676688/bio?