Lihi Kornowksi & Gal Toren: “Everyone in this society, those who try to make art and dedicate themselves solely to it, are victims in a way”
Hi guys, I do want to prep you both by warning you that I will be talking about that very intimate scene you both appear in at the end of Episode 7. Shooting a sex scene like that, I would imagine, is something at the beginning of the show as a huge icebreaker or you save it for the last scene. How did you both prepare for something like that, where it’s not just yourselves on show but also exposing the most intimate parts of people’s relationships?
LK: Yeah, definitely the most complicated scene was the sex scene between our characters, Sophie and David. This was also a scene inside a scene as Sophie and David are actors playing Sophie’s script, so it was really important to us to make it as authentic as possible. Within this process, Sigal Avin [creator] was the choreographer and we practised the scene as if it were a dance. She helped us to set the boundaries of the scene and, at the same time, it gave us the right amount of freedom we needed.
GT: I just enjoyed myself, of course. (laughs) From the beginning we knew this was a key scene for our characters and for the show. We set up our actor-actress relationship to give us room to make this scene work and feel natural. With the rehearsals, we went into the scene without even thinking about it, without feeling shame or anything like that.
I imagine you must’ve ended up having quite a good friendship off camera. Am I right in thinking you’re both involved in music, as well? Did you bond over that musical connection?
GT: Yes, so Lihi’s an opera singer!
LK: I was, but not anymore.
GT: You still are! And I’m a rock singer here in Israel.
LK: Gal is one of the best music artists here in Israel. He’s our biggest star.
GT: In terms of the musical connection, I don’t think it had too much of an impact. Both of us just love what we do and give a lot of respect to our profession and to art.
You mentioned just a moment ago that this sex scene is not just the culmination of Sophie and David’s relationship, but also their relationships with Alice (Ayelet Zurer). It’s a moment effectively told with no words - how difficult was it to portray such a turning point without any dialogue?
GT: For all of us, the story is a big mindfuck on our lives as well. We’re all actors, I’m married to a director, Lihi’s boyfriend is a big Isareli actor so I think we all got into the story with it having a semblance to our own lives. When it came to shooting that scene, we all felt a connection that was all over the room - the ‘what if’ of it. And I think in the finished scene you can feel what we all felt on set.
It definitely does come across in the final product. Lihi, as the show progresses, the character you play becomes more and more ambiguous and almost antagonistic. Did you try and play Sophie as unsuspicious as possible or did you ever want to play up to the audience’s expectations of who she was?
LK: When I first read the script, Sigal didn’t want me to know the end so I could play this manipulative and dark bad character. But all the time I was saying to her, ‘I have to read the end of the script because I have to understand the pain in her and her motivations’. So Sigal let me read it and I was allowed to understand everything about Sophie. So, I think Sophie comes across as manipulative and dark but she carries with her sadness and a lack of purpose. She just wants to succeed and make her film come alive.
Is it true the films of David Lynch ended up being a huge influence?
LK: We watched all of David Lynch movies and it was not easy.
What sort of things did you draw from them to help you?
LK: The nonsense character that Lynch always has in his movies. And also the very sexually open characters that he has. Those both helped me very much as it gives me very good artistic references.
Gal, you play Alice’s husband, David. At the beginning of the show, he seems like a genuinely nice family man, up until the point Sophie works her way into his life. How did you want to portray the progression of David from beginning to end? Does David change and did you have much input on how you got to play him throughout?
GT: First of all, I think David remains a nice guy throughout the show. He ends up a victim of the wishes of these two strong women, Sophie and Alice. He’s caught in this crossfire but just wants to sustain himself. To refer also to the question you just put to Lihi, in order to put ourselves into a thriller, we had to carve a lot of the nuance out of the performance and carry ourselves rather plainly. That way, the vibe, the music, the dialogue - it leaves a space for all of that to live inside the show and to create an atmosphere of stress and fear.
Gal, you were just saying David is a victim in the show, as is everyone to some degree. Come the end of the series, who do you feel most sorry for?
GT: The rat. (laughs) No, I actually think for the people who want to define their lives through art but have lost the ability to communicate with their surroundings. Which is most of us, living in this crazy world and looking for ourselves. Looking at everything through our own perspective and thinking this is the only thing that matters. Everyone in this society, those who try to make art and dedicate themselves solely to it, are victims in a way.