No./9 The role that pulled Greta Gerwig back to acting
The lauded director is back in front of the camera for Noah Baumbach’s WHITE NOISE
Greta Gerwig shows off her “important hair” as Don DeLillo’s Babette Gladney;
“THINK TERI GARR in Close Encounters, but there’s a deep okayness to her.” Greta Gerwig is describing to Empire her character, Babette, in White Noise, her first on-screen role since 2016’s 20th Centure Women. She pauses: “I guess there’s a deep not-okayness to her as well.” In Noah Baumbach’s apocalyptic comedy (based on Don DeLillo’s book), Babette is, according to Gerwig, “the archetype of an ’80s movie mom”, from her lilac leg-warmers all the way up to an intense perm. Gerwig came up with the idea for the hair herself, while texting with costume designer Ann Roth, who has worked on everything from Midnight Cowboy to Working Girl. “There’s a line in the book about her having ‘important hair’, so I knew that it had to be great.’”