Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby

What was the auditioning process like, and why did you want to play Daisy so badly?

I think it was about three days before the audition that I actually found out I was auditioning. I hadn’t read the book, ever; I didn’t really know much about it other than it was set in the 1920s in New York and it was written by F Scott Fitzgerald. So I read the book, read the pages of the script that they sent over, and then jumped on a plane, went to New York and was then in a room auditioning with Leo (DiCaprio) [laughs]. Luckily, I think, if I’d had longer to think about it, I think it would have been really overwhelming.

Did you find it intimidating?

It’s initially intimidating but then Baz (Luhrmann, the director) just made it like a circus. His energy was so welcoming and so playful and he just drove the whole thing with this sort of excitement and spirit of adventure, which was basically true for the whole film, too.... And Leo was really amazing. I had no idea what to expect, I’d never met him, and he was reading not only Gatsby but then moving and playing Tom (Buchanan), and then switching back and playing Gatsby. I was completely amazed that he would invest that much in one audition, that he would go so far to help you when really all he had to do was sit there and read the words.

Didn’t you cry when Baz finally phoned you up to offer you the role?

That’s right, I did [laughs].

But you did encounter doubts playing Daisy...

It’s just generally intimidating to adapt a novel, let alone this novel, so there was always going to be a nervous period. We took hours every morning before we started filming to talk about what we were doing and often we would film scenes for more than a week. It was incredibly useful having that time and space to explore. So I think any fears I had as I was going along, I would just talk to Baz about them and he would always have an answer or a new idea or a quick fix for my insecurities. He was wonderful the whole way through filming.

What are your own thoughts about Daisy? She’s described as attractive, compelling and effervescent, but also shallow, flighty and self-absorbed.

I always had to sympathise with her. She is very quickly villainised for the way that she behaves in the novel but I always had to empathise with the fact that she was a product of her time, that women in the 1920s were encouraged to marry for wealth. She was a debutante, she was brought into society and one of the richest men in the country married her. And of course she would do that. She had this brief love affair with Gatsby, who sort of lied about who he was and then disappeared, and she’s left with… what? With people wanting her. And she chooses Tom (played by Joel Edgerton). It’s not the most romantic way but it’s probably the most practical and probably the one that she would have been encouraged to choose. In that sense, I think she was just making the savvy choice.

Daisy’s style is integral to the film’s aesthetic. Did you work closely with Catherine Martin on Daisy’s look?

I have to say everything was Catherine but the great thing about her is that she always wants you to feel comfortable. She’s wonderful. Everything that I wore I loved. She’s got such a clear idea of how things should look, not just on the character but also within the context of the set and within the flow of the film. And she’s amazingly collaborative — anything that I wasn’t feeling great in or I didn’t respond to, she would change it up. Every time I had a fitting with her, it was fun. She always wanted me to look great in the dress and feel great in the dress. And, of course, these amazing costumes are half the battle in inhabiting that world. You put on the dress and the shoes and the make-up and the diamonds and it transforms you and you hold yourself differently and that’s a huge part of it.

There are some extraordinary outfits. The one which was a collaboration between Catherine and Prada was made of crystal beads connected by metal rings!

That was an amazing dress. We call it the ‘chandelier dress’. It’s heavy and after a couple of takes, I’d have to have it taken off because it would sort of weigh down on my shoulders. But it was really wonderful.

What was it like working with Leonardo DiCaprio once you were on set together?

It got better and better the longer we worked together. He loved talking about the book, loved talking about the script, so every day, me and Tobey (Maguire) and Leo would all sit around with Baz and we’d talk about whatever we were doing for a long time. Everyone wanted to leave the set knowing that we’d done the best we could have done, and sometimes that took more time than we thought it would. He (Leo) came onto set every day, was lovely to everyone, knew exactly what he wanted to do, and worked really, really hard. When Leonardo DiCaprio is behaving like that, everyone else follows suit.

What qualities do you think he brings to Gatsby?

He can wear a suit [laughs]. He’s incredibly charming and he really does have those qualities that Gatsby’s described as having at the beginning of the novel. He really does have that smile and he’s enthralling and wonderful to be around. He’s also incredibly funny. The whole sequence where he sees Daisy again for the first time and he freaks out, runs outside, gets drenched and then has no idea how to articulate himself for the next 10 minutes is hilariously funny.

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