NEED TO KNOW
Diane Kruger’s latest role took a lot out of her.
In Little Disasters, the German actress, 49, plays Jess Carrisford, a mom of three who finds her world turned upside down as she’s accused of harming her 10-month-old daughter, Betsey, when the infant winds up with an unexplained head injury.
While Kruger tells PEOPLE she “loved the premise” of the series, and loves author Sarah Vaughn, who wrote the bestselling book of the same name that the series was adapted from, stepping into Jess’ shoes “was exhausting.”
“I mean, I felt like I was having heart palpitations while filming,” she says of playing the seemingly perfect stay-at-home mom.
Instead of being cathartic, Kruger says it was “tough” inhabiting Jess’ mental state for weeks on end while filming. “Maybe, in a way, it was like, ‘Oh, thank goodness I didn’t go through all of that — the postpartum [challenges].’ It was truly exhausting doing that show. I am really happy with how it came out and everything, but I don’t want to go back there.”
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“It’s the emotional extremes that you have to go through,” Kruger continues, expanding on the challenges of playing Jess.
“There’s just so much every day that you have to accomplish, and it all becomes this sort of — one extreme of emotions to the other. And, over months and months and months of filming, it becomes so taxing,” she says. “It’s almost like a marathon that you run every day.”
A mother herself — she welcomed daughter Nova, 7, with partner Norman Reedus in 2018 — the actress says it was a “relief” to come home to her daughter after long days on set, which made her feel “lucky … that we didn’t have to go through” what Jess and her husband Ed (JJ Feild) did, as their friend, ER doctor Liz (Jo Joyner), called social services on them after Betsey’s injury.
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While her circumstances are very different to those of the character she plays in Little Disasters, there were elements of Kruger’s own experiences she connected to in the story. “I think the mom guilt for sure is there, even though I have help and I am as comfortable as I guess you can be as a young mother. But it is still a lot.”
“Any woman who is a parent, I think, can relate to — especially the first two years, and what happens in your relationship and how to navigate that, and then this embarrassment you feel when things don’t turn out or go your way, and you have to admit failure. You want to do it perfectly, but we’re all human, and it’s never perfect. But you try so hard,” she continues.
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Kruger adds, “I really felt that for Jess. I felt like — she loves her children and she wants to be this perfect mom and cuts the perfect grape every morning, and the cheese plate and the lunch box. And yet she’s struggling, and she’s having all these terrible thoughts, and her relationship is falling apart. I had so much empathy for her.”
The series as a whole intrigued the Inglourious Basterds star because it’s “a really interesting mix of a really entertaining show — whodunnit, what’s going to happen? — and on the other hand, really, what felt to me like a very accurate depiction of motherhood and partnerships when they become parents, and all the different types of parenting.”
“There was a lot that I guess, at this moment in my life, I could relate to and that I found interesting to explore.”
All 6 episodes of Little Disasters drop Thursday, Dec. 11 on Paramount+
