Sister Act
Actress Rosemarie DeWitt has gone from Don Draper's mistress to Your Sister's Sister
By Whitney Spaner
Photographed by Katherine Wolkoff
"9:30 a.m.? What was I thinking?!" laughs Rosemarie DeWitt, on the phone from Los Angeles, the morning of our interview. The night before she was at a good friend's going away party. "She was sitting on my lap and I started crying," says DeWitt. "I share everything with her." The actress says it's because of close friendships like these that she's been able to play such a warm and intimate onscreen sister to Anne Hathaway in 2008's Rachel Getting Married and most recently to Emily Blunt in this summer's Your Sister's Sister. "Once you have girlfriends that you grew up with and went to college with, I think they start to feel the same as sisters," she says.
In the indie rom-com Your Sister's Sister, DeWitt plays Hannah, an artist who has just broken up with her long-term girlfriend, then drunkenly sleeps with her younger sister's best friend, Jack (played by Mark Duplass) unaware of her sister's deeper feelings for him. There was no script -- just an outline or "scriptment" as director Lynn Shelton called it. "Mark had worked this way before," says DeWitt. "So he was sort of a lifeline for me and Emily. We were like, 'This is really how you do it? Is this working?'" The three became super close during the 12-day shoot on the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington. Duplass lived in the immaculate, cedar house where most of the film takes place, and DeWitt and Blunt slept in an "even more beautiful" home on the same wooded property. "Literally every night we'd hear Mark outside -- like a little cat scratching on the door," laughs DeWitt. "He'd have to be really nice to us and we would let him in."
It's this on-set family feel that DeWitt -- who also pops up in the occasional Hollywood film (like this summer's The Odd Life of Timothy Green) and on TV (as Don Draper's mistress, Midge) -- is most drawn to when picking her roles. "You can do the big movie that makes a kabillion dollars, but if it's not fun, that's three months.... I want to be a part of something that's lasting and impacts your life. The more you get to do that, the more you realize it can," she says. "You can go hole up on a little island somewhere and come out with lifelong friends."
In the indie rom-com Your Sister's Sister, DeWitt plays Hannah, an artist who has just broken up with her long-term girlfriend, then drunkenly sleeps with her younger sister's best friend, Jack (played by Mark Duplass) unaware of her sister's deeper feelings for him. There was no script -- just an outline or "scriptment" as director Lynn Shelton called it. "Mark had worked this way before," says DeWitt. "So he was sort of a lifeline for me and Emily. We were like, 'This is really how you do it? Is this working?'" The three became super close during the 12-day shoot on the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington. Duplass lived in the immaculate, cedar house where most of the film takes place, and DeWitt and Blunt slept in an "even more beautiful" home on the same wooded property. "Literally every night we'd hear Mark outside -- like a little cat scratching on the door," laughs DeWitt. "He'd have to be really nice to us and we would let him in."
It's this on-set family feel that DeWitt -- who also pops up in the occasional Hollywood film (like this summer's The Odd Life of Timothy Green) and on TV (as Don Draper's mistress, Midge) -- is most drawn to when picking her roles. "You can do the big movie that makes a kabillion dollars, but if it's not fun, that's three months.... I want to be a part of something that's lasting and impacts your life. The more you get to do that, the more you realize it can," she says. "You can go hole up on a little island somewhere and come out with lifelong friends."
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