“I want to write something new, something extraordinary and ...

“She’s sort of terrifying,” admits Mulligan, “but she’s got this underlying warmth
that she reserves for very few people, and you know that she has it for Daisy.”
Fisher calls Debicki, who held her own with the Hollywood heavyweights, “The
Discovery!”
“We didn’t know her work, we didn’t know who she was,” explains Wick. “Baz
said he’d found Jordan and that she was extremely athletic and tall. We said, ‘What
movies has she done?’ and there weren’t a lot of them. But then we went to a
reading she was part of, and though she was relatively inexperienced, she brought
a wit, a comedy and a presence. The fact that she was in the company of such
extraordinary actors and she was comfortable was amazing.”
“I hope that Jordan comes across as a modern woman,” says Debicki of her
performance. “Fitzgerald is very specific about the way he writes her: she’s the new
breed of woman that has literally just appeared out of thin air. One day everyone’s
walking around in corsets; and the next day some brave woman picked up a pair of
scissors and chopped her hair off. She’s not married and doesn’t appear to have
any intention of marrying; she’s feisty and brave; and she’s got attitude as well—
she’s not a people pleaser.”
“You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever!”*
—Myrtle Wilson
In stark contrast to the women of East Egg is Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan’s
illicit paramour, who lives on the other side of the tracks. Australian actress Isla Fisher
plays the character as a smoldering vamp with a tragic vitality.
“I love Myrtle. She’s trying to be independent and having an affair and living
this life, and she’s desperately trying to be sophisticated,” says Fisher of her
character. “She also has this kind of sensuality. She’s totally in love: she has a beating
heart for Tom Buchanan and she wants out of this Valley of Ashes, and, quite
naturally, she sees him as the ticket to freedom. She’s just a really great, complex
character who ultimately meets a very dramatic fate.”
“Isla is one of the true surprises of the movie,” says Fisher. “In the book she was
written as stout, but Isla is sultry, so you really understand Tom’s attraction to her.”
“I think the relationship between Tom and Myrtle is very important,” says
Edgerton. “Tom is the most powerful, wealthy guy in the story, and even he can’t
have what he really wants.”
15