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Early on in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story,
we see Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole, a wom-
an in her midthirties who’s fond of oatmeal-
colored cardigans and whose Instagram bio
might read “mother, wife, actress, in that or-
der,” seated on a sofa inside her divorce attor-
ney’s office. Soon, she’ll dive into her story, a
six-minute-long monologue that’s equal parts
raw and precise: the story of someone who
hasn’t been truly heard in months, maybe
years (and a scene that will likely resurface
during awards-show broadcasts). But first,
Nicole is just a woman on a couch—looking
dead-tired in a wrinkly button-down shirt and
DIY haircut—waiting. When her lawyer (Lau-
ra Dern) finally breezes in, impeccably coiffed
but apologizing for looking “schleppy,” Nicole
glances down at her shirt and sighs. It’s a small
moment, but one that made this exhausted
mom, wife, and journalist feel seen.
Johansson also felt an almost eerie sense
of connection when Baumbach handed her
the monologue over lunch in the fall of 2017.
“It was the first piece Noah gave me, and it felt
familiar somehow, but not because of what I’d
been experiencing then,” says the actress, 34,
who at the time was embroiled in her own
separation, from French curator Romain Dau-
riac. “But maybe because of how I grew up,
and the dynamic between my parents—or
maybe because I’ve known women who’ve
dedicated themselves to their partner’s vision
and then come out of this decade-long rela-
tionship feeling almost like a ghost.” She adds
that she, too, has been in that place, and that
the truth in Nicole’s story was what excited
her. “I didn’t hesitate at all, because I knew
that I’d have the opportunity to say those
words,” she says. “Noah gave me that mono-
logue, and I was like, ‘Well, shit, come on.’ A m
I going to be like, ‘Nah, I’m good—let some
other actor have that’? No way.”
Johansson is relaying this anecdote from
London, where’s she’s in the homestretch of
filming next May’s Black Widow, which she
stars in and executive produced. A little over
a week before, Forbes named her the highest-
paid actress for the second year in a row, with
her 2019 earnings hitting the $56 million
mark. She’s just returned from Venice, where
Marriage Story premiered to glowing reviews.
By the time this story hits stands, audiences
will have also seen her in Jojo Rabbit, Taika
Waititi’s heartbreaking Holocaust satire that
delivers the emotional heft of Life Is Beautiful
with a spoonful of Moonrise Kingdom whimsy.
When you lay it all out, it’s clear that Johans-
son is at the top of her game.
“I am in a good creative period,” she ad-
mits, while also acknowledging that “every-
thing ebbs and flows, and sometimes you’re
riding a wave, and then the wave subsides,
and then you’re waiting for another wave.”
Considering her career trajectory so far—with
memorable roles in films like Lost in Transla-
tion and Match Point (for which she earned
Golden Globe nominations), plus a Tony-
winning performance in Broadway’s A View
From the Bridge—it can be hard to spot the
ebbs, though there have been some. After be-
ing called out for possibly appropriative roles
in Ghost in the Shell and Rub & Tug (she exited
the latter amid the controversy; the project is
now in limbo), Johansson told a reporter that
“as an actor,” she should be able to play “any
person, or any tree, or any animal.” (She later
clarified the statement, saying that in an ideal
world art should be immune to political cor-
rectness.) Two days after we talk, she’s in the
news again for defending Match Point director
Woody Allen, who’s been accused of molest-
ing his adopted daughter (an accusation he’s
repeatedly denied). To her credit, Johansson’s
critics will find zilch to take issue with in her
current films, both of which feel drawn from
the most authentic wells of personal history.
In 2017, during an episode of Finding Your
Roots, Johansson learned that her mom’s un-
cle and two teenage cousins perished in the
Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Jojo
Rabbit’s Waititi based Johansson’s role on his
own Jewish mother, as well as “all of the best
solo mothers I’ve known,” he says. In the film,
her character serves as a beacon of kindness
and hope in a world that’s falling apart. “I
wanted to show a woman who, despite all
of this lunacy that was happening, was ableWITH STANDOUT
PERFORMANCES IN TWO OF
FALL’S MOST ANTICIPATED
FILMS, PLUS A SUMMER
BLOCKBUSTER (AND WEDDING)
ON THE HORIZON, SCARLETT
JOHANSSON IS RIDING THE
WAVE. BY MELISSA GIANNINI.
STYLED BY NATASHA ROYT.SCARLETT JOHANSSON
to concentrate on giving her son a chance at
being a child,” Waititi says. Johansson, who
shares a five-year-old daughter named Rose
with ex-husband Dauriac, is actually “a very
fun goofball,” he adds. “It’s funny, because I
had never played a mother before,” Johansson
says, “and now suddenly I have two films back
to back where I have children who are, like,
eight or nine years old. Actors get to wherever
they need to go whether or not they’ve lived it,
but [these roles] had a deeper resonance with
me because of my own personal experience.”
Four years before Scarlett Johansson
was born in New York City to Danish archi-
tect Karsten Olaf Johansson and producer
Melanie Sloan, the film Kramer vs. Kramer,
starring Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman
as an estranged couple in a bitter custody
dispute, won Best Picture at the Academy
Awards. Several years before that, Ingmar
Bergman’s miniseries-turned-film Scenes
From a Marriage was blamed for a historic
rise in divorces in Europe. By the time she
was a teenager, Johansson’s own parents
would split. What Marriage Story, a contem-
porary take on the institution, makes clear is
that the trapped feeling Streep portrayed in
Kramer still exists, even in a supposedly pro-
gressive relationship. “Laura [Dern’s charac-
ter] gives a great speech about this facade of
equality,” Johansson says, “where the mother
is the Virgin Mary, and God’s up there and
didn’t even do the fucking. It gives you sec-
ond thoughts as to what true gender equality
looks like, and whether it’s possible.”
Baumbach hadn’t known Johansson was
going through a divorce when he invited her to
lunch that fateful day, but writing the character
with her in mind gave him the confidence to
try things he might not have otherwise. “On
paper, a seven-page monologue in a script
might seem daunting,” he says. “But I felt ex-
cited about it, thinking that it was her.” To be
promoting a film about divorce while cele-
brating new love also seems a bit daunting, but
Johansson, whose engagement to Saturday
Night Live’s Colin Jost was announced back
in May, is up to the task. “My ability to com-
partmentalize comes in handy when it’s time
for things like that,” she says with a laugh. “I’m
certainly, obviously, very happy and fulfilled in
my personal life, but I’m also a sum of many
parts, and able to access different parts of my
story and how I got here. It’s all valuable.” ▪