UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Conjuring up the ghosts of "Grey Gardens" was a task that nearly overwhelmed Drew Barrymore.
"I was scared all the time. I felt sick to my stomach all the time," Barrymore said of her role as "Little Edie" Beale, one of the subjects of the 1975 "Grey Gardens" documentary. "I thought I was going to die. I really did, because I felt such a responsibility to the people who loved the documentary and hold her in such an intense regard."
The documentary chronicled the tragic yet hilarious Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale — aunt and cousin, respectively, of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. The documentary captured the end of a riches-to-rags story of two women who had been among the monied New York elite and who were living in squalor in a decaying East Hampton home that had been theirs for decades.
Barrymore and Jessica Lange play daughter and mother in the HBO movie, also titled "Grey Gardens," that spans four decades and dramatizes how the Beales ended up with only each other.
"It's the most difficult role I've had in a long time," Lange said. "The big moment for me when I was deciding to do this part was — how much would I risk? And I decided I would just risk it all, because what did I have to lose at this point in my career? Nothing."
Lange was at the top of the list of actresses who director/co-writer Michael Sucsy wanted for Big Edie. Barrymore was not, however, originally in the running for Little Edie.
"I've never had this kind of dramatic role," Barrymore said. "You go from 18 to 58. You have to embody another human being that has been well-documented and beloved by many, many people. You have to sing and dance. You have to do intense vocal training. I mean, let's face it. I'm a 30-something-year-old who is obviously from the Valley, if you know what I mean.
"And I'm sure Michael Sucsy was wanting to jump off a building when he heard that I was desperate for a meeting."
But she fought for the role.
"I've never laid anything on the line or worked so hard for anything in my life," Barrymore said. "And all I can say at the end of the day is that I got to work with Jessica … I've never been given this chance before, so I wanted to do anything but not let them down."
"I can vouch for how hard she worked," Lange said.
If Barrymore's portrayal of Little Edie seems rather broad and over-the-top, well, that's exactly the way Little Edie was in the documentary.
Neither Lange nor Barrymore flinched at the extensive makeup required to play the Beales in their later years.
"Both of the actresses … checked their ego at the door before they even showed up on set," Sucsy said.
And it took a lot to make the makeup so convincing.
"At the end of the day, when we took them off, it was a tremendous relief," Barrymore said. "It's like you took 30 years off. But it was a very big bonding thing for us to sit in these chairs for four to six hours to do this makeup."
And they weren't just wearing all the makeup, they were acting in the re-created filth that the Grey Gardens house became — complete with garbage and raccoons.
"There was this one raccoon, Rosie, who peed on set," Barrymore said. "And you have not lived until you have smelled raccoon pee.
"It just was so revelatory that these women lived in these conditions … We had to put aside the 'ew' factor, because if we were grossed out by it, then we wouldn't have been authentic to the way they were."
"Grey Gardens" is also an elaborately mounted re-creation of the upper-crust New York world of the 1930s and '40s. Parts of the movie re-create parts of the documentary — sequences that are interspersed with the flashbacks to earlier decades.
(It's rated TV-14 for the sparing use of the f-word.)
The writers had access to all of Big Edie's journals, poetry and letters.
"It was like hitting the jackpot in terms of research," Sucsy said. "There were huge gaps of things that were missing, but everything in the story comes from something. Nothing was made up out of whole cloth. We really, really tried to make everything as historically (accurate)."
At the time that the Beales' plight became public, Jackie Onassis and other relatives were on the receiving end of rather vicious criticism in the New York tabloids. Criticism that, as it turned out, was unwarranted.
In HBO's "Grey Gardens," Onassis (Jeanne Tripplehorn) appears briefly, and it's in no way a hatchet job.
"We tried to show that the family was caring and that they had the best intentions at heart," Suczy said.
The telefilm neither canonizes nor villainizes the Beales. While Big Edie has been criticized in some quarters for ruining her daughter's life, Lange certainly doesn't see it that way.
"I'm sure there's going to be a lot of debate about that … Did she hinder her child, or did she actually enrich her child's life? I tend to believe the latter, because I think this is kind of a rare love story," Lange said.
"I think these two women were meant to be together and were meant to stay together," she said. "I think there was something in their makeup and their attachment and their dependency on one another that kind of did not allow them to lead what we would consider a normal life. Or what you would consider a normal mother/daughter relationship.
"But I actually think Big Edie was a fabulous mother," Lange said. "I mean, she adored this girl. They had the greatest kind of shared sense of humor. When you watch the documentary, you can see the way they enjoy each other. I think they kept each other entertained for 40 years. And I think that says a lot for any relationship."
If you watch …
What: "Grey Gardens"
When: Premieres April 18, 9 p.m. (It will be repeated frequently.)
Channel: HBO
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com