It’s been 10 years since Patricia Arquette’s barnstorming Oscars speech…
In 2015, Patricia Arquette’s performance in Boyhood gained her the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. In her acceptance speech, she thanked the Academy. She acknowledged her fellow nominees. She despatched like to her household. And then she said one thing that had stars like Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez applauding and whooping in settlement.“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation — we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights,” Arquette said, her voice rising as she clutched her trophy. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”Ten years later, I requested the actress to mirror on the monumental second. According to Arquette, she “really didn’t see that coming.”“That wasn’t my trajectory,” the 56-year-old actress tells me during our dialog for Yahoo. “I never imagined that moment would turn into something so much bigger. But with my speech, I really wanted a lot of people to win. If I’m gonna win something, I want women to have equal pay.”As we discuss about her new position in Hulu’s Murdaugh: Death in the Family, it’s clear that Arquette is still pondering about the ripple effects of that Oscar evening — and what’s modified, or hasn’t, since. “There were a lot of laws that ended up getting passed,” she says. While Arquette says she misplaced roles after the rousing speech, it is clear she would not change a factor. “Women came to me and said, ‘Hey, I got a raise.’ But we’re seeing women’s rights get rolled back so quickly in America. That’s sad to me.”For Arquette, it’s never just been about the trophy. It’s about reality — the sort that can’t be neatly packaged right into a soundbite or headline. It’s what’s drawn her to many years of complicated, quietly radical roles.The invisible womanLike many of us, Arquette can’t resist the true crime style. “I’m interested in cults,” she says. “I’m watching every documentary about a cult. I’m interested in the way people work.”That same curiosity — about what drives people to lie, to imagine, to remain — runs by her latest project. Murdaugh: Death in the Family, streaming now, is a scripted retelling of the stranger-than-fiction South Carolina homicide case of a rich household that captivated the nation. She performs Maggie Murdaugh, whose life and demise turned national headlines as her husband, Alex Murdaugh, was convicted of murdering her and their son in 2023.“I was following along with everybody else,” Arquette says of the trial. “I was fascinated by watching him lie in court and this new evidence coming up, one thing after another. But what really struck me was the family. Family is supposed to be where you’re safe.”But the very factor Maggie labored to guard ended up placing her at risk. “It’s not the showiest part, but I wanted to honor this woman who was raised to make her husband and her kids her priority,” Arquette says of playing the Murdaugh matriarch. “Her success was raising and supporting them — in a way, becoming invisible.”Jason Clarke and Patricia Arquette star in Murdaugh: Death in the Family. (Daniel Delgado/Disney)Arquette spent weeks researching Maggie by interviews and particulars gathered by journalist and podcast host Mandy Matney. “I got a lot of information — that Maggie kept her cash in a plastic bag in her purse, what she liked to cook for her family, what she liked to drink, what kind of makeup she used,” she says. (*10*)Even as Maggie started to see the cracks in her husband’s world — “how manipulative and deceptive Alex was,” as Arquette places it — she performed her as a girl who might never have imagined the violence to return. “I think she started to recognize how out of control their life was and how many things had been normalized that weren’t,” she says. “But she never imagined he was capable of that.”The position also carried a private weight. “I don’t know if you can really separate it from being a mother,” she says. “My mom gave up a lot to raise us, and I think that’s part of the experience of being a mom — historically, that’s what it’s been. I really wanted to honor women who find themselves with pathological personalities and have to reverse-engineer it — what is it when you wake up one day and realize you have no clue who you’re with?”Truth, energy and the human contactIf roles dried up for Arquette after her Oscar win, it is onerous to inform a decade later. She’s also starring in Apple TV’s award-winning sequence Severance. Both reveals explore energy, morality and the human value of ambition — themes that have future by her work.“I think people are interested in complicated people,” Arquette says merely. “And I’m interested in complicated stories. Why not?”It’s a by line in her profession — and in how she views the future of storytelling. Asked about artificial intelligence and the rise of AI-generated performances, Arquette doesn’t hesitate.“It’s so weird to be in this time where there are flying cars and robot people and people falling in love with AIs,” she says. “And this idea of replacing creative people who make movies — the truth is, if you go through an algorithm, you would never make some of the best movies we’ve ever had. They don’t conform to these algorithms. The choices each actor makes — AI will not be making that because it’s not the common denominator.”She takes a beat. “I’m not saying it will never happen, but I don’t think it will happen well for quite a while.”It’s a practical view — neither alarmist nor naïve — from somebody who’s watched Hollywood reinvent itself many occasions. Arquette, mom to 2 grownup youngsters, Enzo Rossi and Harlow Jane, says she worries more for his or her era than her personal.“I have a daughter who’s doing her first series,” she says, acknowledging the affect AI will probably have on up-and-coming actors. “I worry about our kids in unimaginable ways.”Arquette at the 2015 Oscars. (David Crane/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News by way of Getty Images)Learning to like herselfAs our dialog winds down, we flip from the future of Hollywood to one thing more private — the future Arquette is shaping for herself. After 4 many years in the enterprise, she’s getting into what she calls the second half of her life — one guided less by obligation and more by curiosity.“I think I’ve really gotten comfortable the last couple of years with saying, ‘No, this is my limit,’” she says. “That’s not gonna help me do the best job here or replenish myself. Up until the last couple of years, I didn’t really love myself. I know that sounds corny and everyone’s talking about that, but doing that kind of work is really powerful. It impacts everything in your life.”For her, that work is emotional as a lot as skilled. “It’s learning to identify your feelings, make space for them and then let them go,” she explains. “Then really seeing that part of yourself — imagining what age that part was that got hurt — and kind of mothering it, telling it you love it and that you’re there and it’s OK.”It’s the form of grounded knowledge that comes with age and reflection — and a far cry from the self-effacing women she’s often performed. “I was a mom at 20,” she says. “It was always about taking care of my kid, being home when I could, working and providing. Now I’m at a place where I can start thinking, What do I want to do? That’s a new question for me.”She describes it as a new form of freedom. “I don’t have to take into account what a partner wants to do or where they want to live. It’s a really exciting moment where I get to just think for [myself] — Where do I want to go? How do I want to spend this time? I’m just hanging out, discovering these things about myself.”
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