Laura Dern Was 'Afraid' to Film in a Maximum-Security Prison: 'I Came Out in Heartbreak'
Laura Dern's latest film Trial by Fire takes on the real and heartbreaking case of Cameron Todd Willingham
Laura Dern was deeply affected by her time filming in a maximum-security prison.
The Big Little Lies actress, 52, plays Elizabeth Gilbert in Trial by Fire, the real-life ordinary citizen who took on the case of Cameron Todd Willingham as he sat on death row. Willingham, played by Jack O’Connell in the movie, was convicted and sentenced to death for the arson death of his three young daughters, even though there was mounting evidence of his innocence.
Dern and O’Connell meet at the prison where Willingham is being held in the movie, which meant that Dern had to go into a real prison to film the scenes. But it wasn’t like the previous times she’d filmed in a real-life jail.
“On other films I’ve worked in jails, so I’ve experienced it,” she told Page Six. “This one was maximum-security. The environment is invented to enforce that. Weapons were everywhere. You’re pushed around. I went in afraid. I came out in heartbreak. Like this was a waste of human life.”
Willingham was eventually executed in 2004 in Texas for the 1991 death of his three daughters: two-year-old Amber Louise Kuykendall and one-year-old twins Karmon Diane Willingham and Kameron Marie Willingham. His then-wife mother of his children, Stacy, maintained his innocence even though she wasn’t home at the time of the fire.
Trial by Fire, based upon New Yorker article by the same name, hits theaters on May 17.