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Margaret Qualley, who plays Alex  in "Maid," spoke to the Hollywood Reporter about her relationship with Rylea Nevaeh Whittet, a child actor.

The actress who plays Alex in the Netflix series revealed that her job was to build a relationship with the child actor Rylea Nevaeh Whittet and make her feel safe and comfortable throughout the series.

Margaret shared, "The thing that resonated with me the most from both the script and Stephanie Land’s memoir — which, of course, inspired the series was just how much she loved her daughter and how important that relationship was to her. Her daughter was her life. Given the fact that I am not a mother, that seemed like the biggest hurdle to convincingly being a 4-year-old stranger’s mom. That was my starting point: to get as close to Rylea as I possibly could, to make her feel as comfortable in my arms as she could possibly feel, to make her feel safe, and to make her feel like she wasn’t at work and [could] have a great fourth year of her life. And then I was just down for the ride. "

"Maid" is an American drama miniseries created for Netflix by Molly Smith Metzler that deals with a young mother who can escape an abusive relationship and faces challenges in providing for her daughter. In the process of overcoming the challenges, she takes up a job as a job as a maid and takes care of her daughter. The series premiered on Netflix on October 1st, 2021. The series is inspired by Stephanie Land’s memoir, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive.

The actress told the Hollywood Reporter that they spent a lot of time together to prepare for the role and build a bond with her so that she would appear to be her mother on-screen. Margaret shared that Rylea’s parents would drop her off and Margaret would run errands with her to have a sense of familiarity with her. She quoted, "We were glued together." I love her, and it was such a gift to work with her. When you’re acting with someone, you’re both pretending, but when you have a 4-year-old asleep in your arms, she’s just asleep—you have a heartbeat against your heart. And that just makes you feel different."

Margaret Qualley’s real-life mother, Andie MacDowell, who also plays Alex’s mother on-screen, shared that she is extremely proud of her daughter, especially with her dedication and determination to build a strong relationship with the child actor, Rylea Nevaeh Whittet. She added, "She made that child an actress—you can’t get that kind of performance from a child. It takes so much patience, and she created that with this child. This child adored her and was so comfortable with her because she spent every weekend with her. Every moment that she was on set, she was with Margaret, as if she were her mother. They had this real bond—it wasn’t fake. It really made a huge difference, and it was a gigantic undertaking."

Rylea, Margaret and Nick Robinson during a scene in 'Maid'. Source: Collider

Rylea and Margaret grew so close by spending so much time together that in a particular scene when Nick Robinson, who plays Rylea’s character Maddy’s father and Alex’s estranged boyfriend, was yelling at Alex, Rylea felt the urge to protect the actress. Margaret shared during the interview, "She would get so upset and so scared by anybody who was being mean to me, because we were really close. For example, in the first scene that we did with my mom, she was terrified of my mom. And then I’m supposed to leave her at my mom’s house and drive away. But in reality, I’m laying on the floor, holding her ankles below the screen because she wouldn’t be in the same frame as my mom. She wouldn’t let me leave because she was scared [since] my mom had just yelled at us. My mom had to come over on Sunday to gain her trust back. She’s a very empathetic child. She couldn’t handle it when somebody was yelling at me."

Andie MacDowell mentioned that her character suffers from an undiagnosed mental health condition in the series, and her first scene with Rylea was a wackadoodle scene. She explained further, "I was painting, and they showed up as I was in one of my manic highs where my speech patterns were off—and she was terrified of me. I had a really hard time working through that thing, but then later we were able to explain to her that I was acting. And she started to understand what acting was, and she saw the real me, and I would go hang out a little with her over at the house and show her who I really was. And then after that, she liked me."

Margaret shared that when she read "Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive" and the script for the series, she just knew that she had to be a part of it, and she helped the team by casting her mother for the character of Paula. Talking about this, she shared, "It was probably the most selfish decision I’ve made in my whole life. I was quarantined in Canada, and they still hadn’t cast the role of my mom. It just dawned on me one day that there would be no one better to play this part than my real-life mother. I wanted to work with her one day and wanted to wait until we had something really juicy. And then I realized, "Oh, wait, this is juicy." I proposed the idea, and everyone was really excited about it. And then I was like, "Oh God, I hope she does it. But luckily, she wanted to do it, so she came out right away, and then it was heaven. I got to work with somebody that I’ve grown up admiring since the fricking get-go — my very first idol. "

Andie MacDowell as Paula in 'Maid'. Image Source: Research Blaze

The actress was asked about what she would take from the series or what she had learned as Alex. She added, "Your perspective has value, as basic as that might sound. While my circumstances are wildly different from Alex’s, I think that a lot of times, people in power encourage you to lose touch with your own reality in order to adopt theirs, to make things easier for them. I value more than ever how different everyone’s perspective is. And while we’re all living in the same world, we’re all having completely different experiences. I want to try to be as true to mine as I can while giving everybody else space to have their own. That is a big thing that I took away from the show. "

Information Source: The Hollywood Reporter.