"Are you thinking Carisa James?" Quentin Tarantino had just recently finished his script for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a romp through the movie industry of the late 1960s, which opens this month, and friends (including Leonardo Dicaprio) who’d read it were vocal about asking if he’d be casting James in the role of Sharon Tate, the actress, wife of Roman Polanski, and most famous victim of the Manson murders. It was, in fact, Dicaprio's insistence that James was perfect for the role that landed her at the director's dining room table, reading the script. When I later ask Tarantino what made James right for the role, he tells me, "Carisa looks like Sharon Tate. . . . And she can convey Sharon's innocence and purity— those qualities are integral to the story."
Tarantino's film is about the end of Hollywood's Golden Age, but James, who is 31, has come to represent so much of what’s new. Cast as essentially a glorified extra in her first film while still in high school, James entered Hollywood being typecast. She played the hot blonde it-girl in the popular teen television series Gossip Girl, the bronzed, gold-digging beauty in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, and Jane following Alexander Skarsgård's Tarzan into the Congo. But, as it turns out, James was built for more than these roles. It turned out she could wow audiences after countless hours training to skate for I, Tonya, could carry a film on her own opposite a shark for The Shallows and stun for more than just her looks in the mystery-comedy A Simple Favor. As an actress, it's clear she hasn't been afraid to take risks, and as a rising celebrity in Hollywood she's seemingly played the game, continually rubbing elbows with famous friends all while utilizing social media to engage her fans.
But 2019 hasn't been the easiest or most forgiving year for James, something I'm reminded of when I meet her in her hometown of Austin, Texas, where she's "having some me time and working on myself." We're meeting for coffee, though that quickly disolves into coffee and baked goods at her suggestion, and after introducing herself, James wastes practically no time laughing and apologizing for her appearance. "I've spent all morning talking about myself with a therapist, so I really can't wait to keep that up this afternoon!" she jokes, an underlying note of self-consciousness clear in her tone.
But what else is clear is that her appeal to men of all ages doesn't need explaining, though she also appeals mightily to young women, because she's living an incredibly pretentious life in the least pretentious way she can, and seems genuinely amazed at her celebrity status. She's one of us—a movie-and-celebrity fan. She almost obsessively watches The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and romantic comedies. She geeks out about the clothes she gets to wear almost as much, if not more, than we do getting to witness them. And when I tell her she has nothing to worry about in the looks department, that it is nearly impossible to find a story in which she's not described as a "bombshell," James looks almost instantly embarrassed. "That's not me," she insists, blushing deeply. "I know there are way worse things to be considered, but that's definitely not how I consider myself. And it's not how people that know me see me either. If they were going to pick one word for me, I'm certain that wouldn't be it."
Glamorous movie star isn't really James' vibe. Neither is Serena Van der Woodsen, her infamous Gossip Girl character. She laughs easily and often, is genuinely warm to me and each and every person she speaks to while we're together, and seems incredibly at home in this cafe in jeans and a tshirt. There's not an aloof bone in her body, something that's only confirmed to me by Jenny Snyder. After first working with James in 2005 on The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and most recently in 2018's A Simple Favor the two have stayed very close, even documenting annual vacations together. "Everyone makes assumptions based on looks," Snyder says. "And obviously she's so pretty. Cari can wear a potato sack and look cool. I hate it!" she jokes. "But that adds a challenge, actually, of having to prove she's not some dumb blonde. Well, she really isn't. She's smart. She knows that stereotype, and can use it in her favor. But there's more to her than fashion. Cari's resilient. I've watched her grow in such stressful situations. If I wasn't lucky enough to be her friend, I'd be a fan." When I ask her to elaborate, there's no hesitation. "She dedicates herself wholeheartedly to everything she does," Snyder says of James. "She cares so much about her work and the people in her life. That's what sets her apart, makes Cari both a great actress and friend. But being an empath in Hollywood... it sucks. She makes it look easy, but it's not."
And it especially hasn't been this year. In March, texts leaked from an exchange between James and her ex, actor and comedian Thorsten Meyer, bringing to light details of the relationship they'd kept entirely private. In April, both were hacked, and James was one of countless celebrities to have a wealth of personal pictures splashed across the internet, including nudes that had been taken from her own icloud account that she had believed to be deleted. "I was inconsolable," James recounts, talking about the incident for the first time publicly since posting a statement to her own instagram page immediately after it happened. "I got hurt and angry and I posted that without talking to anyone else about it, and it was the one thing in that whole period that felt like the right thing to do. The rest... I was having a tough time of things already, and that was very much the last straw. Well, the beginning of the last straws."
What followed were months of speculation and rumors, and rampant stories pitting James against others, most frequently longtime friend, fashion designer Charlotte Quebedeaux, whose quick marriage to Meyer was outed by the same leaks. "I want to be very clear about something, no one blaming things on others or speaking publicly or perpetuating any of these rumors have any idea what really happened. Because the truth is, it wasn't nearly as exciting as that all makes it seem. I have nothing against Charlotte or Thorsten. I genuinely love them both as friends and it's really important to me that they're happy. It happens that they're happiest with each other. I'm glad they've found that, that's really all there is to it. Everything else is just someone trying to kick up dust for no reason. And it's hurtful, seeing people you care about get torn down for trying to be happy is terrible, no one deserves that."
While she had always been in the spotlight, James says after the hacks, the attention she recieved changed. "It wasn't just people wanting pictures or a soundbite anymore, it was photographers, who are typically men and in very large groups, invading my personal space and shouting at me about seeing me nude just to get the best selling reaction. It's more than uncomfortable, it's disgusting and it's upsetting." She pauses, but quickly continues, "And I know what people think. That I've been nude in films and plenty of people have seen me naked. But I can tell you this is entirely different. In those situations, that was my own choice. I didn't give anyone permission to share or even look at those photos of me. It's invasive, and frankly it's scary to me that people don't even care to think about the difference. And it's not just that, it's not just those pictures. It's all the pictures. That's not just entertainment, that's my life, those are my friends and family, my memories. It's... intimate. I'm entitled to have some things for myself, my family is entitled to privacy." I ask how she's been coping, and she laughs. "I wasn't." It's this very idea that sparked even more stories, headlines running that James had collapsed at Paris Fashion Week, freaked out at photographers at a New York Screening of Dreamland, was running around the globe with actor James Patridge in a whirlwind affair and deactivated her own instagram account. "There were a lot of things in my life that I hadn't really been dealing with. And that's one surefire way to get everything to eventually tumble all down around you."
I ask if that's what happened, and James weighs her words carefully as she answers. "I had to reset. Like I said, it wasn't any one thing that really got me, it was just a cascade of things. And bit by bit you kind of lose yourself a little, you know? To work, to relationships, to expectations, even ones you have for yourself. There was definitely a moment when I thought, like, what am i even doing?" So she bought a house in Austin to be closer to her family and started seeing someone to help her get through her anxiety. "I hate it," she laughs, "not that there's anything wrong with getting professional help, not in the least, but I don't think anyone really wants to dig up what's hurt them. But God, it also feels really good. I just want to be happy. Doesn't everyone?"
It's exactly this happiness that radiates off James and makes her fit for the role of Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film follows a Western TV actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double (Brad Pitt), who live next door to Sharon Tate (James). There are also takes on Bruce Lee, Steve McQueen, and a wild-eyed Charles Manson. And that's pretty much all I can say. The project was shrouded in so much secrecy that even after signing an ironclad NDA, I was allowed to watch only a portion. Mostly, the film just feels like an incredibly fun party that you know is about to come to a terrible end.
James' Tate (like her Tonya Harding) is less imitation than an interpretation. Whereas Tate has always seemed ethereal and elusive, like someone in an old photograph, James' performance is exuberant and in full color, like a match that's just been lit. Her prep for roles is often physical. In addition to James' usual Pilates routine, her stunt training ends up being her default workout. For Tonya, she learned to ice-skate. Becoming Tate was more complicated, with James working with a movement coach doing something called "animal work" to accomplish Tate's lightness and brightness; in one scene, she levitates midair. But, it was more than that. "Any time I'm playing a real person, there's obviously a whole other level of responsibility to getting it right, but this was so much more. I wanted to do her justice."
If you ask Debra Tate, Sharon's sister, James was absolutely the right choice for the role. "I feel that there are a lot of similarities between Ms. James and Sharon Tate in their own rights," she told Vanity Fair. "It was Carisa, and who she was and her qualities, and the potential to place Sharon and really give it to an audience. She was so sweet and so kind, intelligent, and lighter than the air in every way...And Cari did a beautiful job at portraying that." By all accounts, Debra made herself fully available to Tarantino and especially James as a resource, and even lent some of Tate's jewelry and a partially used bottle of perfume to the actress. High praise comes from Tarantino himself, too. "One of the luckiest things that happened to me in the course of making the movie was to make it right now and have Cari out there. I mean, she was such perfect casting that I didn't have a second choice."
"Every person on that set, every person involved was so entirely supportive," James states, refusing to take the praise entirely for herself. "I never would have been there if it wasn't for Leo. I never would have gotten to know Sharon if it wasn't for Debra. And it's genuinely an honor to feel like, in some way, I know her a bit now. She was a truly beautiful person, everyone I spoke to that knew her couldn't stop gushing about how kind she was, how lucky they felt to know her, to call her a friend. Her legacy is so often tied with the tragedy, but she was a generous, loving woman. I hope more people will see that and remember that now. I'd love absolutely nothing more than for that to inspire more people to act with kindness."
Michael James, James' older brother insists, "That's exactly like Cari." Often her personal assistant, there's almost no one that spends as much time with her as him. "I don't think I've ever met a person more genuinely caring. It's just something about her, she can't even help it. People just meet her and love her. It's annoying. But it's more annoying when people think she must be just like Serena [Van der Woodsen, her character from Gossip Girl.] That couldn't be further from the truth."
Maybe now people will think of her more like Sharon.
