Brie Larson Said That It Took Her “A Long Time” To Be Able To Enjoy The “Basic Things” In Her Life Again After Filming “Room,” Which Is Why She Hasn’t Done Any More “Dark” Movies

Discussing Room in an interview with AV Club ahead of its 2015 release, Brie explained: “I spoke with a trauma specialist about the sexual abuse and what would happen to a mind after you’ve been stuck in that space for seven years. Because it’s different than, say, a week in, you’d start to normalize some stuff.”

“Then I spoke with a nutritionist about the lack of vitamin D, about not having a toothbrush, not being able to wash your hair or face, lack of nutrition, and what that might look like,” she went on. “From there, I was able to find the fact in it, and then I could find a way to relate to it.”

But, of course, this took a physical toll on Brie’s body, with the star telling City News: “There was the physical nature of that, the lack of vitamin D, because I couldn’t go in the sun, and then on top of that working a 12-hour day. It took a lot to recoup at the end of the day; I needed a lot of sleep.”

The movie was also shot mostly in chronological order over 59 days, which meant that Brie’s first scenes were the ones that showed Ma and Jack trapped in captivity.

Then, halfway through, everything changes when Ma masterminds Jack’s escape from the room, leading to their freedom and her reuniting with her parents. 

“It’s not until she’s at home in a safe place that everything starts to come to the surface,” she continued. “She has to negotiate who she was with who she is now, come face-to-face with her mother and father. It becomes much more complicated.”

At the time, Brie admitted that the whole thing was “emotionally traumatic,” explaining: “To hold onto that level of intensity certainly requires more energy from your body than my typical day.”

“I had a lot of things to support myself set in place when we started shooting,” she shared. “I was really open with my friends and family about what it was that I was doing. I made sure they stayed close and mailed me care packages, sort of to remind me of who I still was.”

She also said it was no coincidence that the project she moved onto after Room was action film Free Fire, saying: “You shake it off by jumping into something else that uses a completely different muscle. You wear out certain muscles. With something like Room, I was like: ‘Next year or two of jobs, I can’t cry. I can’t cry anymore!’ I’m looking for something to laugh over.”

Reflecting on emotionally challenging roles during the Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actress Roundtable, the star told her peers: “These are things that are living inside of you that I don’t know if you would’ve given a life to [otherwise], and sometimes they’re really beautiful, and sometimes they’re sad and scary or keep you up at night.”

“The hardest part for me has not been committing to the characters, it’s getting out of them,” Brie continued. “I basically haven’t done anything as dark as Room since Room because it took me a year to get out of it, and it was really scary.”

“It took me a long time to be able to just do basic things that I used to enjoy in my life,” she added. “You hope that you have the grace of a line producer who’s scheduled it so that there are moments where you can offload.”

Brie went on to reveal that she didn’t have that opportunity while shooting her 2023 TV series Lessons in Chemistry, and the fact that her character constantly held in her emotions took a toll.

“Eventually, I was like: ‘You have to put a pop-up tent on set, and that’s where I’m going to go cry,’” she said. “Because sometimes it feels so intense, and I’m like, ‘I can’t do it anymore!’ So, you have to find ways to offload. I put a lot of board games on set. You have to find what works for you.”