Violet Wister (Greta Gerwig) is the indomitable group leader — though later shown somewhat dominated — whose central project is looking for troubled souls to rescue. “Violet has the element of the child who goes around looking for hurt birds,” says Stillman. “Her group is a self-designated animal rescue league, looking for ‘hurt birds’ they can assist. Unfortunately they sometimes misidentify a bird that isn’t a hurt; sometimes the hurt bird strikes back.”
Says Gerwig: “Violet has such strange convictions, but she stands behind them so firmly and tries to get everybody else to see them too. The more people make fun of her and tell her she’s crazy, the more it steels her to the task of improving the world and helping people improve themselves. While she’s convinced that she’s right about certain things, she’s also pathologically open to being wrong. She’s a glutton for punishment, which I think is very funny-she almost seeks disapproval so that she can improve herself.” Violet later also turns out to be quite different than she initially presents herself to be.
Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) is Violet’s closest collaborator and the two have a long back-story. While Violet is sometimes painfully open to other people’s criticism, Rose is more judgmental.
“Rose is the opinionated voice of reason in the group,” says Echikunwoke. “She tends to be practical, but she’s got some pretty strong ideas about certain things, especially college life. She presents herself as a bit of a snob” — manifest in her skeptical attitude toward a variety of men as “charlatans,” “playboys” or “op-er-a-tor types” – though much of this is almost certainly a comic pose.
“The Rose character is based on the Anglo-colonial Caribbean women I’ve known who greatly impressed me with their strong personalities and oblique humor,” Stillman says. None of this was in the character description when Megalyn came in to read for the part but during the audition Stillman asked if she could try it with an accent.
Megalyn had just been visiting a Nigerian-British friend who had a snob British accent. “The British version immediately clicked with the character,” Stillman said. “Though Megalyn did a brilliant job with the accent we always wanted to use its fraudulent conception in some way.” Occupied with pre-production and then the shoot Stillman didn’t write the Rose back-story scene until the morning before the shoot’s final day but it ended up a signature moment in the film.
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