Glenn Close Says She Was Intrigued by the Character of a ‘White Woman’ Who ‘Lives in a Black Community’ in ‘The Deliverance’

Glenn Close talks about her character in recent film ‘The Deliverance.’

The 77-year-old Oscar-nominated actress spoke to The Guardian about her role as Alberta, a white woman with a black daughter and black grandchildren. PEOPLE published Friday. Close said she had “no idea” the best way to play the character — a cancer patient who only dated black men and openly flirted along with her black male nurse — but took on the role to challenge herself.

“If there’s one rule I try to stick to,” Close said, it’s to “never repeat myself” in movies. “Just for myself,” she added with a laugh, “I think I’d get bored.”

“Alberta is a white woman who has lived her life in a black community and has only dated black men,” Close explains. “(She) is a woman who has been a victim of violence and I think she has become a perpetrator of violence. She has found God in a very real way and she hopes that her daughter can come clean as well.”

Close explained that director Lee Daniels told her that “there are white women like that in every black community” — the same comment he also shared in an interview with theGrio.

“I was intrigued and wanted to do her justice,” Close said, adding that Daniels told her that “every black person knows a white woman like that, but not every white person knows a white woman like that!”

Close’s comments got here shortly after Daniels shared his vision for the film with theGrio. Daniels explained that audiences “have never seen this white woman before, but black people know her.”

“For me, it was so exciting to be portraying this character that only black people know,” Daniels said of Albert. “White people don’t know her. I think part of that is the originality and provocativeness that I try to bring to my stories.”

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The director also said he wanted viewers to grasp that they need to imagine black women once they speak out. When Alberta’s daughter, Ebony, first talks about supernatural occurrences in her home, nobody believes her.

“So often, black women are not believed. Look at Kamala Harris today, you know what I mean?” Daniels says. “It’s incredible. We don’t believe black women. And for me, it was about our women being believed. That was a really key part (of the film). I enjoy working with black women so much. They raised me. They protected me. My aunts protected me as a child. And so I celebrate them, their flaws, their beauty and their complications. I’m fascinated. For me, I was on the playground (on set).”