So what did you determine that Megyn’s emotional need was in the story?

During that year and a half, she faced an incredible moral dilemma: She really liked Roger, and she gives him credit for her career and where she ended up. She’s also a very driven woman who didn’t want to be defined by [accusations of sexual harassment], and that’s unfortunately a big thing for a lot of women, where you don’t want the world to look at you like you’re a victim. Even a year or two after that experience, I saw Megyn speak at women’s forums, and the way she talked about it was in this really protective manner. Her defenses come up even higher, and she becomes more lawyerly and journalistic about it.

So as not to be portrayed as a victim?

Yeah. I think that’s just how she copes with her pain. Maybe she does it differently in private — I don’t know about that. But that was hard for us because when you make a movie, you want to have those moments where you can break a character down and just have her be raw, and there was nothing that gave me enough evidence that it was the right thing to do with her.

So how do you find another way to indicate those emotional undercurrents?

There’s this moment where the lawyer at her deposition asks her, “Any long-term consequences?” It was the closest to an emotional break that I could get because of the stupidity behind a question like that. I mean, where do you even begin? In one of the takes, when the actor said that line, I felt something break, and I didn’t answer the question. I’m so grateful that [the director] ended up using that moment.