Jessica Chastain turned to Kardashians for style inspiration

Written by . Published: September 14 2017

Jessica Chastain turned to Kim Kardashian and her sisters for style inspiration as she created her real-life "poker princess" for Aaron Sorkin's new movie Molly's Game.


The actress takes on the role of Molly Bloom, who ran a high-stakes underground poker empire in Los Angeles, for the film, and admits she had to rethink her fashion for the part - because her character was all about her look.

Jessica reveals she felt she had to ooze sensuality as the former Olympic hopeful skier, and she needed a little help getting into the right mindset - and the right costumes.

"She (Molly) has this sensuality about her; I just feel awkward always," the Zero Dark Thirty star tells Deadline. "Even the clothes I was wearing in the film, it was definitely a choice, but it was something so far away from anything that I would ever imagine myself to play.

"I had pictures of, like, Kardashians in my trailer. I really wanted to show this story of this woman in society - in this man-cave - and how women get power in this society."

Writer/director Sorkin adapted Bloom's book of the same name for his film, which launched at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada this week (beg11Sep17), and he hopes the movie helps to paint a different portrait of Molly than the narrative promoted in tabloids.

"She was not the woman the tabloids made her out to be," Sorkin tells the outlet at the film festival. "There was much, much more to her than that."

And he knew he had the right woman for the role when they first met, because Jessica was already in the mindset to play the poker game planner: "Basically, it was like, 'Why are we meeting? Why aren’t I just playing this role?'" she recalls. "I was like, 'You should just cast me. What is going on here?'”

Sorkin adds, "If I had any doubts at all, and I didn’t, it was that meeting that pushed me over."