The Help: Jessica Chastain Had A Lot Of Fun With The Cast's Special Diet

Jessica Chastain needed a little "help" to get into character for one of her biggest movies. The Oscar-winning actor played Minnesota housewife Celia Rae Foote in the 2011 film "The Help," but she had to have a special makeover for the role. Because the film was set in the 1960s, producers were adamant that the women in the cast should be portrayed as a bit curvier than the females in modern-day films. That meant Chastain and her co-stars had to go on a special diet –- to gain weight.

In an interview with People, Chastain recalled how much fun she had bulking up for her role in the blockbuster period drama. "We all had to gain weight because they wanted us to be curvier and that was a lot of fun," Chastain said. "All of us gals in Mississippi eating grits and caramel cake. Oh, we had a really good time."

While the craft serves table is a staple on any movie set, Chastain made it clear that the food tables on "The Help" set were loaded with special dishes to encourage the female stars to pack on a few pounds. "They got us special food. It wasn't typical crafty," she said. "It was like full-on 'gain weight' [food]."

So, did the cast get to sample the chocolate pie that maid Minny (Octavia Spencer) was known for? Chastain didn't elaborate, but according to Toque Mag, the food seen in the film was the real deal. Director Tate Taylor hired real-life Southern women to whip up the fried chicken, ambrosia salad, and, yes, those chocolate pies in their home kitchens so they would be authentic.

Although Jessica Chastain enjoyed eating grits and caramel cake as part of her movie prep, she also added less tasty things, such as soy, to her diet in an effort to gain the 15 pounds needed to make her curvier, she told E! News. While she actually liked how she looked with the extra weight on her body, Chastain admitted that filming with the extra padding was hard in the summertime heat. "It was like a form of torture because you put on all this weight and then you're in the South where it's really hot and muggy and you're putting on girdles to suck you in," she said.

Still, Chastain seems to do whatever is needed to fully get into character when she takes on a role. For her Oscar-winning role as Tammy Faye Bakker in the 2021 film "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," she underwent heavy prosthetics and other procedures to transform herself into the controversial televangelist, per Vulture. "If you're going to play a character, use every tool that you have to help you tell their story," she told Digital Spy in a 2022 interview. "For me when I'm acting, I really like to let go of Jessica – of myself – and give myself over to whoever I'm playing."