Da’Vine Joy Randolph was sent cigarettes by director Alexander Payne so she could practice smoking before filming The Holdovers.

In the new comedy, Paul Giamatti plays a grumpy professor who is forced to stay on the campus of his boarding school to babysit a few students alongside chain-smoking head cook Mary, played by Randolph.

As The Idol star had no personal experience with smoking, Payne sent two packs of cigarettes to her door to encourage her to practice.

“It was very important to him that it looked believable,” she explained on the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast. “He would say, ‘I feel like the act of smoking means so many things and tells such a vivid story. It tells on you if you don’t know how to do it.’ I don’t smoke at all.”

The Only Murders in the Building star noted that Payne sometimes asked her to redo a take because he wasn’t convinced by her character’s smoking.

“We sometimes redid takes because he was like, ‘No, doesn’t look right,'” she recalled, before adding with a laugh, “But what about the acting?”

In addition to her smoking practice, Randolph also prepared for the role by working with a dialect coach to perfect her 1970s Boston accent and coming up with backstories for Mary’s outfits.

“In my mind, I had crafted, there was a goodwill in the neighbourhood of the boarding school, and she saved up her money, and that became her ‘nice’ outfit,” she said of the dress Mary wears in a crucial scene.

The Holdovers is in U.S. cinemas now.

© Cover Media