EXECUTIVE EDITOR, INTERNATIONAL & STRATEGY Andreas Wiseman
SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Denise Petski
MANAGING EDITOR Erik Pedersen
DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR Tom Tapp
PHOTO EDITOR Robert Lang
EDITOR-AT-LARGE Peter Bart
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, CONTENT, INTERNATIONAL Stewart Clarke
INTERNATIONAL FEATURES EDITOR Diana Lodderhose
BUSINESS EDITOR Dade Hayes
CO-BUSINESS EDITOR Jill Goldsmith
POLITICAL EDITOR Ted Johnson
FILM EDITOR Justin Kroll
NEW YORK & BROADWAY EDITOR Greg Evans
ASSOCIATE EDITOR, TELEVISION Rosy Cordero
SENIOR TELEVISION WRITER Lynette Rice
TELEVISION REPORTER Katie Campione
SENIOR FILM REPORTER Matt Grobar
INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR Jake Kanter
INTERNATIONAL BOX OFFICE EDITOR & SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR Nancy Tartaglione
SENIOR INTERNATIONAL FILM CORRESPONDENT Melanie Goodfellow
INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION CO-EDITOR Max Goldbart
INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION CO-EDITOR Jesse Whittock
INTERNATIONAL REPORTER Zac Ntim
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, ASIA Liz Shackleton
ASIA REPORTER Sara Merican
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Glenn Garner
STAFF WRITER Dessi Gomez
NIGHT AND WEEKEND EDITOR Armando Tinoco
WEEKEND EDITOR Natalie Oganesyan
PRESIDENT Ellie Duque
BUSINESS LEADERSHIP
Carra Fenton SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ENTERTAINMENT SALES
Céline Rotterman SVP, GLOBAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
Brianna Corrado PRESIDENT, ENTERTAINMENT SALES
Melinda Carson VICE PRESIDENT, SALES & EVENTS
Tracy Kain VICE PRESIDENT, SALES & EVENTS
Nadia Romdhani SALES DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL
Letitia Buchan SENIOR DIRECTOR SALES PLANNING & CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
Renee Amponin ACCOUNT MANAGER
Luke Licata SENIOR DIGITAL SALES PLANNER
Caitlyn Halfon JUNIOR DIGITAL SALES PLANNER
Kayla Eber SENIOR SALES & MARKETING ASSOCIATE
ART
Grant Dehner SENIOR DESIGNER
Paige Petersen DESIGNER
Terrence Ellsworth DESIGN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
EVENTS AND MARKETING
Sophie Hertz DIRECTOR, EVENTS
Laureen O’Brien DIRECTOR, BRAND MARKETING
Ally Goldberg SENIOR EVENTS ASSOCIATE
Maddy Situmeang EVENTS ASSOCIATE
PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO
Larry Struber DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION
Michael Buckner CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
David Ferino VIDEO DIRECTOR
Benjamin Bloom SENIOR VIDEO PRODUCER
Jade Collins VIDEO PRODUCER
SOCIAL MEDIA
Scott Shilstone DIRECTOR, SOCIAL MEDIA
Natalie Sitek SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
Nada Aboul Kheir SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR
PRODUCTION
Natalie Longman PRODUCTION DIRECTOR
Michael Petre DISTRIBUTION DIRECTOR
Andrea Wynnyk PRODUCTION MANAGER
By Baz Bamigboye
ON THE COVER
Denzel Washington, Ridley Scott, Paul Mescal, Connie Nielsen and Pedro Pascal photographed in London exclusively for Deadline by Violeta Sofa.
How the making of Maria first began with a movie and some take-out pizza for Pablo Larraín and Angelina Jolie.
BRIAN TYREE HENRY
RYAN DESTINY
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION IN ALL CATEGORIES INCLUDING
ELISHIA HOLMES, p.g.a. BARRY JENKINS, p.g.a.
BEST DIRECTOR
RACHEL MORRISON, ASC
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
BRIAN TYREE HENRY
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
RINA YANG, BSC
‘THE FIRE INSIDE’ IS A MONUMENTAL ACHIEVEMENT FOR DIRECTOR
RACHEL MORRISON “
Matthew Creith / THE WRAP ”
BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR
BEST ACTRESS
RYAN DESTINY
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
WRITTEN BY BARRY JENKINS BASED ON THE DOCUMENTARY T-REX
BEST FILM EDITING
HARRY YOON, ACE
Written by BARRY JENKINS Directed by RACHEL MORRISON
Premiere
10 Pamela Anderson
The Last Showgirl actress proves a star can be reborn.
14 Art of Craft
Going back to nature with The Wild Robot.
18 Fresh Face
Izaac Wang skates to stardom in the Sundance hit Dìdi.
28 Ms. World
Women are at the forefront of the international Oscar race.
30 Hit and Run
Fugitive director Mohammad Rasoulof on covertly making his festival hit under surveillance.
36 Putting on Blitz
Steve McQueen talks us through the process of his WWII film.
42 Top Docs
Netflix are coming in hot, but the non-fiction field is crowded.
Dialogue
60 MIKEY MADISON
64 MALCOLM WASHINGTON
68
74
80
Cover Story
Features
108 The Story of Sing Sing
How Colman Domingo, a cast of convicts and a true story made for an awards season surprise.
112 The State of the Race
Pete Hammond casts an eye over the hopefuls of 2024.
The Partnership
114 Angelina Jolie & Pablo Larraín
The dynamic duo behind operadiva biopic Maria sing each other’s praises.
talk about making movie music magic.
Cinematographers
By Ryan Fleming
Movie maestro Ridley Scott and the Gladiator II cast discuss his return to the Roman Empire.
By Michael Fleming Jr.
Singer Robbie Williams reveals what made him the fall festival season’s Better Man By Antonia Blyth
WHAT’S HOT, WHAT’S NOT, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN THIS AWARDS SEASON.
PREMIERE
Shine On
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
How The Last Showgirl’s spotlight revealed the real Pamela Anderson
Toward the end of The Last Showgirl, Pamela Anderson stands alone and exposed on a stage, while, for perhaps the millionth time in her life, a man appraises and assesses her. Anderson’s character Shelly is auditioning for a Vegas show, trying to hold onto a job she has loved her whole life. But as she blinks under the bright spotlights, the director, played by Jason Schwartzman, tells her, “What you sold was young and sexy. You aren’t either anymore.”
This may be fction, but, says Anderson, “I could feel it in my body.” The script told her to yell at that director, “I’m 50!” But in that moment, Anderson decided to insert her real age into the line: “I’m 57 and I’m beautiful, you son of a bitch!” As that scene played at the Toronto Film Festival premiere, from the darkness of the theater came calls of, “Yes girl!” and “Love you, Pamela!” Anderson’s business of late has been one of truth. She left Hollywood and returned home to Canada. She made a documentary, Pamela, a Love Story. She began appearing at events sans makeup. “I went home to fnd out why I had been making some of these choices, and with destructive relationships,” she says. “I wanted to fgure out, who am I? I wanted to be myself.” She had always been an actress, but her creative ability had so often been eclipsed by that old notion: a woman must frst be whatever is considered “young and sexy” to be valued in the industry. The world cast her in a box that began with her 1990 breakout Playboy shoot, but inside, Anderson knew herself to be an artist, a creative soul. Those old, limited assumptions of Anderson ran deep. Her agent passed on The Last Showgirl without even telling her. “He thought it wasn’t right for me. He thought I couldn’t do it,” she says. “At that
point, I was being ofered nothing. But also, I’d kind of given up too, in a way.”
But behind the scenes was a woman who had watched Anderson’s documentary and truly seen her: director Gia Coppola. “Because I was turned down within an hour, I knew that she hadn’t even seen [the script]. And I just needed to fnd a way to get to her,” Coppola says. “I saw a woman that was bursting at the seams of wanting to express herself creatively.” In Anderson’s documentary, Coppola had found herself “so impressed with her knowledge of art house cinema and art and philosophy.” She just knew that Anderson could play Shelly.
In the Kate Gersten-scripted The Last Showgirl, Shelly has been forced to ofer herself up for that audition because her long-running show, Le Razzle Dazzle, has closed.
It was considered out-of-date; actually, she was considered out of date. But Shelly loves dancing in Vegas. For her, Le Razzle Dazzle was a nod to the Parisian Les Folies Bergère, and an elegant and timeless evocation of feminine freedom. It had been a kind of agency and visibility in the midst of single-parenting. Until it’s taken away from her and she fnds herself at a loss.
“Obviously, there were similarities with Pamela and Shelly’s character traits,” Coppola says. “She seems so much a woman
that was turning her frown upside down and making lemonade out of lemons, and that’s so much of what that character does. It was this bubbly, bright spirit sometimes, in a way, to protect themselves. I saw that with Pamela, and although there were similarities because she wanted to express herself as an actress, I think that there was enough of a diference that it was going to feel exciting to her as a role and not just as this documentary approach.”
Fortunately, Anderson’s son, Brandon Thomas Lee, who executive produced her documentary, happened to stop by her agent’s ofce. He noticed the script on a pile marked ‘pass’ and grabbed it. When Anderson read it, “I felt it,” she says. “I had to do it. I felt Shelly right away. I knew it was right. There is something karmic there because if Brandon hadn’t made
that documentary and Gia hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
Finally, Coppola and Anderson connected. Anderson recalls their frst “really funny Zoom meeting. I was telling her, ‘Are you sure you want me to do this? I know I can do this.’ And she goes, ‘No, no. I want you to do this.’ We just spent a lot of time with me selling her and her selling me. And then by the end of it, we both realized, OK, we’re doing this. But I just couldn't believe it.” Now, Anderson describes the flm as “a story about a woman who’s been discounted and disregarded. She’s fghting back in her own way, rethinking her choices in life. I think it’s just representative of so many of us working against the odds to do what we love.”
Dave Bautista stars as Eddie, Le Razzle Dazzle’s stage manager, and Shelly is buoyed by the friendship of Jamie Lee Curtis’s
sardonic and unapologetic cocktail waitress Annette, and by fellow Razzle Dazzle dancers, Mary-Ann (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka). As shooting began, with Coppola at the helm, Anderson says, “It was such a beautiful sisterhood on the set. It was so wonderful to have all these women supporting women.”
Much has been made of Anderson’s personal life and of the tabloid fame phenomenon she experienced through her fve-year stint in the ’90s in Baywatch and particularly during her tumultuous marriage to rocker Tommy Lee, the father of her two boys. In 2022, Hulu released limited series Pam & Tommy, which depicted that era of her life, starring Lily James as Anderson. I ask about that show’s impact on her and she says simply, “I can’t be my past. I am so much more. You can’t have regrets, or you wouldn’t be the person you are.”
In the days following our interview, right before the election, an empowered vision of Anderson’s past work would appear. In a video titled Beywatch, set to the music of “Bodyguard”, a track from her Cowboy Carter album, Beyoncé cosplayed as Anderson’s characters from Baywatch and her 1996 flm Barb Wire, in a bid to encourage Americans to vote. In response, Anderson joked on her Instagram: “Don’t call me Bey,” followed by a kiss emoji.
When she looks back, Anderson
sees herself as a woman who has performed her entire life. “I had never been on a plane before I came to LA,” she says. “All this time I’ve been acting. I was playing, what is a model? What is a wife? I was acting the whole time.”
She is grateful she made the choice to turn away from the narrow space the industry had allowed for her back then. “I took a lot of time of to be with my family. It was better to be with my kids as much as possible than go down the path of this career that I didn’t want.” And the timing of this new career era feels right, in so many ways. “It’s even sweeter that I’m able to do this flm after my kids are grown and I don’t have a destructive relationship that’s taking up all my energy. I was a 1000% focused on the flm. It just really excited me and energized me that I’m inspired to work, and that people are looking at me in a diferent way.”
As we speak, she is fresh from the Academy Museum Gala—a star-studded evening in LA. “It’s always scary to walk into a room like that with so many of your peers and people you admire,” she says, “but so many people came up to me and were excited for me in the flm, and it just feels like it’s a diferent time and I just really am embracing it.”
At that gala, once again, she eschewed makeup—a habit that frst began almost unconsciously.
1, 2, 3: Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl
“I went to Paris fashion week, and I was wearing these Vivienne Westwood clothes and it was just my head [left unadorned]. I thought, I don’t want to sit in the makeup chair for three and a half hours. I thought no one would notice. It’s just this little head, it doesn’t matter. And that way I could go to the Louvre and see all these things I wanted to see. Then I went to the show, and I never expected that reaction. It became this whole thing. But I was doing it for me. I wanted to be myself, for me. I’ve had people come up to me with their daughters to say thank you, but I just wanted to be myself for myself.”
At the TIFF premiere of The Last Showgirl, Francis Ford Coppola was in the audience. He congratulated Anderson. “To have Francis Ford Coppola give you a compliment,” she marvels. “And he’s an honest man.”
That was the frst time any of the cast had seen the flm and during the standing ovation that followed, director and actors gathered on stage. “I’ve been getting ready my whole life for this flm,” Anderson told the audience. Beside her, Curtis said through tears, “The dreams
become a really harsh fucking reality, especially for women… I’m a product of that same reality.” Lourd cried too, as she explained how the flm had given her a new perspective on both her late mother Carrie Fisher and grandmother Debbie Reynolds’ experience. “I got to understand my mom on a deeper level than I ever had, and it was a beautiful experience. And to do that with Pamela was an absolute gift. She is a wonderful mother and was also a beautiful mother to me on this flm.”
Now, as we wrap up this interview, Anderson is of to the airport, heading for Spain where she will shoot Karim Aïnouz’s f lm, Rosebush Pruning, alongside Riley Keough, Elle Fanning and Callum Turner. “He’s a wonderful artist and storyteller,” she says of Aïnouz. “It’s a beautiful f lm. I play the mother. I’m really excited.” She has already shot The Naked Gun reboot starring Liam Neeson, an experience that she calls “hysterical fun”.
This unexpected turn of things is still hard to take in. “I just can’t believe it,” she says. “I’m just starting my career at 57. It’s taken me all this time to just be myself.”
4 Beyoncé channels Anderson in her video Beywatch; 5 Anderson with director Gia Coppola; 6 Anderson at the Vivienne Westwood SS24 show during Paris Fashion Week.
In Tune With Nature
How production designer Raymond Zibach added a painterly touch to the animated style of The Wild Robot
BY RYAN FLEMING
a
effect
When we’re lighting the scene, the lighter could basically paint in details or lose details. A big part of our style is where we put the detail and where we take out information.
“We wanted to make sure that our paintings captured the essence of nature,” says production designer Raymond Zibach. “When paintings are done really well, you get that connection through the art and through the artist’s eyes.”
There are 34 versions of Roz in the flm, just to do the dirt, dents, scratches and moss growing on her and the wooden leg.
Raymond Zibach.
It was important to have trees, shrubs, grass and ground cover, and all these bits and pieces that would get close to the ground because Brightbill would be very small and we might be shooting on the ground.
We created
painterly
that the lighters could use to change the look of Roz and loosen her up with the brush strokes, and even make her edges not as clean, which is a big deal in CG.
Roz is the only purely CG element in the opening of the flm, before the island has a strong effect on her. Her shift to a hand-painted style becomes more noticeable when another robot, Vontra, arrives.
In the frst couple of weeks, Chris Sanders and I were talking a lot about Tyrus Wong’s development art for Bambi. He had done these beautiful watercolors and pastels that were so emotional and really captured nature in a beautiful way.
We wanted a harsh environment that was always going to be another character that was going to be affecting Roz right from the get-go, and a big part of it was trying to capture the feeling of being in a forest.
“Our head of animation was worried the look was going to get in the way of acting, so I really had to convince him… and now he loves it more than anything.”
Raymond Zibach
It took a long time to fne tune the look of the hand-painted fur, but Fink
The plants and nature on the island were inspired by what you fnd in the Sierras, or any of the mountains as you go to the northwest of America, into Canada and maybe even Alaska.
the fox was the frst major breakthrough.
For the animals, we really simplify the painterly technique inside the animals on the shadow side, and then we enhance it on the light side. Much like the way light does work, it picks up more highlights, so we would put more little brush strokes on the lit side and not the shadow side.
Izaac Wang
How the actor developed his Dìdi character as a “more vulnerable, immature” version of his true self
BY DESTINY JACKSON
AGE
All smiles, perched in his gaming chair during our interview, Izaac Wang rattles of the fun things he does in his spare time, such as crafting theater performances at his fne arts high school, sharing memes on his secret Instagram account and playing popular online video games like Valorant. He wants to avoid the notion that he’s the same as Chris, his on-screen counterpart in the flm Dìdi, written and directed by Sean Wang (no relation).
“I’m very cool.” the actor says. “For the characters I play, I think of it as me, but in a multiverse—like Spider-Man. Chris is just me, if I was less awesome than I am right now. He’s a more vulnerable, immature, younger version of me, going through a difcult stage in his life where he’s surrounded by a community of people that aren’t as accepting as the people I have around me right now.”
In Dìdi, a mid-2000s era coming-of-age tale loosely based on the flmmaker’s upbringing, Wang’s character Chris is a complicated 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy trying to navigate the adolescent pitfalls of growing up. Chris yearns for a sense of belonging as he listlessly winds down the last days of summer before starting high school. However, despite his best eforts to try and ft in, Chris’s deep-rooted insecurities cause him to constantly blunder in his relationships with not only his crush, but also his friends and family.
It’s a nuanced role to capture, but a testament to Wang, who manages to emote the adolescent innocence and crass duality that Chris oscillates between on screen. According to Wang, who is 17 years old, it wasn’t much of a challenge to depict the ennui of a soon-to-be high school freshman, considering those days weren’t far
behind him. “Sean is an incredible director.” Wang says. “It didn’t feel like I had to try to come across a specifc feeling in a way [that would elicit] notes. One of my favorite notes to make fun of, because he always said it, was, ‘Do a scene as if you just got betrayed by one of your closest friends.’ That’s how we got through most of the dramatic stuf.”
The other director’s note that kept him anchored to the spirit of a wayward teen? “Be less cool,” Wang smiles. “I try to be more confdent. My dad always taught me that if you bring confdence into something you’re not confdent about, you can still be confdent about it. But with Chris, I had to tone that down because he’s immature and vulnerable. I had to tell myself, ‘Dammit, I have to be less cool.’ So, I guess you can say, in fact, that I am pretty cool.”
Born in Minnesota to a Chinese pharmacist father and a Laotian mother, the actor was headed to Los Angeles by age three. Though Wang’s paternal grandparents added a bit of a thespian streak to the family lineage, having spent time performing Chinese theater prior to moving to the States, it was not his family that initially decided their son should join the industry—it was fate. While running a new pharmaceutical shop in Moorpark, Wang’s father, Peter, the CEO and co-founder of Honeybee Health, randomly struck up a conversation with a frequent customer who just so happened to be a kids’ talent manager. “It was a happy little accident, and from there on out, I’ve just slowly been gaining the passion to be an actor,” Wang says. This happenstance eventually led to roles in Good Boys, Cliford the Big Red Dog and a supporting role in Raya and the Last Dragon, before he landed this frst leading feature flm role in Dìdi.
“I remember thinking because I had so many callbacks and me and Sean bonded really well that, if he doesn’t hire me, I’m going to blow up his house,” Wang says, jokingly. “I was going to quit. But then when I actually booked the job, I was ecstatic.”
Taking on the responsibilities of a leading role meant new opportunities for the teen to hone his craft. His frst challenge came when he had to perform a heated argument with legendary actress Joan Chen.
17
HOMETOWN Los Angeles
Wang in Dìdi.
Izaac Wang in Clifford the Big Red Dog
“UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE ON TELEVISION. A WONDERFUL PERFORMANCE BY EWAN MCGREGOR.”
While Dìdi primarily centers around Chris’s clumsy hijinks, the true emotional anchor is the fraught and tender relationship between mother and son. At the f lm’s apex, tensions arise when Chris’s mother, Chungsing (Chen), pleads with her son to make better life choices. Chris, unable to grasp her concerns, hurls a furry of insults at her before running away. Chen’s quiet resilience, alongside Wang’s emotional fervor, perfectly encapsulates the tug of war between parental expectations and adolescent rebellion. “It’s funny because that crazy car yelling scene was my frst time meeting Joan Chen.” Wang remembers, “And I can never rehearse to the same level that I can act; it’s a bit difcult sometimes, especially for dramatic scenes like that one.” To nail down the tense emotions needed, Wang’s instinct was to dive right in, no practice required, while Chen took a more seasoned approach. “Joan really
Quick Shot
City Styles
The Room Next Door production designer
themes
For The Room Next Door, production designer Inbal Weinberg says her main focus was maintaining a realistic New York look while incorporating director Pedro Almodóvar’s visual style. “Pedro has his own very strong aesthetic
style and visual language that he has developed over 40 years of flmmaking,” she says, “but this was sort of his frst time venturing outside of his known environment of Spain and going into a city that he doesn’t know well personally.”
wanted to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse,” Wang says, “But then, I was like, ‘We could also just do it.’ But it all ended up working out, and we got a good scene out of it.”
Refecting on the deeper thematic reasons for the constant strife between mother and son, Wang adds: “Chris has all this built-up teenage angst and rage inside of him that he just hasn’t been able to get rid of, and the only person there to rant to is his mom. It’s not that Chris despises his mom, he just doesn’t understand her. And she doesn’t understand him. But the whole thing with that scene is that you fnally see the moment Chris and his mom realize that the only way to understand each other is by talking it out, not yelling at each other. The monologue that Joan has later is incredible.”
Familial struggle is a resonant topic for Wang in his own life, as is the frst-generation Asian American experience. There’s a delicately-balance to that portrayal, including themes packed with complexities that require a skilled hand. Wang knew he had to bring Chris’s frustrations to life in a distinctly real way and he looked to his own family for inspiration.
“My mom immigrated here when she was young, and the same goes for my dad,” he says. “They had to learn how to be American [while growing up in Minnesota] in the 1990s. My mom and I used to butt heads over the most random, pointless things, mostly because we have the same personality. We’re both super stubborn and don’t give up. But the whole pro-
Martha (Tilda Swinton)’s apartment is based on a 5th Avenue apartment owned by a friend of Almodóvar’s, with a balcony overlooking downtown NYC.
“The views were very important to him,” says Weinberg. “In fact, the view that you see out of the windows is the actual view out of that apartment. We took plates out of that apartment and turned it into a photographic backdrop that we could hang in our studio in Spain.”
The interiors of the apartment were
different, as they had to match Martha’s life as a war photographer. “I got in touch with two female war photographers, one in D.C. and one in Brooklyn, and I visited with Pedro and the team,” she says.
cess of flming this movie bonded us together,” Wang admits. “And it wasn’t something that was an a-ha moment. It was over time. Whenever my mom and I would butt heads, my dad was also like our therapist—until he got tired of us—and then got us an actual therapist, that helped a lot. But being together for one month while she was my manager on set and working with her every day, I grew closer to her, mostly I think because of Chungsing and Chris’s story.” Luckily, all that work and butting of heads paid of. Wang received a Gotham Award nomination for his role, which both surprised him and afrmed his choice to move forward with his acting career. “I think of myself as chill,” he says. “I don’t get too high or too low. My brain lets me take things in without freaking out too much. But when I found out I was nominated for Breakthrough Performer, the news hit me like a truck. This acting journey has been a crazy ride and tough at times. Doubt is a monster I’ve fought with all along the way. But being recognized like this, knowing people appreciate my work, makes me feel like I’m on the right path. This is the most inspiring, encouraging— and every other synonym I can’t think of right now—news for me, and it’s fuel for my fre to keep growing. I’m still learning, and being in this profession is a privilege, so I want to do as many jobs as I can. But a well-written script that is meaningful to me and to others is always a winning combo.”
Now that’s pretty cool. ★
After shipping a lot of décor items from New York, especially books, Weinberg was able to work with Almodóvar to craft the visual aesthetic. “Pedro knew immediately what would work for him and for the style
of the character. It was a very good matchup between his style, which is very expressive in color and more stylized, and the New York City touches that connected the thread.”
RYAN FLEMING
Inbal Weinberg on blending NYC
with the Almodóvar aesthetic
Above: Inbal Weinberg. Right: The Room Next Door.
Izaac Wang with director Sean Wang on set.
FOR YOUR SAG AWARDS® CONSIDERATION
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ENSEMBLE IN A COMEDY SERIES
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES HARRIET DYER
“THE BEST TV COMEDY OF 2024 SO FAR.”
MASHABLE
“EXCELLENT.”
ROLLING STONE
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES PATRICK BRAMMALL
“ BRAMMALL AND DYER ARE COMEDICALLY FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS.”
COLLIDER
“SOMETHING TO BE TREASURED.”
TVLINE
Robbie Williams
The British musician reveals why his biopic Better Man made him cry, his early career memories and his undying love for Married at First Sight
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
When one imagines a musical biopic of storied singer-songwriter Robbie Williams, a CGI chimpanzee in the lead role is not an obvious choice. However, Better Man, in the hands of writer-director producer Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), sees that proverbial ‘performing monkey’, played by Jonno Davies, become key to a poignant tale of dehumanizing celebrity. As Williams puts it, “It is a very special magic trick. It desensitizes and sensitizes you all at the same time. We have deep empathy and compassion for animals, way more than we do for humans.”
In 1990, Williams shot to fame aged just 16 in the British boy band Take That. Better Man documents his early family life, his struggle with celebrity and addiction and his journey to recovery and resolution, set to the sound of his own music. Here, Williams digs into his feelings about the flm, his career memories and what he loves to see onscreen.
My Story On Screen
[Take That bandmate] Mark [Owen], reached out last week and was like, “Hey, Rob, me and the lads are all going to be in town. Can we see a screening of Better Man?” And I was like, “Yes. I’d love you to.” Which of course I would, but also, I’m terrifed because our relationship is so complicated and so healed
that returning to the scene of the crime and talking in the way that I talked as a 17-year-old is bound to open old wounds for people. [My ex-girlfriend] Nicole [Appleton] went to see it last week with Natalie, her sister. I FaceTimed them all straight after the flm and we all wept together. I don’t know how Liam [Gallagher]’s going to behave about being in the flm. It’ll be interesting. The bit I’m most concerned about is my dad because he’s a crucial part of that flm. And what doesn’t come across in the flm is how charismatic and charming and wonderful to be around my dad is.
My First TV Lesson
Our frst performance on TV was on BSkyB, and I think that about 100 people in Great Britain probably had satellite dishes in their homes at the time. We were in the Granada Studios in Manchester and Michaela Strachan was the host. It was overwhelming and scary. I was already aware that my place in the band wasn’t safe. And the management at the time had made me aware that they were unhappy with my progress, so I was terrifed. Normally when you perform, you’re just terrifed because
of performance anxiety, and then you’re exhilarated because something exciting has happened. But I was exhilarated to be on TV and also sad that my livelihood and my future were in peril.
The Best Advice I
Ever Received
To me, this made total sense. It’s embrace the madness. It changed my outlook on my job and what I do. You try and protect yourself and control what is happening to you so much, this overwhelming fuckery that happens, you push back against it so much. And since I’ve seen my job as a job and since I’ve had kids and daddy goes to work, and since I have embraced the madness, my life has got a whole lot better and I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful to be who I am, to have what I have, and to experience what I experience. And the sad thing is that in all of my pomp, I experienced no joy whatsoever. Now there is heaps of joy and heaps of excitement. I get to claim my place in the world, feel comfortable in it and enjoy it. And that is a huge gift.
The Part I Always Wanted
When I was growing up, I thought I was going to be an actor. And I auditioned for a boy band by mistake and got in. And I’ve been playing the part of a pop star ever since. This is me acting as if I am my script writer. I am directing the shit show. But that being said, actual acting, I don’t want to do that. That whole thing about, “And now we shoot from a diferent angle.” I’m just taking fve steps and I turn right and we’ve got to shoot that three diferent ways to Sunday and we’re going to do it until 3 o’clock this afternoon. When do I get to go and say things? That is 5% of your job. The rest of it is fucking boring.
My Toughest Career Experience
Having a panic attack for two hours in front of 75,000 people in Leeds 2006. It changed my life because it was such a traumatic experience that I had to take evasive action. And from that moment, very slowly, I’m the person that I am today. I went away and retired. It was that huge in my head: This is killing me. Then my brain started to turn to Swiss cheese because
Top: Robbie Williams; below: Take That bandmates, from left, Howard Donald, Gary Barlow and Mark Owen.
“In the hands of this remarkable cast and Malcolm Washington’s assured direction, August Wilson’s work finds its best conduit to the screen yet. Danielle Deadwyler anchors the film with a performance of tremendous courage and heft. John David Washington brings self-possession to a man who yearns to exceed the oppression of his ancestors.”
DANIELLE DEADWYLER
I had no purpose. And I realized, this is why people die when they retire. So, I put purpose in front of myself and my frst purpose was to fgure out how to do this and enjoy it.
The Films That Make Me Cry
I don’t watch f lms that make me cry. I stay away from them, because I don’t need melancholy because that’s how I feel between my ears anyway. I want escape and silliness. So, anything that’s going to depress me, anything that’s going to make me sad, anything that’s going to make me cry, I avoid as if recoiling from a hot fame. Because of my ‘isms’ that’s where I am anyway. Why do I go down that street? That’s where I’m trying to escape from. Give me Housewives of Orange County. All the Housewives.
The Most Fun I’ve Had at Work
I’ve got to say that it’s right now with Better Man, it’s truly exciting. I feel like a new artist that’s just been signed. And the excitement of what this new-found world could mean. And I would say that the most fun I’m having is right now is because I may have the opportunity to have another bite out of the apple and experience and derive joy from the gifts that have been given to me. And it feels like with a glint in my eye that that might be about to happen.
The Role I’d Want to Play
Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That bit where he comes down in the lift and he’s got his suspenders on. “How do you do? I see you’ve met my faithful handyman.” Because it’s fun and it’s silly and it’s dark and it’s stupid and it’s massive and it’s glorious. I am not one of those people that needs or wants to, or ever will, play Othello or Hamlet. But like I said earlier on, I don’t want to do three angles of me opening the door.
The Character That’s Most Like Me
I think they’re all people that I would like to be, not something that reminds me of me. Danny Zuko was like, I want to be that. I want to live in the ’50s, ’60s. I want to go to that school. I want to have that life. I want to be that good-looking with that jaw. And so, I don’t know if there are characters that are, oh, that’s me. It’s all characters that I want to be.
My Most Quoted Lyrics
That doesn’t happen. Not for a long time. There’s not that gathering of fans outside the hotel now. Everybody’s got kids or grandkids. I think they understand the folly of turning up to a stranger’s hotel to go and sing songs at him. Yeah. That doesn’t happen
My Guilty Pleasure
I don’t have guilty viewing. My viewing is my viewing. I’ll tell you at the moment, I’m very happy that there’s football games, Premier League and Port Vale division two. But I’m unhappy that Big Brother doesn’t broadcast on a Saturday, and Married at First Sight is only on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. With MAFS, cut to the chase and just do the Australian one because that’s the daddy. Their psych tests aren’t so stringent, I think. It’s just amazing to watch human behavior and duplicitous actions. It’s a soap and it’s Shakespearean. It’s wonderful.
Who Would Play Me in My Biopic
Well, we got the perfect person with Jonno Davies in Better Man. But what was that lad’s name with the cheeky face that’s great and he’s from London and he’s about 33? He’s in that flm with Harry Styles in it? [Pause] OK, so who I was thinking of isn’t in that flm, so I’ll go with Barry Keoghan
My karaoke playlist
I don’t do Karaoke. It’s not my thing. It’s the equivalent of you saying, “OK let’s have an evening where we all get together and do some journalism. What’s your favorite thing to write about?” I don’t do it. Why? Because it’s my job. ★
Quick Shot
New Perspectives
When he frst met with director RaMell Ross, cinematographer Jomo Fray was excited by the challenge of flming from a character’s perspective. “It was a completely different experience to anything I’ve ever shot,” says Fray. “As the cinematographer, you have to be present to the scene in a completely different way.”
Since Fray’s role became more performance based, he had to pay close attention to the performances of Elwood and Tanner because he was shooting from their perspectives. “I would watch rehearsals of Brandon (Wilson) and Ethan (Herisse), seeing how they were interpreting the characters’ physical motions, emotional movements… I’m inside the scene, so if something happens, I have to react and I have to react as the character whose perspective the camera is attached to at the moment.”
Fray’s camera performance ended up leading to some unexpected moments with the actors, including one scene with Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s Hattie. “There was this moment where Hattie is at a table telling Elwood some pretty hard news,” he says, “and you can feel it as the character that she’s about to say something really hard, so as Elwood with the camera, I look away because I don’t want to look her in the eyes. And there was a pause, and Aunjanue hits the table and says, ‘Elwood, you need to look at me.’ And the camera shifts back. That was a totally unscripted moment, and it’s almost like being welcomed into their world as an actor.”
—RYAN FLEMING
From left: The Real Housewives of Orange County; Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show; John Travolta in Grease
Left: Jomo Fray; Below: Nickel Boys
Nickel Boys cinematographer Jomo Fray on performing behind the camera
BEST
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
“Harper
and Will Go West”
Written by SEAN DOUGLAS, KRISTEN WIIG, JOSH GREENBAUM
“AN ENDEAVOR THAT COULD CHANGE AND EVEN SAVE LIVES.”
“POIGNANT AND LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY.”
“‘HARPER AND WILL GO WEST’ COMBINES HUMOR AND HEARTFELT EMOTION IN A WAY THAT REFLECTS THE FILM AS A WHOLE.”
Women of the Hour
Stories with strong female leads dominate a crowded feld in this year’s contenders for the Academy’s Best International Feature Film
BY DAMON WISE
Looking outside America this Oscar season, there are plenty of candidates for the Best International Feature award. You might gravitate to Latvia’s Cannes entry Flow, a dialogue-free animation in which a black cat, a bird and a ragtag band of other creatures fght for survival in a human-free world after a catastrophic food. Or maybe you’ll fancy the chances of raucous Irish-language Sundance comedy Kneecap, a wildly stylized biopic of the English-baiting, all-male hip-hop trio from Belfast.
But these two are outliers; the international Oscar race this year is dominated by stories of women, from all over the world. For example, the U.K.’s Hindi-language drama Santosh, flmed in Uttar Pradesh, Northern India, fnds a policeman’s widow thrown into her late husband’s world, where she must battle police indiference and solve the murder of a low-caste local girl. From Bulgaria there is Triumph, a political satire starring Borat’s sidekick Maria Bakalova as a psychic drawn into a paranormal search for national glory. And although Norway’s entry is called Armand, it’s actually a vehicle for Renate Reinsve, who plays a single mother pulled into a confict at school when her son, the flm’s unseen title character, is accused of bullying.
Narrowing things down to the fnal fve, there is sure to be support for Belgium’s Julie Keeps Quiet, which bowed in Critics’ Week at Cannes. Introducing charismatic newcomer Tessa Van den Broeck as Julie, and very much in the slow-burn tradition of local auteur Chantal
Akerman, this narratively slight but emotionally powerful character study from frst-timer Leonardo Van Dijl concerns a teenage tennis player whose coach, Jeremy, is accused of inappropriate behavior with his students. Julie fercely fghts in Jeremy’s corner, but something is not quite right—and, in the end, that something has to give.
There’s a similar vibe to Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle, which debuted in Cannes’ Competition and, although its director holds Swedish and Polish citizenship, is representing Denmark. Set in Copenhagen during World War I, the flm stars Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline, a seamstress whose soldier husband goes missing in action. Karoline falls pregnant, loses her job, and meets the mysterious Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a friendly matriarch who runs a candy store and an adoption agency. Dagmar seems too good to be true—and she is. International festival favorite Dyrholm is the draw here.
Two more Cannes titles look set to make the cut, notably Germany’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, f lmed undercover in Iran against the backdrop of the rebellious Woman, Life, Freedom movement and smuggled out by its dissident director shortly before he left the country for good. Then there’s Jacques Audiard’s avant-garde musical Emilia Pérez f lmed in Paris but set in Mexico—which stars Spanish-born trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón in a dual role, playing a fearsome Mexican cartel leader who fakes their own death in order
to give up the gangster life and start over again as a woman.
Ever since Bong Joon-ho’s Korean-language Parasite swept up six nominations in 2020— winning for Director and Screenplay alongside Best Picture and Best International Feature— Hollywood has been on the lookout for another non-U.S. flm to break out. Both I’m Still Here and Emilia Pérez could pop out of the international ghetto, notably for their directors. In fact, the Best Director category is not so impervious to subtitled movies: Fellini’s La Dolce Vita in 1961, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes in 1965 and Costa-Gavras’ Z in 1969. Similarly, voters have been receptive to foreign-language actors over the years too, recognizing performances from Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren, Liv Ullman, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz and more, although Loren and Cotillard are the only two actresses to win Best Actress for a non-English language performance.
Gascón has a chance to make that elite club three, but she will have stif competition from Fernanda Torres, who plays the lead in Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, which won Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival this year and is representing Brazil in the international category. The true story of Rio de Janeiro’s Paiva family, whose lives were torn apart in 1971 when their much-loved patriarch Rubens was taken away from them by the brutal military dictatorship, Salles’ flm has struck a chord with audiences all over the world.
On paper, it sounds like a very academic
1 The Girl With the Needle; 2 Santosh; 3 Julie Keeps Quiet; 4 I'm Still Here.
The international Oscar race this year is dominated by stories of women from all over the world.
exercise, or perhaps even an exorcism, since there is a whole genre of flms from South America—notably Chile and Argentina—that deal with the traumas of the past by confronting them head on. I’m Still Here, however, is very diferent. It doesn’t do any of the things you might expect it to, since it’s not, as you might expect, a David and Goliath story, where you root for the underdog and the bad guys get their comeuppance in the fnal cathartic act. Instead, as the title suggests, it’s about defance, and the ground you give away when you give in.
To explain, Torres plays Rubens’ wife Eunice, who somehow fnds her voice while raising a family and dealing with an almost unimaginable loss. It’s a subject Torres has thought about a lot on her journey with Salles since the premiere in Venice. “It’s a very unique flm,” she muses. “And it’s diferent, you see, because it provokes reactions that flms are not provoking anymore. There’s a kind of honesty. We don’t look like we are acting, but at the same time it’s not a documentary. And that’s on purpose. Walter disappears into the movie; he doesn’t try to show of. Nobody’s showing of. It’s a
very unique flm. Every time I watch it, I look at it and say, ‘What an enormous movie.’” She laughs. “Very strange!”
Salles echoes this sentiment, and credits Torres with the f lm’s quiet, unassuming power. “To play this woman was so vital to the f lm as a whole,” he says. “She had to be able to say so much with so little, because this is a role based on restraint. Yet it’s based on the possibility of expressing the extraordinary inner strength that’s driving that woman. Within what appears to be a very limited bandwidth, she had to say a lot with very little. Fernanda is the only actress, I believe, that could have done that.”
But aside from that performance, I’m Still Here has a resonance in this year’s awards conversation for a much more specifc reason. In 1998, not only did Salles’ streetwise, comic-dramatic road movie Central Station make the international shortlist too, his leading lady, Fernanda Montenegro, broke out with a nomination for Best Actress—both at the Oscars and the Golden Globes—as the flm’s reluctant heroine. Montenegro, now 95, is Torres’s mother,
and even appears in I’m Still Here as the older Eunice, now struggling with Alzheimer’s. Her daughter looks back at her mother’s surprise fush of success with great fondness. “She was 70 at the time,” says Torres. “I remember her telling me, ‘‘Nanda, I’m 70 years old now. I’ve done everything I wanted to do in my life, I’ve played all the characters I wanted to play. I think it’s time to close my door. It’s over, I think. What more can I expect?’ But then… Oscar!” She laughs. “And she didn’t stop, even after that. Every year she says, ‘No, next year I have to stop. I can’t work the way I’ve been working.’ She’s a workaholic. A severe workaholic. I mean, she’s shooting now!”
Torres seems to have inherited her mother’s irrepressible spirit, which is why she sees only the upside of I’m Still Here, for all its darkness. “It’s not a sad movie,” she insists. “Come on, there’s no reason to do a movie about the dictatorship in Brazil. Why would I go to a movie theater to see a movie—another one—about the dictatorship in Brazil? No. It’s a movie about endurance. It’s about endurance, in happiness and in love.” ★
The Man Who Wasn’t There
When he started work on The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof knew he could be arrested at any time. Luckily, he’d picked up some useful tips the last time he was in prison ...
BY DAMON WISE
There’s a funny phrase in Hollywood— “director’s jail”—that gets thrown around whenever a f lmmaker fnds their career in stasis after making a particularly high-prof le fop. Reputations are certainly tarnished. Some go into television instead, and some never get back in the saddle. But, so far, no one there has ever been to jail for moviemaking. Not even in the paranoid early ’50s, when the House Un-American Activities Committee waged war on active Communist Party members, particularly those working in the liberal arts.
In Iran, though, incarceration is a very real threat, as director Mohammad Rasoulof knows all too well. The director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig—now Germany’s ofcial submission for Best International Feature Film—Rasoulof caused a stir earlier this year when his flm, his 10th, was selected for Cannes. Having confscated his passport, the Iranian authorities ordered the 52-year-old to pull the flm; meanwhile, in a court case linked to his political activism, Rasoulof had been declared
guilty by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court with the likely outcome of an eight-year prison sentence and forfeiture of all his assets. He would also be lashed, something else that doesn’t tend to happen to profigate auteurs in the West.
Rasoulof didn’t hang around. When the news broke, he and some of his cast and crew made a break for it, taking a journey that took several weeks (the details are sketchy, for obvious reasons) and landed him in Germany, where he was granted asylum. “A few days after the shooting of the flm ended,” he recalls, “I told my friends outside Iran that I was about to leave. I told them, ‘What happens now is that I will have to cut myself of from all kinds of communications online. The flm is now in your hands, and you will have to get this fnished no matter what happens. If I get arrested, you have the responsibility of fnishing the flm. And I don’t know when I will be able to touch base with you next, but I will try.’”
The idea for The Seed of the Sacred Fig had come to him while serving a year in jail for shooting without a permit. “There was a mix
of prisoners of conscience and criminals when I was there,” he recalls. “But for me, it was somewhat of a discovery, because I was trying to focus more on the prison ofcials and trying to understand their perspective as opposed to having a confrontational relationship with them. The other interesting part for me was that I was watching the political events that were unfolding outside—the Woman, Life, Freedom movement—from behind bars. And that in itself, watching it with other prisoners from inside the prison, was a very unique experience.”
Watching with him was the famous Iranian director Jafar Panahi. “Jafar and I were together in prison, and we would see each other after we were released,” he says. “So, when I wanted to start this project, I told him, ‘I’m quite afraid of what I’m about to do,’ and what he had to say to me was, ‘Just get started. Go in, and you will forget about your fears.’”
The story he wrote concerns Iman, a married lawyer with two teenage daughters, who is promoted to become an investigating judge.
“ ONE OF THE
His role is meant to be kept secret, but when his cover is blown, Iman takes his family to the ruins of his childhood home. Now in the middle of nowhere, Iman begins to realize that, just as Iranian society is losing ground to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, he is powerless to assert control of his own family.
Even by Rasoulof’s usual standards, this was a highly charged political subject. “I have been making underground flms for a very long time,” he says, “but I never felt the sense of danger that I did this time, because I knew I was approaching an eight-year sentence and I knew that if they caught me making this flm they would add to the sentence, and I would have to go to prison for it. So that made me, and a few other people who were key deciders of the flm, put our experiences together and come up with solutions [to avoid suspicion]. We decided to go with a very small group and with very limited and clear resources.”
Finding the actors was the frst priority.
“When the Woman, Life, Freedom movement happened, many of the female actresses decided, or announced, that they were no longer going to appear in front of the camera with a veil or a fake veil,” he says. “That allowed me to pick from the actresses that had made that announcement for this flm. This was also true about the other crew members. And some other crew members were people who had decided that they were not going to work on any statebacked projects.”
They began without any equipment. “The rehearsals were done in small get-togethers or parties,” he says. “It looked like we were having a fun time together, but in fact we were rehearsing the story with the actors.”
And when the cameras did start rolling,
Rasoulof was never there. “The most important strategy was that I was never present on the set,” he says. “Sometimes I was much further away, sometimes I was nearer the set. But depending on the location and the scene that we were shooting, we would decide where I would be, at what distance I would be to the set that would allow me to direct it.” Were the authorities monitoring him? “Of course. The security agents and intelligence agents always follow you, but their ways of following have now changed. Nowadays, they follow you through your cellphones, through your bank cards, and through where you get gas, because in Iran you also have to buy gas with a certain card. Considering all that, I was very careful not to leave any traces behind.”
“Whenever I did have to leave my home,” he continues, “I would be very careful to be wearing some sort of disguise—like wearing gym clothes—and not letting anyone see me. I would be at a certain distance from my home, and then a car would come to pick me up and take me to my next destination. I was always very careful to see what was around me and if anyone was watching. What we did was quite close to what gangsters do, but I always felt like I had to keep my distance from the flm crew. You should remember that I served in jail and in jail, I learned many things from gangsters.”
Given the very real possibility of being apprehended, the entire crew had fake scripts at all times. “There was always the risk that we would get arrested,” says Rasoulof, “and we had another script. That was Plan B. And as soon as anyone had a sense of danger, we would automatically switch to the other script and go to Plan B.”
So, what was the story in the other script?
Don’t the Iranian authorities hate everything? Rasoulof laughs. “Actually, the Iranian authorities do love propaganda. So, based on the locations that we were in, we would come up with a story. One thing that might be useful for you to know is that we never appeared anywhere with a facade of making an actual feature f lm. We always pretended that we were making several short f lms. So, it always appeared as if we were making a f lm or a project for the state TV.”
Key to the flm’s existence, he says, was “the process of editing. This was done by Andrew Bird, a friend of mine from another flm that he had edited for me before. As we were shooting the flm, we were also sending fles for him to edit. For instance, we would shoot three or four days, and we would send him smaller-size fles. He would get started on editing those fles, and we would continue with the rest of the shoot.”
When he fnally left Iran, Rasoulof went through a neighboring country, where he found asylum in the German consulate. “That’s when I started getting back to fnishing the flm,” he says. “That’s when I touched base with my friends. But everything was in the hands of the editor, and he had the responsibility to fnish it.”
Rasoulof’s dramatic story paid of when his flm won a Special Jury Prize in Cannes, but he has yet to come to terms with life as an Iranian emigré. “I have not reached that point yet,” he muses. “I’m not really realizing or understanding yet how things have changed because I’m constantly traveling, and I am in the gestational stage of being in exile. So, I frst have to settle down and then I will fgure out what the changes are.”
“But I just want to say this,” he adds. “For seven years I was banned from leaving Iran. Even when my flm There is No Evil won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2020, I wasn’t able to be there. And then all of a sudden there is the exact contradiction. But at the same time, I’m constantly traveling. Sometimes I miss that sense of being in one place and that sense of… not quite stability, but, yeah, just staying in one place. I have to stop traveling frst to be able to fgure out how to work through the two contradictions.”
Was it worth it? He smiles. “Of course. Freedom is extraordinary. And I’m going to put it this way: If I’d stayed in Iran, I would be in jail right now, and a flmmaker in jail is a victim of censorship. I never wanted to play the role of a victim.” ★
From left, Satareh Maleki, Mahsa Rostami, Missagh Zareh and Soheila Golestani in The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
BEST ORIGINAL SONG “THE JOURNEY”
Written by DIANE WARREN
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE AARON ZIGMAN
“All the times they thought that they could hold you back But you’ve always known there was no chance of that You ’re made (you’re made) too strong (too strong) And when you ’re going with your heart, you can go further than you ’d ever thought possible Prove them all wrong”
Don’t look back
1
None of my flms have been similar to any other flm, from Occupied City to Hunger to Small Axe to Shame. I mean, they are all very, very, very diferent. And that’s not just because I want to be diferent, it’s because the subject matter asks for it to be like that. It’s all about subject matter, and then making work that can enhance what I want to talk about. With Blitz, I wanted to look through a child’s perspective. Like a Brothers Grimm fairytale, it’s very dark, but it’s almost like a dream—and I think that seeing these things through a child’s perspective is what gives it a dreamlike quality. Because I’m putting you in a situation where you’re experiencing things for the frst time. It’s a landscape we’re all familiar with, but it’s at the same time it’s unrecognizable.
Dare to be different
2
What’s radical about Blitz is that every single image on the screen has never been shown before. Every single image on the screen. You’ve never seen women in a factory making bombs. You’ve never seen fremen working the way they did to put out the fres. You’ve never seen [4ft 6in bomb shelter marshal] Mickey Davies, you’ve never seen the Café de Paris bombing, you’ve never seen a London tube station fooded. Every single image is revolutionary, just because people chose not to put it into pictures before. It was steeped in research, because I knew questions would be asked of it, particularly about how—as my historical advisor Joshua Levine, who wrote The Secret History of the Blitz, explained—London was so cosmopolitan at that time. I knew it had to be steeped in research because a lot of questions would be asked: Was it really like this? So, every single image is something
Steve McQueen
The director of Blitz talks us through the choices he made to create his dreamlike love letter to wartime London
BY DAMON WISE
you’ve never seen before, in the history of British cinema.
3
Be true to the story
It wasn’t about ticking boxes. It’s a story about a boy, and it started with a photograph of a boy that I found during my research for Small Axe of a Black child being evacuated, with a cap and a suitcase. I wanted to know who he was. I felt so protective of him when I saw that photograph. He was just a sweet little boy. But the contrast is, he’s in the environment of war. So how did he come to be in this situation? Who were his parents? Where did he live? And then the story of George [played by Elliott Hefernan] spiraled out of that, taking him to broader, wider situations, once he leaves his bird’s
nest. Most people didn’t really leave their neighborhoods in those days, their four or fve streets. So, the fact that he goes out into a broader, wider environment would have been very unusual.
4
Give credit where it’s due George’s mother, Rita, played by Saoirse Ronan, is a character in war that has never been given a platform before. Never. And half of the war efort
was women keeping the country together. They were looking after elderly parents, evacuating their children, working at munitions factories, working in aircraft hangers. They were holding the fabric of the country together. That’s what women were doing. It was half of the war efort. But they’ve never been given a platform on the screen, ever. If they were, they’d have been a girlfriend or a wife, handing someone a cup of tea.
5
Music is the great leveler I love radio. I found out about a 1940s BBC talent show called Works Wonders. I love the fact that Rita is not just a mother of a child. She has an individual life, and the song she sings for the show, “Winter Coat”,
From left: Saoirse Ronan, Elliott Heffernan and Paul Weller.
is something I wrote with Nicholas Britell. The idea of the lyric, ‘My father left me his winter coat,’ suggests an absence, but it’s also about a presence. The hug of a coat, the texture of that. I thought that could really communicate, and Saoirse did an amazing job. For English people at that time, the idea of being emotional through song was very important, I feel. It was the oil in the engine. We wrote it in Studio Three in Abbey Road—where The Beatles recorded—myself and Nicholas. It then went on to another writer, who polished it of. Me and Nick, we worked very quickly together. We had the same dynamic duo from 12 Years A Slave. If it ain’t broke, don’t fx it: Hans Zimmer does the score; Nick does the onscreen music. But it was just one of those things I really wanted to communicate. I think everybody has a keepsake of someone who has passed. It’s a very personal situation; it’s a song about a coat that, when it’s cold, is warm, like a hug from a person who’s not there anymore.
6
Chemistry is key
I thought [musician] Paul Weller [who plays George’s grandfather] looked incredible. I thought, ‘This is someone who can actually write his own songs and perform,’ so I assumed he could act too. But, at the time, Paul was having none of that. He was like, “No, I’m not too sure.” It took a bit of convincing. But then I got him with an acting coach, and he was incredible, absolutely incredible. I mean, beautiful. I cannot tell you how beautiful he was as an artist. You had him, a 66-year-old guy, you had a 29-year-old woman in Saoirse, a nine-year-old boy in Elliott, and they all just got on so well. They loved being with each other. They loved playing. They loved communicating. So, what you see on screen is real. I mean,
there was no hierarchy. It was like a family.
Build a solid foundation
7
I loved working on a picture this size. But then again, I loved it because, as a British director, usually we’re working in abandoned warehouses or whatever. All of a sudden, I’m working in a studio. With a desk and phones that actually work! I thought of cutting one leg of the table and making it a bit wonky, because we’re not used to things working or things being brand new. We’re not used to that. So, I was a f sh in water, mate. The thing I had anxiety about was the core of the picture. Everything else, I loved doing. All the set pieces, I live and breathe for stu f like that. But getting that foundation of love, that was the thing. Because if the foundation’s not right, it will all crumble.
8
Trust your composer
The score came directly from the heart. Hans Zimmer’s mother was in London, in Mayfair, during the Blitz. She was evacuated from Germany, and then, fve years after the war, she went back to Germany and became a translator for the Americans. She met his father there. Five years
after Hans was born, his father unfortunately died, and then Hans went to boarding school. When I showed him the flm, he immediately understood it. It was miraculous. He said, “I know what to do.” Because he understands that situation. The feeling of being taken away by war. I was sitting with him, shoulder to shoulder— literally—when he wrote the score. It was pouring out. I think his mother and his relationship was at the core of this. His mother was huge in his life.
9
There’s light at the end of the tunnel
After the First World War, there were a lot of avant-garde flmmakers and artists working with abstraction. They were trying to deal with what just occurred. A lot of avant-garde flm is based on the horrors of the First World War, trying to somehow deal with that. There’s a short movie by Man Ray that I discovered. I thought, ‘OK, wow, I can take [inspiration] from that and put it into the picture.’ In the beginning, you see this sort of abstract image... You don’t know exactly what it is. At the end of the picture, you fnd out. It’s a refection. But the black and white stuf that comes after that is X-ray images of salt crystals, the bed of
the sea. Then we cut to some daisies. The daisies really symbolize, somehow, a nostalgia of how things were, or how things could be.
Think of “Imagine” by John Lennon. I would’ve jumped of a bridge a long time ago if I didn’t believe there was still a possibility of us having our hands on the steering wheel and changing the course of history. You have to believe that, otherwise we’d have no hope.
10Keep on moving I’ve been working for 18 years straight. I’ve been working like crazy with my flm work and my artwork. Blitz is a kind of bookend, in a way, and I’m ready to go onto the next chapter. I think I’ve got two more chapters left. For 18 years I’ve been boom, boom, boom, not stopping. And it’s been great because… Look, I’m a Black man. There’s an urgency. There’s an urgency. I’ve got to get it out there. I’ve got to move. But also, it’s exciting. Working with great people and collaborating. I’m very fortunate to do what I do. A lot of people I grew up with didn’t have this kind of opportunity, so I know I’m very fortunate. I don’t take it for granted. Therefore, I have to work. It’s W-O-R-K in capitals. It’s exciting and thrilling and dangerous—and necessary. ★
Elliott Heffernan and Saoirse Ronan in Blitz
“AN INSTANT LANDMARK. VILLENEUVE DELIVERS A TWO PART EPIC OF LITERARY NUANCE AND TIMELY SIGNIFICANCE. A ‘DUNE’ FOR RIGHT NOW AND TOMORROW.”
ON IN ALL CATEGORIES
BEST PICTURE
MARY PARENT, p.g.a. CALE BOYTER, p.g.a.
TANYA LAPOINTE, p.g.a. DENIS VILLENEUVE, p.g.a.
BEST DIRECTOR
DENIS VILLENEUVE
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Screenplay by DENIS VILLENEUVE and JON SPAIHTS
Based on the novel Dune by FRANK HERBERT
BEST ACTOR
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
ZENDAYA
REBECCA FERGUSON
FLORENCE PUGH
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
AUSTIN BUTLER
JAVIER BARDEM
JOSH BROLIN
BEST ENSEMBLE
BEST CASTING
FRANCINE MAISLER , CSA
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
GREIG FRASER, ASC, ACS
BEST FILM EDITING
JOE WALKER, ACE
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Production Designer
PATRICE VERMETTE
Set Decorator
SHANE VIEAU
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
JACQUELINE WEST
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Visual Effects Supervisors
PAUL LAMBERT
STEPHEN JAMES
RHYS SALCOMBE
Special Effects Supervisor
GERD NEFZER
BEST SOUND
Production Sound Mixer
GARETH JOHN
Supervising Sound Editor
RICHARD KING
Re-Recording Mixers
RON BARTLETT
DOUG HEMPHILL
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE HANS ZIMMER BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Comeback Kids
Where there’s a Will & Harper there’s a way: Netfix seeks an Oscar return with their strong slate of documentary contenders
BY MATT CAREY
For three years, Net fix has gone without a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination for one its originals, a surprising dry spell for a streamer used to dominating the category. But it looks like the drought is about to end.
The platform has felded an exceptional slate of contenders in 2024, many with a strong shot at making the Oscar Documentary Feature shortlist—the frst step toward an Academy Award nomination. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, Daughters, Will & Harper, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, Power, The Greatest Night in Pop, Martha, Skywalkers: A Love Story, Yintah—they all present a solid opportunity for Net fix to compete for the top documentary prize.
“I feel very honored to be a part of this incredible slate of movies,” says Josh Greenbaum, director of Will & Harper, a kind of buddy comedy about the friendship between actor Will Ferrell and his pal Harper Steele, who came out as trans. “As a doc flmmaker, I applaud their support for our artform. Our industry, by and large, is going through a change—not just
the doc space, but the narrative space as well. And, so, to have a company like Net fix clearly show that they believe in nonfction and believe in documentaries means the world to me as a flmmaker. And I know I share that feeling with the directors of all these incredible flms.”
Will & Harper, Mountain Queen, Daughters, and The Remarkable Life of Ibelin all earned places on DOC NYC’s shortlist of the year’s best documentaries. Between them, they claimed 16 Critics Choice Documentary Awards nominations, with Will & Harper, Daughters, and Ibelin all competing for the CCDA’s Best Documentary Feature.
Ibelin, about a young man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy who found connection with others in the online gaming community of World of Warcraft, won an audience award at Sundance, and honors for Benjamin Ree’s direction. Ree says he screened the flm for Net fix and other distributors shortly before the world premiere at Sundance and the streamer jumped on it.
“It’s great Netfix has bought so many quality documentaries this year,” Ree says, pointing to a
beneft of drafting so many Oscar contenders. “I think that will create this synergy efect where if you watch one documentary you like this year on Netfix, you are more likely to watch another one.”
Net fix acquired Daughters out of Sundance, where it won both the Festival Favorite Award and the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary.
The flm, directed by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, goes inside a Washington D.C.-area prison where incarcerated men get the rare chance to participate in a daddy-daughter dance with their daughters.
“This flm does such a beautiful job of bridging the idea that fathers need their daughters and daughters need their fathers, and this unjust system that we call the criminal justice system, that it really separates families and tears them apart,” declares executive producer Kerry Washington. “The flm is about the need for us to pause these systems and treat each other like humans.”
It was out of the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival that Net fix acquired Mountain Queen, directed by Lucy Walker. The flm’s protagonist, Lhakpa Sherpa, overcame the patriarchal culture of her native Nepal to summit Mount Everest an astonishing 10 times.
Walker, a two-time Oscar nominee, calls the Net fix acquisition “an incredible dream come true in this documentary climate… because the story is very much about Lhakpa not having been seen in her life and fghting for a cause that was about inspiring other women and girls and showing the world what women and girls were capable of.”
Net fix may end up dominating the Oscar documentary shortlist, but by no means does it have the feld to itself. It faces stif competition for Academy recognition from National Geographic’s Sugarcane, directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie. That flm— about the appalling treatment of Indigenous children at Indian residential schools—leads the Critics Choice Documentary Awards with eight nominations. Black Box Diaries, the MTV Documentary Films’ release directed by Japanese journalist Shiori Itō, has emerged as a strong contender, as has Kino Lorber’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat from veteran director Johan Grimonprez, and Amazon Studios’ Frida, the documentary about artist Frida Kahlo, directed by Carla Gutiérrez. Other solid contenders: Mati Diop’s Dahomey, winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, Raoul Peck’s flm that shared the top prize for documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. Queendom, Agniia Galdanova’s documentary about the remarkable Russian drag performance artist Jenna Marvin, has emerged as something of a surprise contender, recently named to shortlists of the year’s best by DOC
NYC and the IDA. And Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, about the late actor who was paralyzed in a horse riding accident, could earn recognition for flmmakers Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui.
Many of this year’s hopefuls are noted for the director’s integration into the storyline. Itō, director of Black Box Diaries, pursues justice after she becomes the victim of a sexual assault by a prominent Japanese TV journalist. “I think it helped a lot that I was journalist so I could investigate my own case when police weren’t doing anything,” she says. “Also, it helped me mentally, psychologically, that I could distance myself from the case, thinking I’m covering someone else’s case.”
In Hollywoodgate, director Ibrahim Nash’at risks his life to document the Taliban’s consolidation of power after the exit of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He supplies narration for the flm and is glimpsed on camera, sometimes when Taliban fghters are threatening to kill him if he steps out of line. “Any shot that had me in it, we were putting on the side, never keeping it as part of the edit,” he recalls. “[But] we discovered that the story we were trying to build was a Shakespearean drama about power—and the
Taliban won at the end, and you cannot have a Shakespearean drama about power with the bad guys winning. So, we had to include my character as a secondary character and as a tool.”
Filmmaker Jazmin Renée Jones has won acclaim—and a place on the IDA’s shortlist of the year’s best features—with her directorial debut, Seeking Mavis Beacon. Jones appears on camera throughout with her co-producer Olivia McKayla Ross (dubbed an ‘e-girl investigator’), as the two try to solve the mystery behind the woman featured on packaging for the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing software.
Porcelain War, the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner directed by Brian Bellomo and Ukrainian sculptor-turned soldier Slava Leontyev, documents how Leontyev and his artist wife, Anya Stasenko, continue to make art despite the Russian invasion of their country.
No Other Land, another strong Oscar contender by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian flmmakers, features two of its directors on camera—Palestinian Basel Adra and his friend, Israeli Yuval Abraham. The flm, set in the occupied West Bank, examines how Palestinian villagers face constant pressure from the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli settlers intent on dispossessing them of their land.
No Other Land is “not just about the friendship and to show that the relationship can be ‘nice’ between Israelis and Palestinians,” Adra says. “No, it’s to show the power imbalance.” Adds Abraham, “Our flm, that we worked on for fve years, speaks about forms of structural violence.”
No Other Land lacks U.S. distribution despite winning awards around the world, from the Berlinale to Shefeld DocFest in the U.K., Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in the U.S., and many other festivals. Some critical favorites have resorted to a self-distribution model in search of audiences and Oscar traction, including Union, the flm directed by Brett Story and Stephen Maing that documents the frst successful unionization drive at an Amazon facility, and Carville: Winning is Everything, Stupid, directed by Matt Tyrnauer. The latter flm, about the Democratic political strategist James Carville, has aired twice on CNN, but lacks a formal theatrical partner.
For this year’s hopefuls, winning may not be everything, exactly. They’d be thrilled to earn an Oscar nomination. But to get that far, they’ve frst got to make the shortlist of 15 fnalists, to be announced on December 17. ★
Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lahka Sherpa
Sugarcane
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Directed by CHRIS SANDERS
Produced by JEFF HERMANN p.g.a.
Screenplay by CHRIS SANDERS
Based on the book by PETER BROWN
KRIS BOWERS
“KISS THE SKY (FROM THE WILD ROBOT)”
Written by DELACEY, JORDAN JOHNSON, STEFAN JOHNSON, MAREN MORRIS, MICHAEL POLLACK, ALI TAMPOSI
With his action-packed Roman epic Gladiator II, RIDLEY SCOTT is coming for the directing Oscar he should have won almost 25 years ago for the original, this time telling a fiery tale of revenge filled with blood and sand, weaponized rhinos, a shark-infested Colosseum and crazed baboons. Mike Fleming Jr. talks to the visionary British director—plus stars PAUL MESCAL , DENZEL WASHINGTON , PEDRO PASCAL and CONNIE NIELSEN —about the challenge of following the sword and sandal movie with a hero’s journey set to echo in eternity.
ship-to shore invasion with feets of Roman battleships fghting with trebuchets and thousands of archers. A naval duel to the death inside a fooded, sharkinfested coliseum. A fght against a rampaging rhino, and hand-tohand combat with a pissed-of hairless, snarling, possibly rabid baboon. Nobody does these things as well, or efciently, as Ridley Scott, and with Gladiator II he’s topped the action of the Oscar-winning 2000 original, in a refection of a more cruel, decadent and crumbling Rome, plagued by years of upheaval since the death of Russell Crowe’s rebel leader Maximus.
Gladiator took home fve awards from 12 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe. But there was nothing for Scott, the most accomplished and successful living flmmaker yet to win an Oscar for Best Director. Despite his groundbreaking work on sci-f classics Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982), he has been nominated just three times, in 1992 for Thelma & Louise (when Jonathan Demme won for The Silence of the Lambs), in 2001 for Gladiator (when Steven Soderbergh won for Trafc), and in 2002 for Blackhawk Down (when Ron Howard won for A Beautiful Mind ). Soon to turn 87, having delivered another epic less than a year after his revolutionary saga Napoleon, Scott believes Gladiator II is his best work to date and most logistically ambitious production so far, costing about $210 million net budget (not unusual for the world creation undertakings Scott seems to prefer). And while they don’t give prizes for such things, he managed to shoot his historical epic in just 51 days, even though he was forced to halt production for half a year because of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Napoleon scraped three nominations, all in the technical categories, and if Scott is going to take the long-awaited beeline to accept the Oscar, it will be for the inventive storytelling. Scripted by David Scarpa, Gladiator II has connective tissue, but turns much of it on its ear, elevating their characters above some dusty old toga-wearing cliches. Filling Crowe’s sandals is Paul Mescal as Lucius, the adult son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), who has been hiding in the North African province of Numidia.
Lucilla has since remarried, to Marcus Acacius
(Pedro Pascal), a decorated Roman general and a favorite of Rome’s debauched twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Marcus Acacius is behind the flm’s opening battle scene, in which Lucius loses his wife and is enslaved by the Romans. This brings him to the attention of slithery arms dealer Macrinus, a character created by Denzel Washington from scratch, infuenced by his own family history of slavery. Unaware of Lucius’s parentage, Macrinus forces Lucius to fght for his freedom, and his life, at the packedout Colosseum, where, unrecognized by Lucilla, he shows an almost superhuman strength. Scott’s own personal superpower is that when he reads a script, he visualizes every scene; he knows how he will set up each shot and aim as many as 11 cameras at it so that even the most logistically difcult scene might only require two takes. This might sound constricting but far from it: this way of working leaves him open to fnding inspiration and indelible imagery
in the moment. That happened on the frst Gladiator. Remember the image of Maximus’s hand, gliding through the wheat growing in the felds approaching his estate? Russell Crowe wasn’t even in the country for that.
During some pick-up scenes in Italy, Crowe’s stand-in snuck of for a cigarette, running his hand through the wheat as he did so. Spotting him, Scott shouted at him to stop. “Put out that fucking cigarette before you burn that feld,” he barked, “and someone get me a camera.” Thus was born one of the most memorable scenes, and Gladiator II harks back to it several times. Crowe has since noted other examples that he and Scott found in the moment, such as the two-sword decapitation scene before Maximus asks the crowd, “Are you not entertained?” Mescal replicates that too.
SOMETHING ELSE THAT MIGHT SURPRISE YOU about Scott is that he’s not too busy to binge watch TV and small indie flms, mostly because it’s the best way to fnd the stars of the future.
Scott saw enough episodes of the Ireland-set BBC TV series Normal People to believe that its leading man Paul Mescal had the chops to rise to hero stature. Further investigation revealed that, as well as an impressive stage background, the 28-year-old had form as a sportsman, playing the highly physical game of rugby.
“Couldn’t have seen that coming on the bingo card,” laughs Mescal. “I wouldn’t have said while making Normal People, ‘Do you know what?
Ridley Scott’s going to see this, and he’s going to say, That’s my guy for rolling around in the sand in the Colosseum.’ But I think if you really unpack that, I think why he cast me is, regardless of the scale and the kind of action that is required, you need somebody who is equally invested in the emotional language of the flm.
That’s something that I pride myself on, and it’s something that I’m drawn to for sure.”
From left: Russell Crowe in Gladiator; Ridley Scott and Paul Mescal on set.
Still, the rugby thing helped. “I did break my nose, my jaw,” says Mescal. “And three fngers and two toes. So, what’s that, seven or eight [bones], depending on how you look at it?”
How did that compare to the Gladiator II shoot? “I came out of that relatively unscathed,” he says, “mostly thanks to my trainer and the way we approached it. We didn’t want to go for something that was purely aesthetic, we wanted to build a body that was capable of inficting damage and taking damage, because I wanted to do my own stunts. And there’s no way that you can fake it when you shoot a Ridley Scott flm with eight cameras and you’re on camera the whole time. So, we just had to make the muscles big and make myself able to take some impact. But I didn’t come out of it with any major injuries.”
During the casting, Mescal knew other names were being foated for the role. The frst flm not only won Russell Crowe the Oscar, but it also made him as a global superstar. “[The audition] was organized incredibly quickly,” says Mescal, “and it was a Zoom that lasted no longer than 30 minutes. Ridley’s time is very precious to him, so it’s like there’s no fat on the bone. We’re getting straight to the point. We talked very little about the flm, initially. We spoke about the general arc of Lucius for about 10 minutes, and then we spoke about everything in between for another 20. And then we didn’t actually speak again until I’d been cast.”
Scott originally cast Crowe at the suggestion of his friend Michael Mann, who’d then just put the actor through his paces in The Insider. He felt Crowe had the natural intensity to play a general hellbent on avenging his slain family. Mescal’s Lucius has a similar trigger, but he’s much younger and less experienced. What did Scott see in Mescal?
“Paul had a diferent kind of energy,” says Scott. “Russell’s was right there on the surface; you can feel his confdence in being a general who basically won the war and brought peace to Rome. Paul is much less fully formed, but he is big and strapping. I don’t know if he was pro, but he was nearly that in Irish rugby, and all that physicality helped. Honestly, if you’ve got half the physicality, you can master the rest of the learning curve. Putting on muscle weight is a matter of good diet, lots of exercise, and having a big guy standing over you saying, ‘Where were you? You’re fve minutes late!’ So, you’re putting on 10 or 15 pounds of muscle, and the whole demeanor changes when you’re putting on that physicality.”
How did that work with Crowe? “When I saw Russell after The Insider, he had put on some weight, he had a bit of a tummy and kept talking about how he would promise to lose it to do Maximus. But Russell naturally is a bit of a boiling kettle, always on the edge of boil. Paul is a diferent creature coming from a diferent
“TRY AND WRESTLE A 50-POUND BABOON. YOU’LL LOSE YOUR ARM AND YOUR HEAD. CAN YOU HANG FROM A BEAM BY ONE ARM FOR TWO HOURS? NO, BUT THEY CAN.”
“IN GLADIATOR II I FOUND AN OUTLET FOR MY OWN PERSONALLY FELT ANXIETY ABOUT THE RISE OF AUTHORITARIANISM.”
direction, but the kettle will boil over, if needed. And he knows where to go, because his frst love is theater. I respect the theatrical side of that. It gives the actor an encyclopedia of emotions to draw down on and know how to get there.”
Still, Mescal may be flling big sandals, but Scott gave the actor room to fnd his own lane so as not to clone one of the most indelible action performances in the last 50 years.
“That was the most important thing with a sequel to a flm that’s so beloved in the frst place,” says Mescal. “The only way I could really go into it was with Ridley giving me the space— which he did—to make Lucius as identifable as Maximus is. I think the context for both of those characters is very diferent. You’ve got the kind of nobility of Russell in the frst one, and you’ve got the latent anger and chaos of Lucius in the second. They’re fghting for very diferent things, motivated by very diferent things. Ultimately, at the end of the flm they’re more similar than they are at the beginning. It was about making the frst two acts of the flm, almost like them not being in conversation, those two performances. And then toward the end of the flm, you start seeing the fusion of father and son.”
The one quality they share is an unquenchable thirst for revenge. When Commodus kills his father Marcus Aurelius after the ruler told his son that Maximus would be the best leader for the Roman Empire, Commodus then cruelly slaughters his rival’s wife and son. That gives Maximus a singular purpose that drives his savagery in the arena.
Lucius’ motivation is set early on. While Maximus’ leadership of Roman troops against the barbarian horde in Gladiator seemed righteous, Lucius starts the sequel as one of the latter. Having been exiled for his own protection by his mother, we see Lucius has a life, and a warrior wife. This time, the Romans invading by sea are the bloodthirsty, conquering pillagers, and when Pedro Pascal’s Roman general Marcus Acacius kills his other half, Lucius has all the rage he needs for his journey. And once again, the shortest route to the Roman elite is through the dark tunnel leading into the gladiatorial arena.
“You see Lucius in a scene in the cart when he’s arriving back in Rome after he’s been captured,” says Scott. “He’s talking to his fellow gladiators about what Rome represents to him, and he has a strong hatred for what it is. I think he’s one of the few people probably in that time [who understands]. That is the context of coming from nobility and knowing the privileges and understanding of what that nobility did to the rest of the world. Rome took his wife from him. There’s a huge gap between his lived experience before he was seven or eight to what he can see now—the wood from the trees, essentially. He’s got a balanced understanding about what makes Rome and the Roman Empire so extraordinary, but also what makes it one of the most brutal conquering forces in history.”
FINDING THAT STORYLINE MIGHT SEEM OBVIOUS
now, but the biggest reason for the 25-year gap between I and II was that they just couldn’t fgure out how to ramp up another when the two main characters—Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus and Crowe’s Maximus—lay dead in the sands of the Colusseum at the end of the movie.
“It really took us 20 years,” says producer Doug Wick, who oversaw development with his partner Lucy Fisher. “We had tried to develop one 10 years ago, and we weren’t happy with it. Everyone agreed that we were never going to put out some kind of money grab because the frst movie had gone too well. So, these are the problems that we wrestled with, and we were very aware of the impression the frst movie made. We had to honor that, but also give people a story that felt like it was worth telling on its own.”
One stab was taken by musician Nick Cave, who profered a version at the behest of Crowe that had Maximus being sent back to Earth by the gods to kill Jesus Christ and his followers, because he was stealing their thunder. Given the derisive response to Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel staged as a musical, I suggest it was better that they kept developing.
“Nick Cave did a great job of invention and Russell was fully engaged,” Scott recalls. “We all were, but I was the one dragging my feet. I was like, ‘I dunno about this.’ I thought we were getting too far of the mark, and if you do that, that’s where you can lose it. I was going along with the boys. I didn’t really believe in it. It got too rich and started to go to time warps, which frankly I thought was bloody silly. But the one thing I added to it was this great idea of [opening] a portal of time in death, and it would have to come from the dying soul of a dying soldier in a battlefeld. Isn’t that cool?” It is, I agree. But what do you do with it? “I kept it as a little silver bullet, thinking, I’ll use that again somewhere.”
Scott also introduced the character of Lucius’s wife, the love of his life. “Right now, many women, certainly in the Middle East and especially Israel, are soldiers,” he explains. “I saw her as a woman living on the edges of this city, in a kibbutz. I saw her as a housewife but then you realize, ‘Oh god, she’s got a bow.’ Movies can do this brilliantly. You realize she’s also a soldier, an archer, a markswoman.”
That came out of development of the version they didn’t use, but they still had to fnd a story that could survive without Crowe. “We started of the frst movie where the Roman general Maximus is the hero against the freedom fghters,” says Wick. “So, now we would start of with the freedom fghters and with Pedro Pascal as basically the enemy, the Roman general. That’s when we knew we had a movie, and it would be some version of a homecoming. Everything was discussed over several years, for example, the antagonist. No one wanted another emperor as the antagonist. So, then you start to talk about it: OK, what would be a great antagonist? Because the goal when you make a period flm is always to make it feel like it could be a flm about now. What would feel right now? Well, there’s nothing like a billionaire who’s buying infuence in the capital or the world, which was the starting point for the creation of Denzel’s Macrinus.”
THE LONG ROAD TO GETTING THE STORY
straight, however, was to prove much easier than staging some of the craziest battles ever seen on a movie screen. Scott and his producers wanted to have a giant rhino in the frst flm, but the technology wasn’t there.
“This was diferent, because the frst movie had to be made on a budget,” says Wick. “Back then, everyone said sword and sandal was dead. Russell Crowe was untested. It was a much bigger risk. This time, everyone came in with the common belief that the fghts had to be escalated, that there had to be an increased theatricality. We’d made the audience wait for 23
“CONFLICT IS THE KIND OF THING YOU DON’T WANT IN LIFE, BUT YOU WANT IN A ROLE. THE MORE CONFLICT THERE IS, THE MORE YOU HAVE TO ANCHOR YOURSELF TO.”
Denzel Washington as Macrinus.
years. Paramount came on as partner. We still saw budgets that were too high, and we would have a meeting where we would be with Ridley and all the visual efects people. Since Ridley has everything in his head, he can easily say, ‘Oh, I don’t need that. I need this.’ Ridley also has produced commercials all these years, so he is most practical about what he feels essential and what isn’t.”
All agreed there would be no scrimping on the scenes that needed to top those from the original. “At every budget conversation we had to defend why we felt the need to have the naval battle and the rhinoceros. Those were really the two biggest ones. The opening battle also, that was big. These were initially much bigger than they needed to be, but we fought for them because it had to be a bigger spectacle than before.”
The scene that provoked the biggest reaction this time around is the baboon brawl that Lucius faces, an attack even crazier than the tigers that ambushed Maximus in the original. The idea came to Scott while he was flming the pilot for the HBO Max series Raised by Wolves in South Africa. “We were in a kind of safari park, with all the animals in the world wandering around,” he says. “It’s a place where visitors park their cars with their cofee lattes. There was a little group of baboons that sat on a wall,
“TOWARD THE END, YOU START SEEING THE FUSION OF FATHER AND SON”
How to convey such brutality? “I cast 12 very small stuntmen,” Scott said. “Some were tough teens but they’re quite tiny. I put them all in black tights and, for fun, I painted whiskers on them. Then we went to war, and it became this stuntman brawl of savagery. So, then I had all the physicality recorded of the actors. I removed the guys in black tights, put in wire frames of baboons, where it looks good, and the movements look real. You then put on the fesh and hair. And then you’ve got a master work of digital right there, and you change nothing into a furry, snarling baboon.”
Having witnessed the attack in South Africa, Scott was able to defend a complaint that his alpha baboon didn’t look like the ones you see at the zoo. “Some guy says to me, ‘I’ve never seen a baboon like that before.’ I said, ‘Well, he’s got alopecia, you know what that is? It’s when you lose all your fucking hair.’ I told him, I copied this baboon from that park. It had alopecia, so everything was sinew and tendon with no fat,
staring at the tourists. One idiot walks across to a big baboon, and he tries to pat it. And this thing just attacked him. He was a big man, but the guy dropped his cofee and ran for his car, getting clawed as he struggled to get in the car. I thought it was funny, but what was there was the physicality. It knew when to defend, kill, and attack. Baboons are carnivorous animals, and a big baboon could be 40 or 50 pounds. Try and wrestle a 20-pound Jack Russell and you’ll lose. A 50-pound baboon? You’ll lose your arm and your head. Can you hang from a beam by one arm for two hours? No, but they can.”
like muscular steel. I said, ‘That’s my monster.’ That’s when I said, ‘Paul, you know what? It would be cool if you turn the tables on the baboon. If you bite the baboon, the baboon will be psychologically in shock. And snarl back when the baboon goes, Holy shit.’ It was meant to be funny, but it worked.”
How did all this look to the producers watching from a short distance? “We talked at length about the frst movie, where, obviously, it was clear why Russell Crowe’s Maximus would win in the arena,” says Wick. “He was a great warrior. The question with this kid Lucius was, why
would he win in the arena? And we talked and bored each other with the thematics, and came down to how anger and rage would fuel him.
But that’s still only an idea.
“And then Ridley, in the midst of all those conversations says, ‘OK, in that baboon fght, Lucius is furious because his mentor has just been killed. The alpha baboon comes at him, and Lucius is so enraged that he bites the alpha baboon in the arm and spits out a mouthful of fur.’ Well, that completely shows the audience, perfectly dramatizes Lucius’s ability in the arena based on the anger that fueled him.”
Producer Michael Pruss—who runs the flm portion of Scott Free and also worked with the director on Napoleon and Alien: Romulus—has become accustomed to the flmmaker’s style, but still is left gobsmacked now and then.
“Ridley always says to me, he runs his set like a benevolent dictatorship,” says Pruss. “I see that in the way he works: He’s the four-star general, and he goes into battle with all his troops. The military comparison is right, because Ridley’s father was a military man, involved in rebuilding Germany after the Second World War. Clearly, he was a man of great pedigree and intellect and a doer and a stern character. I think I see that in Ridley too. He runs his sets like a general would. It’s like we’re getting ready to go into battle and Ridley’s the general leading us over the trench, and you just run, knowing you are so well marshaled. Everybody knows their roles, everybody has the eye on the details, so there won’t be any faltering. And under Ridley’s stewardship, we all know where we’re supposed to be and what we’re supposed to do. He sets the tone, and then we have to rise to his level.”
“The baboon scene plays like one of the most terrifying and exhilarating set pieces of the flm,” Pruss continues. “Watching it felt like an enormous stage play, a bunch of guys in their costumes hopping around this big arena in Morocco, and you felt like it could have been experimental theater had you just walked in and not known what it was. But it’s Ridley, so there are 11 cameras, and every actor knows exactly where he’s falling, what his reaction should be when he’s bitten, or he meets his end or doesn’t meet his end. It took a day and a half. I was in awe of how he directs these scenes and knows every part of the visual language of a scene, whether that’s an intimate scene with Paul and Connie, or whether it’s a gnarly, violent set piece where you’re on the edge of your seat.
“The fact that Ridley throughout his career
From left: Pedro Pascal, Ridley Scott and Paul Mescal on the Gladiator II set; Connie Nielsen as Lucilla .
has managed to balance incredible spectacle with intimacy and emotion tells you everything you need to know,” he adds. “I was reminded of watching the frst Gladiator with my father at the Odeon Cinema in Romford near London. I could never have honestly imagined that, 25 years later, I’d be part of the producing team on the sequel. Life is full of surprises and unpredictability that takes you to places you never thought possible, and I have just been incredibly lucky to fnd myself in Ridley’s world, to learn from his mastery of the craft.”
DENZEL
WASHINGTON
IS USED TO CARRYING
the ball physically in his movies, but this time his character, Macrinus, is playing politics. He’s also played the heavy several times, from his Oscar-winning turn in Training Day to his work in American Gangster, in which his Harlem drug lord smuggles heroin in the cofns of soldiers killed in Vietnam. In both roles he keeps his intentions veiled until he wants you to know his true self. “He didn’t show it at the time, but I think he really enjoyed doing American Gangster with me,” says Scott. “I think the flm was honestly terrifc, one of my better movies.”
To get Washington on board, Scott showed him a painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, a 19th-century artist. “His work in Roman and Greek circumstance, they are spectacular,” he says. “There was a painting which I think defnes the Macrinus: a guy standing there, with huge forearms. He’s African, superlatively powerful, and he’s wearing beautiful silk— orange and sky-blue silk—and he’s got a beard that hits a point. He’s got a hat on the back of his head; it looks a bit like a Dizzy Gillespie hat but woven with beads and whatever else they used back then. Denzel said, ‘What does he do?’ I said, ‘Well, he’s a billionaire.’ He said, ‘Oh, OK, send me the script.’”
Like Lucius, Macrinus also has a backstory that gives him grievance with the most powerful people in Rome. He was a slave, one that was horribly abused but fought his way to freedom and afuence in the gladiatorial arena. Now, he has a stable of gladiators that cement his place in high society. “We did easily 50 drafts, with evolution each time,” says Wick. “Ridley will do this thing where he’ll take your 120-page script and reduce it to 50 pages just to look at the bones and see if they’re working. There was a lot of deliberation on how much to reveal with Denzel’s character.”
Lucy Fisher said they decided that they didn’t need much because of the actor playing him. “Everything was really deeply explored,” she says, “and then with each exploration, you’d get new storyboards from Ridley, who gave you the visual equivalent of whatever you were
discussing. Denzel, because he is such a strong presence as an actor, his abilities transcend dialogue. He delivers dialogue gracefully, but he brings so much more dimension than you could even imagine whenever he’s on screen. So, we decided to toss that backstory. We needed to go through those earlier drafts to build his character, but Denzel brings such strength to the performance, you don’t need the backstory.”
In creating the role, Washington said he didn’t need to trace back to Roman history to fnd his Macrinus: He had his own family history to rely on. “My last name is Washington,” he says, “Why do you think that is?”
“Benjamin Corbin Washington,” he continues. “Look him up. I forget if he’s the grandson of George Washington, or cousin, but he owned my family, my great-great-grandfather. So that side of slavery is there in my family. My grandfather was born in 1864, I believe, so just this side of slavery. And then my father was born in 1909, as a free man. I still own the land that my great-great-grandfather bought under our name. Black men couldn’t own land in America in those days, and my great-great-grandfather married a Native American and bought land at a dollar 75 an acre, because he couldn’t own it. And now we own it. Macrinus was a lot closer to slavery than I am, obviously, but it is the same set of circumstances.”
In Washington’s mind there was one major diference. “I was raised by a man of god, so I was taught that god is love,” he said. “So, I was taught love. That was obviously not the case with Macrinus. His was a life of pain and death, and he found a way to claw his way out and was determined to never be owned, never be dominated, never be controlled, never have to answer to anyone else. And he was willing to sell his soul, art, body and anything else, to get what he wants.”
What was diferent about working with Scott after the 17 years since American Gangster? “I call him the governor,” Washington says. “The word I hear is ‘evolve’. But the frst Gladiator, it won Best Picture, and I guess it was a flm that directed itself. I would never use the word evolve. He was a great director back then, and he will be for all time.”
Washington spends most of Gladiator II playing power games above the gladiator arena, but the experience has only whetted his appetite for when he plays the Carthaginian leader Hannibal, who with his troops attacked Rome with elephants. Antoine Fuqua, who directed the Equalizer trilogy and Training Day, is prepping that one, and Washington is already getting in shape. “I’m producing and starring in Hannibal next fall,” Washington says. “I’ll do Othello onstage starting in February, and it feels like Gladiator II was preparation for Othello, which will be preparation for Hannibal. I’m in the gym now. I looked at a photograph of myself
“I WAS TAUGHT THAT GOD IS LOVE. THAT WAS OBVIOUSLY NOT THE CASE WITH MACRINUS.”
at an Academy Awards, and I was 250 pounds. Those days are over. I’m on my way to 180, and I’ll be ready for my Hannibal ftting. I’m not where I want to be, but I ain’t where I was.”
ALSO MAKING AN ENTRANCE INTO THE Gladiator universe is Pedro Pascal, as Marcus Acasius. Born in Santiago, Chile in 1975, Pascal grew up with Scott’s flms, naming Blade Runner, Alien and Thelma and Louise as three of his favorite movies (“There’s no other flmmaker in the world that has three movies on my nerdy Top 10”).
“My parents immigrated to the States when I was just a baby,” he recalls, “and the sponge-like way that I absorbed movies and entertainment of that era meant that the ones that Ridley made early in his career imprinted themselves onto my development and into my imagination.”
Pascal saw the frst Gladiator movie when it came out, and it struck him emotionally more than as a particularly awesome piece of entertainment. “I remember at the end of the movie,” he says, “and Connie’s line telling Maximus to ‘go to them’. The idea of him spiritually being reunited with his loved ones, that throttled me, because I saw the movie not long after I lost my mom that same year. I can’t say I believe in that sort of an afterlife or that I’ll ever see her again, but I remember the comfort that gave me was
really, really powerful. And I had to go back and see it again just to feel that again.”
The experience of shooting, he recalls, lived up to his expectations. “It was unlike any experience I’ve had or am likely to have again,” he notes, “and everyone says the same. He composes the entire world visually. And I suppose, technically, he has to because he has so many cameras set up for one take, whether it be something intimate between two characters or it’s the Roman army invading North Africa with battleships against a fortifed wall. He will shoot stuf like that from start to fnish, and that is just nothing I’ve experienced before.”
Pascal also cites Scott’s insistence on building his sets as realistically as possible as being part of his directorial genius. “It’s so utterly immersive, with all of the soldiers, the wailing women and everything. He makes these fully, fully realized tableaux and scenarios so that you can basically be in the world and there’s barely anything left to the imagination. It’s a dream. Sometimes I’ll need more takes if there’s more work that my mind needs to do in order to believe in the world that I’m acting in. But on his sets, since everything is available to you, you don’t need more takes because it’s all there. And so that does so much of the work. And so, I fnd it very, very technically complicated and strangely very actor friendly.”
And as an actor, Pascal relished the script, with its interwoven intrigues and accent on
confict. “Confict is the kind of thing you don’t want in life, but you want in a role,” he says. “The more confict there is, the more you have to anchor yourself to. And it was nice to play somebody who is, at the end of the day, very straightforward and identifed very much by movements of the story. And then see his loyalties reveal themselves, and you see a kind of bloodthirsty fghter who really is loyal to one woman in her value system. And then the more tragic it can be, the better.”
ABOUT THE ONLY FAMILIAR FACE FROM THE original Gladiator is Connie Nielsen, returning as the mother of Lucius, the former lover of Maximus, now the wife of Marcus Acacius. Nielsen has been intrigued by Lucilla’s tenuous relationship to power since the frst flm. The levers are diferent this time—she spent most of the original evading her pawing brother Commodus—but the gender boundaries barring her way are still there.
“The experience of not giving women the power that they are due is certainly as pertinent today as it was 2,000 years ago,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve evolved a lot, and the Romans were certainly as misogynistic as the ancient Greeks were, but they also at the same time revered women as a certain goddess power. I really felt like I was bringing to Lucilla a lot of that goddess power. At the time, people lived in a very sort of fuid, spiritual manner. Their ancestors were very present in their lives and were represented in small, unique rituals every day, and they were mediated basically by yourself and never necessarily by a priest. It was between you and your ancestors. I wanted to bring that into Lucilla as much as was there in the f rst one, when she takes over from her father as the conscience of Commodus.”
Gladiator II, she explains, “comes after 80 years of a golden age in Rome, an absolute golden age with amazing leaders, philosopher-leaders who have subjugated their own egos to serve the nation. Where we fnd Lucilla is in the space that is inevitable when power has lost its moral legitimacy. Lucilla stands as the only surviving emblem of moral legitimacy for the empire, and she’s being used as such. In fact, she has been held hostage to her name without which she would most certainly be dead in the intervening 18 years or 20 years since the death of Commodus.”
As with others working on the movie, she saw parallels with the present day. “I found it to be such an historically rich moment in which to position Lucilla,” she says, “and I also found an outlet for my own personally felt anxiety about the rise of authoritarianism, which had been vanquished during the time of my grandmother.
“WE WERE VERY AWARE OF THE IMPRESSION THE FIRST MOVIE MADE. WE HAD TO HONOR IT, BUT ALSO GIVE PEOPLE A STORY THAT FELT LIKE IT WAS WORTH TELLING ON ITS OWN.”
I think it is causing a lot of anxiety to a lot of people around the globe. And that loss of ascendancy and of values is sort of what you see Lucilla building on over and over again. She can’t help herself. She’s bound by her upbringing, her sense of righteousness and her sense of decency. She understands that, yes, you can kill the person, but you cannot kill a state of mind, because it keeps on going.”
This puts her in the most dangerous place. “She’s in quite a bind because here she’s got her beloved son, who she sent away to save his life because the Romans would wipe out lineages to prevent problems in the future. But she’s also got a good man [Pascal’s Marcus Acacius] and they’re on a collision course.”
Nielsen talked to Scott about the centrality of that plot point. “I said to him, ‘It’s so evil and so genius all at once, the situation that you’re putting her in. My son has every reason to hate
using it. It’s culturally and historically wrong. It just won’t work…’ And he said, ‘OK, stop. Write everything down and send it to me.’ So, I wrote 20 pages because I was a young and very hungry artist, and I wanted to put my mark on this incredible story.
“I sent all of that stu f and after three days, I hadn’t heard back from him, and I was absolutely sure that I’d been fred. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, why can’t you keep your mouth shut, Connie? You had to go there, didn’t you?’ And then after three days, I called his ofce, and said, ‘Listen, I haven’t slept in three nights, so can you just please ask him to get on the phone, so I know whether I’m fred or not?’ And then Ridley comes on and he’s laughing. He says, ‘No, you’re not fred, Connie, go to sleep. You’re fne. I’m just trying to remove the most ofensive parts of your notes so that I can send them of.’”
the very person I love. And, by loving him, I put myself further into the cauldron of his rage. As a mother, you will just do anything for your children. But, at the same time, I’m also a happily married woman. I just felt that that was such an incredible and deliciously rich space to create a Lucilla from.”
The actress says she’s never been shy about questioning the motives of her character but does admit that she thought she’d killed her chance to play Lucilla in the frst Gladiator. “Ridley called me and asked me what I had thought about the latest draft,” she laughs, “and I said, ‘Well, this is where I’m seeing an issue because blah, blah, blah.’ I was like, ‘That kind of word just didn’t even exist at the time, it’s weird that I would be
Nielsen said he incorporated many of her changes, put some lines in the mouths of other actors. But mostly, he made her feel he was listening. And it encouraged her and other cast members to fnd resonance in moments by taking chances.
“‘Strength and honor,’ that’s a beautiful line that we found in the frst flm,” says Scott, “and when Connie’s Lucilla says it to Paul in his cell, Paul picks that moment up spectacularly and answers as if almost in surprise that she says to him: Be strong. And he applies the same line, with the deepest respect to his mother.
“That’s one of the most emotional moments in the flm. A line like that can either be nothing or something. It’s called great acting.” ★
From left: Mescal as Lucius; Pascal as Marcus Acacius, with Nielsen as Lucilla.
Dialogue
Mikey Madison
How the Anora star developed her heartfelt portrayal of a sex worker for Sean Baker’s immersive Palme d’Or-winning dramedy
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
John Magaro IN CONVERSATION WITH SOME OF THE LEADING OSCAR CONTENDERS
Malcolm Washington
The right key A family feud sparks drama in The Piano Lesson 64
Isabella Rosellini
Cardinal zen As a nun in Conclave, she keeps the priests in line. 68
Guy Pearce
Monster mogul Playing a man of infuence in The Brutalist. 72
Saoirse Ronan
Two for one Accolades roll in for roles in The Outrun and Blitz 78
Dark day Revisiting historical horrors in September 5 84
Jeremy Strong
Bad infuence Meet the sorcerer of The Apprentice 90
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Shining a light Sharing ancestral heartache in Nickel Boys 94
Denis Villeneuve
Enter sandman Setting the scene for Dune: Messiah 98
At the heart of Sean Baker’s flm Anora is Mikey Madison. Having seen her work in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Scream, Baker cast her as Ani, a young woman working as a dancer in a New York strip joint and living in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. When Ani impulsively marries a rich but immature client (Mark Eydelshteyn), his oligarch father and mother descend from Russia in a bid to annul the union. For Madison, preparation and authenticity were key, so she set about not only learning Russian and dance, but cultivating a deep understanding of the world of sex workers.
I read a piece written by a sex worker saying your character in Anora is the most respectful and real representation they’ve seen. That was the ultimate goal, I think, for me, and why I wanted to do so much research and dive into this and how important it was for this character, so that’s so wonderful. I read Andrea [Werhun]’s memoir. It’s called Modern Whore. It’s amazing. She’s a beautiful writer, and she talks about her life as a sex worker, as an escort and a dancer in her early twenties. And just the way that she spoke about her sexuality and her life, her sense of humor, was something I just really connected with, and I was so intrigued by her as a person. I felt that Ani would be able to relate to her in some way. I liked how she spoke about things. She was also a consultant on the flm, and she was able to answer lots of questions, talk through certain scenes with me, and it added so much nuance and so many important layers to the flm and character, little, tiny things that only a sex worker would know that we were able to put into the flm.
What’s an example of one of the small things she told you about that mattered?
Andrea was talking about locker room chatter, things that you say to someone, what food she brings as her lunch to eat in the break room, little things like that. Kennady [Schneider], my dance
instructor, taught me how to blow dry my Pleasers [shoes] so that they ft my feet—all these little details that were so important. She told stories that really inspired me and, I think, informed some of the improvisation. And Luna [Sofía Miranda], who plays Lulu in the flm, we became friends, and she’s wonderful and was so generous sharing stories and had such a great sense of humor about her job. It’s hard to think of just one thing, because that was everything for bringing the character to life. If I hadn’t have done that, it would be a completely different character and story, I think. It was the most important thing I did.
Lindsay Normington, who plays Diamond, is also a stripper and activist for sex workers in LA.
What did you learn from her?
She’s an amazing person, incredible dancer, just a funny, beautiful, intelligent woman. And honestly, while we were flming, we didn’t have a chance to get to know each other very well, which I actually think was a blessing because I really like her as a person, but we needed to have that distance, I think, to be able to say and do the things that we do to each other. She was just very committed to throwing herself into those scenes with me. There’s a scene where we fght each other, and flming it, I think it was even more brutal than what is shown on screen. We were really just scrapping
with each other. And there’s not many actresses who want to put themselves in that situation and get in there with me, and she was so willing to do it. She brought so much realism to her character, and her lived experience, I think, really informed her performance. Working alongside all of these women, where I’m the only person who does not have that lived experience, really pushed me to want to dive even deeper into the research and the character and that community because I didn’t want to stand out in a bad way. I wanted Ani to be this real, authentic, honest person and the depiction of sex work to mirror that.
You mentioned improvisation. How much was there?
While she’s working, the frst however many minutes of the flm, it’s all improvised. Her dancing, giving dances, talking to men, they just followed me around with a camera and I had a wireless
mic, and I would just walk up to people, men, try to pick them up, talk to my coworkers. And they flmed that with a completely live club, so dancers were everywhere, music was blasting, customers were all over the place. With the research I had done and also my background as an actor, I was able to intuitively look at someone who I’ve never spoken to before, try to understand what kind of conversation they want, what kind of person they are, and try to cultivate some kind of chemistry and try to get them into a room for some dances. Obviously, it was contained and there’s a safety net under all of it, but I think the lines are blurred a little bit, because there’s not a camera right here, shooting an interaction. I think that the relationships and the conversations I had were much more free and honest because of that.
You did your own stunts, including a big fght scene with you and two men, that’s both disturbing and
then funny and then disturbing again, tell me about shooting that? It’s a really important sequence in the flm, and I really liked the way that Sean and I were able to play with different genres and infusing comedy and this slapstick element into those scenes because it makes people laugh, and I think it also challenges an audience. I’ve heard people say afterwards that they felt really bad for laughing, or conficted by laughing at her in those moments, and I think it’s interesting to challenge an audience like that. And so for me as an actress, I was aware of the absurdity of some of these scenes, the absurdity and the chaos of it. But obviously, Ani is not. To her, she’s fghting for her life in so many different ways, fghting to save her marriage, and also she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her, she’s fghting for her life too. I think because of the way we shot it, you’re pulled back, and you’re able to see the absolute absurd chaos of the situation. And
I think that it makes people laugh, because in these dark moments, I think that there is some humor, which is one of the reasons I love Sean as a flmmaker, because he takes a scene like that, which could, with a different flmmaker, have a very different outcome for the character, and he makes it something that you wouldn’t expect. And it was interesting to play with that.
What did you know or love about Sean’s work before you met him?
I had seen Tangerine before I knew I was going to meet with him, and The Florida Project. I love the characters that he creates and the world that he is interested in, and so to me, he’s always been that very singular flmmaker that I’ve admired. And since knowing him, I’ve now seen all of his flms, and I think that he’s a genius. He’s an amazing flmmaker, and he dedicates his life to telling really interesting, honest, truthful, authentic stories. And as an actress, it’s really exciting to be a part of that.
You had to speak some Russian for this role. So you didn’t know any before?
No, I knew nothing. A couple curse words really, but that was it. And so I started from zero and tried to learn as much as possible within a short period of time. It’s a very complex language. Also, Ani needed to speak it in a specifc way. It needed to sound like she was speaking at a certain level.
She wasn’t completely fuent, so I needed to keep that in mind. Because the thing about Ani is she’s always on the outside looking in. She never fts in. Even if she’s trying to speak fuently, I never wanted it to be perfect. I wanted there to be something that separates her from the others. And so it was really diffcult. I dedicated hours each day to trying to learn as much as I could and to understand what I was saying and what the other actors were saying to me. It took months and months. It was the most important thing at that time that I was doing. I dedicated my life to it.
Tell me about connecting with Yura Borisov, who plays Igor. There’s something so touching about the understanding between you.
Yura is an amazing actor, a very deep, intelligent actor. And there was always something there, I think. There was defnitely a chemistry for us to build off, or a curiosity for each other. And I think both of our characters are outsiders in a way, and they both have this loneliness that connects them in some way. But he and I were able to cultivate an interesting chemistry, where you can feel something palpable between them, even if Ani’s pushing away because she’s has more important things to focus on. But he was constantly surprising me, he brought such an interesting perspective to his character. And he’s one of the most talented actors
I’ve ever worked with and one of the nicest people as well, so I’m so lucky. We’re so lucky that Yura’s in this movie and American audiences get to see his genius as a performer because he’s so special.
Both your parents are psychologists. Did that infuence you wanting to be an actor, to do this job that requires a deep understanding of how people work?
I don’t know any different because it’s just how I was raised, by two psychologists. And growing up, everyone’s favorite joke was, “Oh, do they psychoanalyze you?” And I’m like, “Probably, I just don’t know that they are.” And so I think that now I’m able to have some hindsight, I do feel that both my parents are very deep people. They have a curiosity for humanity. They just have this understanding, or a care for people. Growing up with them, I’m able to have a deeper understanding and a curiosity as well for people and why they do things and psychology. So yeah, I do think that it’s informed my acting and at least helped me to be able to sympathize with my characters when I play them.
Can you talk about what you have coming next?
I don’t know what I’m going to do next, honestly. I have nothing planned right now. I’m hopeful that I fnd something that really speaks to me soon, something that I fall in love with. My dream is to keep working with Sean. ★
From left: Mikey Madison in Anora; Madison with co-star Mark Eydelshteyn.
Malcolm Washington
The Piano Lesson director paid homage to his family legacy with his big screen debut
BY DESTINY JACKSON
For director Malcolm Washington, generational Black resilience and complex familial bonds are the underlying themes in front of and behind the camera for Netfix’s The Piano Lesson. Making his feature flm debut, Washington enlisted the talents of his family as his brother, John David Washington, plays the lead role alongside appearances from his mother, Pauletta, and twin sister, Olivia. Older sister, Katia and father Denzel Washington are producers. Based on August Wilson’s 1987 play, the story centers around a bitter feud between two siblings (played by John David and Danielle Deadwyler) who disagree about what to do with the family’s antebellum-era heirloom piano.
How did this adaptation fnd its way to you? Did Virgil Williams approach you frst? He was involved in it many years before this started, but I don’t think he worked on it yet. So, I approached him with a take that I thought was interesting. At the same time, my brother was going to do the flm, and I kept talking to him about how exciting this project was when I read it. I talked to him about how we should do the genre stuff, and the spine of it should be death and American reconstruction. Then, I worked on it privately and linked up with Virgil. I brought everything I had been thinking about, and we just clicked and took off from there.
Talk about the motifs in your version of the flm. It elevates the August Wilson stage play and the 1995 Lloyd Richards flm by leaning into gothic horror stylization with ghostly elements. Wilson during this time was in dialogue with Toni Morrison. A movement of the Black Southern Gothic was happening going into the ‘90s, if you look at Eve’s Bayou or The Bluest Eye, Daughters of the Dust, Arthur Jafa or Kara Walker paintings. It’s a theme woven through culture and artistry. Also, societally, we’re just at a time now where we can showcase Black
horror with what Jordan Peele has done. It’s a tradition that I wanted to pay homage to here. There’s a spiritual connection between the elements as a conduit to ancestry and God in those artists’ work and the flms I’m talking about. All these things are tied together through wind, earth, water and fre. When I broke down the story for myself, this was an element that I felt I could add a lot to because it was just how I thought about the characters representing something else. Wilson’s work, his desire is to draw the Black American experience in all its depth and diversity and different voices. It’s not a monolith. So, I wanted that idea of having a complete elemental thing going where we use these things to tell this story that is mythical, spiritual and soulful at the same time.
Samuel L. Jackson starred in the original 1987 stage play as Boy Willie. Now he’s the elder Doaker three decades later. Was it a no-brainer to get him involved in the flm?
He was attached to the flm before I was, so I came to him with a dream, script and a pitch deck. I was like, “Hey, here’s what I want to do with this. Are you OK if I take this ride? Can we go together?” And he was down. [Laughs.] I feel like any iteration of The Piano Lesson has to go through Sam Jackson because he’s the most experienced person. Of anybody on earth, there’s nobody with more lived experience of The Piano Lesson than Samuel L. Jackson.
Do you think if he said no, your dad would have called him? First of all, nobody can make Sam do anything. He’s an icon. He’s a legend. One of one. [Laughs.] If you look at his work, there’s so many young flmmakers that he’s put his name beside. Like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight, early Quentin Tarantino… he was part of their upbringing, their rise.
He has that entertaining monologue where he’s divulging the history of the piano. Talk about the construction of that scene. That moment is the whole pivot of the movie. It’s a scene where the movie unlocks itself. Leading into it, some things are hinted at regarding the piano lore, but you don’t really know what’s fully happening until Doaker unlocks the meaning of everything and the movie busts open. It’s a 10-page monologue, but he was already super familiar with the dialogue and the journey he’s telling. I consider that section of the movie a short flm, so that’s how I approached it. Sam has this ability as an actor to sustain the audience’s attention for that long, so that was a great start. But I wanted to introduce you to the characters of the family who owned the piano along with the ancestors.
On the stage, you don’t have any idea who is what. You hear a bunch of names, and you can try to parse it together, but I wanted to introduce you to the humanity of these people who aren’t alive anymore and show you what they look like. So that way, when they come back and you see them, it all connects and turns into something bigger. Filming that day was like watching Michael Jordan have shooting practice. That’s Samuel L. Jackson, and he’s Samuel L. Jackson for a reason. The way he ends that monologue and hits that last line, a chill goes down your spine.
What was it like directing your brother John David on set? Was anyone on set playfully jealous wondering why he probably got less takes than anyone else? No. [Laughs.] But you know what? It’s so wonderful directing an ensemble because so much of directing is just watching and looking at what somebody’s doing on set. A lot of it is also contemplating what’s present in the space right now. What is the
actor giving you? Looking into their eyes, what do you see? Each actor that we had required a different language. They required a different amount of takes and collaboration.
It was nice to watch my brother and get past the barrier that he was my brother and just an artist. I saw a sensitive, passionate artist and it was wonderful because I thought he brought such a beautiful sensitivity to a hurt Boy Willie. He’s somebody who can be so brash, a character that’s so singular in his wants and how he goes about it, but I thought he brought such a wonderful softness where he just felt misunderstood and wants to be heard, but nobody takes him seriously. As the youngest sibling, I feel that.
Danielle Deadwyler does some incredible work here. Can you talk about the process of working with her?
She’s so gifted and talented. I’ve been a fan for a while. We reached out to her team and set up a meeting, and when I spoke to her, I knew immediately that we could make the movie tomorrow and that she was our Berniece, and she was going to body this. She brought such intellect, craft, stillness, and weightiness but also was able to be tender and vulnerable, which is hard to do. This is also a character that can be frowning the whole movie, or you can just read into the top layer of her feelings, but her eyes were just these big eyes that were just gigantic, foor-to-ceiling window to the soul. And she is somebody who’s in control of every part of
her body, the way she moves through space was just so emotive. Putting her into the chaos of John David spinning around her, then Sam and Michael Potts and Ray Fisher and Corey Hawkins, the alchemy of all those things, created this beautiful and combustible energy.
Why was this the right time for you to make this flm? I had many things happen at once that made this flm possible. We were in Covid deep lockdown, I was very isolated, and I was archiving family photos during that time. I had also turned 30, which was a realization that I’m in a different part of my life, and I had to reconcile that. I was having those identity questions of who I am now. Who am I as an adult? Not in terms of my profession, but of me as a man. I was looking for answers and looking at my ancestors, like, well, who are the men that I come from? Who are the women that I come from? And what does that mean for me ultimately? How do I identify myself in terms of them? So, when I read the play, I was like, “Whoa, OK, this deals with that.” When I started reading it, it was funny and exciting, and then I got deeper into it and there were these really big questions being posed about questions of legacy. That’s something that always concerned me: our ancestors and what they’ve done to give us the space and opportunity to make our lives possible, sometimes from beyond the grave and so on. So, I snapped into focus and wrestled with these types of questions.
What do you know of your family's legacy beyond your parents? Is there anything that stays with you?
A big part of this was based on my grandfather. My mom’s dad passed away when I was eight years old. But as you can imagine, he was a big infuence on my mom. My mom always talks about her idea of what love really is and what the beauty in it is. It’s based on her parents’ relationship, her idea of masculinity, and what a man is. It’s strength and tenderness; it’s empathy and compassion. It’s curiosity and patience. She always talked to me about him and how I reminded her of him and that his qualities live in me. In that way, he became a marker of all those things for me. When I think of what I want to be as a man, I think of him even though we only shared my frst eight years of life together, in this way, he is guiding me. My grandparents passed away within four months of each other, but I found, as I’m super nosy and go through all the cabinets at my parent’s house, that my mom did these interviews with him in that time span. She recorded them and tried to talk to him about his whole life, but she couldn’t even do it. Her friend did it for her because she couldn’t even have that conversation, so she ended up talking to him about his philosophy of love, spirituality and the history of his life and then he passed away shortly after, so she could never watch the tapes and never did anything with them. One day, I found them and started watching them. I cut them together on Father’s Day into a little clip and sent it to her.
I felt like I was watching this man teach me from a conversation he had 20 years before about who I can be, the potential I have as a man, and in the process of making this flm, trying to connect to that part of myself and learning about that part of myself, and his face is adorned in the piano because his spirit was in this project and in the room with us. ★
From left: John David Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Potts and Ray Fisher .
Isabella Rossellini
The Italian-born Conclave star on evoking the powerful nuns in her past and her mother’s legacy
BY DESTINY JACKSON
Model, actor and animal behaviorist Isabella Rossellini has no regrets. At the golden age of 72, the child of actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian director Roberto Rossellini has learned her fair share of lessons during her fve decades-long career. Now, in Edward Berger’s papal whodunnit Conclave, Rossellini transfers that resilience to Sister Agnes, a primarily silent yet intimidating nun tasked with caring for the cardinals as they meet to elect a new Pope after the former one dies under mysterious circumstances. As the candidates, marshaled by Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), backstab and clandestinely strategize, Sister Agnes holds crucial information.
You’ve had so many varied roles in your long career. What made you want to be a part of this one? The script was a page-turner. I read it several times, especially the ending. It is a very surprising ending that I found very moving because I think the core of the flm is about doubt. All of these political discussions amongst the cardinals feel very much like the political discussion we are living these days in America. But it’s also about corruption and personal ambition. You see many layers of human nature. And fnally, when you think that all the doubts are resolved, they elect a pope and doubt returns. To me, Cardinal Lawrence gives a beautiful speech at the beginning of the flm, talking about the evil of certitude and the moral preciousness of doubt. He says, “In doubt, there is mystery, and if
they don’t have doubt in mystery, we wouldn’t need faith. So, let’s bow to what we don’t understand, what we don’t know, and accept it.” And the flm ends again on that note, which I think is so powerful and moving.
Even though Sister Agnes doesn’t say much, the impact of what she knows permeates the flm. I never imagined her different from the way I played it. But then everybody’s saying, “Oh, you have such authority,” while nuns have a more submissive role. I know I played her with a lot of authority because I went to Catholic school, and my nuns had a lot of authority. I suppose I could have played her differently in a submissive way, but I played it instead with a lot of authority, and I never doubted that that was the right way to play it, and Director Berger agreed. She’s outside of the pope’s election cycle, so when she speaks, she just speaks the truth, what she’s seen, and then she goes back to silence. But I love that in the flm, she’s like a shadow, and her presence throughout the flm makes you ask, “Is she really just preparing the room? Is she just collecting the keys to their bedroom?” She’s listening, and that’s so powerful.
Did you happen to pull inspiration from your mother’s role as Sister Mary Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary’s for inspiration in playing Sister Agnes?
No. I didn’t even think about it. Only after the flm came out and I met the press was I reminded that mama played a very powerful, modern nun who teaches a little boy how to defend himself.
How did you approach preparing for a character with limited screen time as opposed to larger roles? Is there a difference for you in the process?
No, because you’re still portraying a person, but in a way that gives you lesser chances. You have to be more precise at fguring out
your character and making them identifable and understandable, but you’re only given a few scenes to do that. I often play supportive roles, not leads, but sometimes when I had longer parts, I could say something like, “Maybe she has a sense of humor? Maybe she lies?” Sometimes, there is something surprising about a character that you can remedy later on in another scene, you can fll in what was missing. But when you have a small role, your aim should be more precise, and you should really know what to do with every second you’re on screen.
Stanley Tucci said in an interview that you introduced him to a fabulous restaurant with a familial connection to you while flming this movie. Where was this? I took him to a restaurant run by nuns called L’Eau Vive. It’s a place where my mom used to go because she was very famous, and whenever we went to a normal restaurant people would come up and ask for an autograph or paparazzi would start bothering her. But they left her alone when she went to this nun restaurant because the nuns had hardly seen flms. I remember once that one of them said to her, “I think you’re an actress,” and the nun was delighted because she wanted to know about the lifestyle, how actors lived, what they did, etc. It’s a lovely place where the nuns serve food, are very humble and sing. There are also a lot of cardinals and priests, it’s a hangout for the Vatican. It’s a delight.
Conclave brings up this notion about what you’re passionate about vs. fnding your own true calling. Growing up in this acting family, was there another path for you?
I don’t know that I had a calling that was so powerful as being a nun—more than anything, I’ve liked narrating. I wish I’d been a director earlier instead of just remaining an actress. I’m a raconteur. I attribute that to the fact
I belong to a generation where there weren’t too many women directors. My mom whispered to me one day that she thought she could be a director, especially when she was older and always at home, dying to have a job. I think she could have been like Laura Dern, a good friend of mine, who buys books and options stories and develops the material for herself. But that’s a change in the generation; it’s not that my mom was lesser than Laura, but it didn’t occur to her.
You have your degree in animal behavior. Is zoology in your future?
I do have a master’s degree in Ethology, which is a part of zoology, but it’s more specifcally animal behavior. But that’s more like Jane Goodall, who worked with chimpanzees and was the founder of the science of animal observation in the wild and how they live. The flms that I make as a director are always about animals and ethology.
Sister Agnes’s use of her agency is also very important in assisting Cardinal Lawrence in the election cycle. She has that line, “I know my role is to be invisible. Nevertheless, God gave me eyes and ears. So, therefore, I see and hear.” Can you talk more about that scene?
In hearing this, Cardinal Lawrence then denounces one of the cardinals lying to the others. And she steps in to say, “No, that’s the truth.” And nobody doubts that what she says is correct. Though she’s not part of the process, she
intervenes to say the truth. She has nothing to gain and nothing to lose. All the others, sometimes they lie a little bit or portray things because it’s their ambition to become a pope, she can’t be a pope, she doesn’t have any power. Her invisibility, though, gives her a lot of power.
There’s a lot of tension at frst between her and Cardinal Lawrence that eventually shifts. I think her vow to be a nun, whether whatever pope was going to be elected, she was going to be serving. She might have an opinion, but she made the vow of understanding that human beings are faulted and limited. So whatever pope was going to be elected, whether it was a liberal or a conservative, she was going to be serving. I think she likes Cardinal Lawrence because of that speech. I was very impressed with that speech, and I thought she saw him admitting doubt, meeting the human frailty and human limitation is what she admired most. She’s not admiring him when there is an accident and revelation with the other nun, and she wants to handle it because she’s responsible for the nuns and Cardinal Lawrence wants to interrogate her. That irritates her because that’s her domain, dealing with the nuns. He should just stay in the patriarchy; she stays here and you stay there. But when it comes to doubt and basic truth, I think she’s on the same wavelength as Cardinal Lawrence.
What about your female agency?
Your mother had quite a personal
and professional blowback in terms of the situation with your father, which you had to sit with your whole life [Bergman had an affair with Rosselini's father and she was conceived before their marriage]. Are there are any lessons you perhaps learned while navigating your career or seeing your mom regain her agency? That derailed her a lot. Look, I have an accent because of it. My mom couldn’t come back to America for 10 years. I wouldn’t have an accent if I hadn’t grown up in Europe speaking French and Italian. I would’ve come to America earlier. The frst time I came to America I was 18. She continued acting after that, but it was a terrible blow. All her money was confscated, she couldn’t see her daughter [Pia Lindström] for eight years. She was condemned by the American Senate, who took a stand against her. It was very severe. She continued to work, but not in Hollywood anymore. She worked in European flms and did theater. It was a big blow to her career and as a person. As for me, I do what I like and what interests me. Curiosity is my engine. I look at things that I’m curious about and I always fnd that if I follow my curiosity, I fnd happiness and joy, and if I try to pursue success or recognition, it just leads you to a dark place of depression. So, maybe I’ve learned from my mama or dad for sure because he was such a rigorous artist. My father was a very infuential flmmaker more than a box offce success just because he followed what was interesting to him. And my mom had that, too, for sure. She had, maybe more than any other Hollywood actress, maybe also due to the scandal, an incredible career that spanned Europe. She worked with people from Hitchcock to Ingmar Bergman, my father to Victor Fleming. She did theater, television, all of it. So, I think she was also pursuing her passion and interests and was less concerned about [the overall trajectory of] her career. The concept of, “It will be good for my career…” I never really heard that talk in my family. ★
Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes in Conclave
Guy Pearce
How The Brutalist actor dug into his own life experience to play a man of wealth and taste—and power
BY DAMON WISE
Given the number of indelible performances he’s given since breaking out world-wide with only his third bigscreen appearance— The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in 1994— it’s astonishing that Guy Pearce doesn’t have an awards shelf creaking with the weight of career-affrming statuettes. That could change after Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, an epic drama (complete with 15-minute intermission) in which an emigrant Hungarian architect, László Toth (Adrien Brody), seeks political asylum, and a creative outlet, in postwar America. As the ultra-rich Harrison Lee Van Buren, an apparent philistine who becomes Toth’s artistic champion, Pearce steals the show.
How did you become involved with The Brutalist?
Well, it came about in a very easy way, to be honest, because Brady had expressed an interest in me playing the role. So, it went via my agent in America. I'm trying to think when that was… Maybe two and a half years ago. It was quite a while back.
Did you know Brady before that? I’d heard of him. I’d heard of
Childhood of a Leader, but I hadn’t seen it. So I did some homework, and read the script, and I pretty much loved everything I was witnessing. Then I got to chat with Brady, and it just felt like one of those opportunities that was exciting, because it felt unusual and unique. It’s funny when jobs come along, because there’s a whole range of responses. Sometimes you can feel excited by the director, but the script
needs work. Or the script may be great, but it’s the director who you don’t feel particularly inspired by. This was one of those ones where it all felt right.
How would you best describe the script?
It was long, it was big, and it was detailed. I found the way in which the characters were realized quite intriguing. From an acting point of view, the stuff that was in there
was just really interesting to me, in terms of how one might play a character like this. I don’t remember how many pages it was, but I certainly got the sense that it was quite epic. I think it was probably longer than most other scripts I get. The intermission existed in the script, with the photograph that we see on the screen while the rolling intermission takes place. It was very clear from the outset that he had a vision. My memory of it is that it was pretty much the same as the fnished flm. Like Chris Nolan and Memento, the fnished flm is pretty much a mirror of what was there on the page.
So nothing changed at all?
With someone like Brady, you just feel that there's a real sense of exploration—of human behavior and psychology—that leaps off the page. So, if anything was trimmed or shaped slightly differently, I don't really remember. I just remember feeling that Brady was somebody with a great sense of heart and a great desire to explore human interaction, and human foibles, and strengths and weaknesses. I think I said to him at some point, at the end of the process, “Look, if there’s anything you ever want me to come and do, I’ll do it.” Because, with Brady, you feel like you’re in trusted hands. You’re in the hands of somebody who has as much interest in trying to understand people as I do—in fact, more so—whereas some flms are far more about… Just other things, I guess. Obviously, every flm involves people. But I’m always more interested in the inner workings of a human being than I am in—perhaps— ideas, even. I’m just fascinated in dynamics between people
How did he picture the character? Did he give you the script and leave you alone, or did he give you homework?
No. If I’m going, “I’m not seeing this, you need to give me a bunch of homework in order for me
to understand what it is you’re trying to say,” then I think we’re in trouble. That’s not to say I haven’t done jobs before where I’ve done research, and I’ve delved in, which I probably would do just out of curiosity to a degree anyway. But with this I felt like I was able to see this character as I was reading him. Which is, to me, always the best. I do my best work when that’s my response. It’s always the most enjoyable and exciting experience where I almost feel like I could start flming the day after I’ve read the script.
I’ve been on flms before where I go, “OK, the director seems to have some interesting ideas, but I can’t quite see the character yet, so I’m going to have to cobble some stuff together to try and fnd it.” Sometimes you really do fnd it. Maybe there’s a little clincher moment. Like a photograph, if you’re playing a real person, or a photograph of someone else who makes sense to you. You might see something in their eyes and go, “Aha! Got it.” But if I don’t get that, or if I don’t at least feel that, then I feel like I’m fudging it. I feel like I’m cobbling something together and trying to present something which just doesn’t feel authentic. [Laughs.] And then we’re in trouble!
What was the eureka moment here? What was your way into Van Buren?
Well, just reading the script. It was very clear. He’s worked hard for his life, but what he’s attained for himself translates into a power, where he feels an ownership of the space that he’s in, of the people around him. I went to a private school, growing up, and I still am friends with some of those people from school. Some of them have become very wealthy. I witnessed this power that these people pursue. I guess we’re all trying to identify ourselves. We’re all trying to feel confdent in what it is that we do in our lives, and to feel OK in the world, and the way in which we do that varies.
For some people, once they attain certain things, or once they become successful, they go, “Aha, that’s the thing that gives me my identity!” That can present itself in an obnoxious way, or it can present itself with great humility, and there are six million variations in between.
The interesting thing about Van Buren, I think, is the way we see him in that very frst scene he’s in. Obviously he's triggered by a very emotional moment; his mother’s about to die and there are trespassers in his house. We get to see the explosive, unstoppable train that he knows he can be to get what he wants in life. But then, in the second scene, we see him be quite touching. He’s in a cafe with László. He’s realized, and he’s learned, who László is, and he’s actually moved. One of the things Brady said to me was, “Look, Van Buren has great taste. He’s got a great sense of artistry and a great appreciation for the fner things in life.” But then what comes into question is this: Is his appreciation for László because of his skill and artistry and brilliance, or is it tinged with envy and complication? It’s like Salieri; he can recognize the genius. And the more he recognizes it, the more he’s frustrated by it, because he doesn't actually have it himself.
You see the two extremes of Van Buren in those scenes, and I thought there was something
interesting about that. Apparently, my grandfather was the same. My mother’s father used to get horribly drunk every night and scream and yell. I don’t think he was ever violent, but he was violent in his energy. The next morning, when he’d sobered up, he’d be saying, “Oh, come on, what’s wrong with you all? How come you’re all in a bad mood?” It was really almost schizophrenic behavior, because everyone else was then on eggshells going, “How do I deal with this person?” But I think [for the flm] it was important, as did Brady, to present a character who had a heart, and sensitivity, and had an awareness of artistry. So, our audience is going, “Well, I don’t know what to do with this guy because I’m scared of him. But I do feel sympathy—to a degree.”
Van Buren’s attitude to László changes when he reads about himself in a glowing magazine article—“A Millionaire Amid His Moderns”—and realizes that his work validates him as a man of wealth and taste. It says so much about power, and when I use the word power, I mean just in our own internal way. Like the moment in the store when someone’s trying to sell you something and you don’t want to buy it, but you feel a bit powerless in the moment. Or maybe there are little moments throughout the day when you do feel
Guy Pearce in The
confdent—you feel like you have power—and those around you are affected by that. But, obviously, with someone like Van Buren, it’s more extreme. I suppose on some level it’s the Donald Trump version: the bigger, the better. That’s what gives him his power, because he sees people swoon at his feet. [Pause.] It’s funny, actually. I mention Donald Trump because I was watching a documentary about him on Netfix recently [Trump: An American Dream]. When you see him younger, there’s less bravado, there’s less…
Less pomposity?
Yeah. He doesn’t have his empire yet. Once you’ve got your empire, you’ve got to hang onto it. You’ve got to dig your heels in and go, “No, no, no, I deserve this.” Whereas in the beginning, there was a slightly more humble approach. Clearly, Trump, as we know, was trying to not only live up to his father but probably outdo his father, in a way. So, in the early days, he was having to work out how to do that. Then, of course, in later years, after he bought all his casinos, built all his buildings, he really believed that he was the man. And if you’re not going to be humble about it, you become this infated version of yourself. It’s so diffcult to deal with, when you’re watching someone like that, isn’t it? You know there’s some humility in there, but they’re not prepared to show it anymore.
Did any of that occur to you while you were making the flm, or is this something you’re refecting on now?
No, no, no. I feel like my character had more class than Trump. I’m only refecting on him now, I think, because I’ve just watched this series recently, where I’m reminded of what he was like as a younger man. But, no, I don’t think I thought of him at all when I was making the flm. I just happened to catch a bit of the documentary. I was like, “Oh, that's right. That's what he used to be like…”★
Brutalist
“‘SASQUATCH SUNSET’ PRESENTS US WITH CREATURES THAT WE INSTANTLY BELIEVE. Steve Newburn should be singled out for his REMARKABLE CREATURE DESIGN.”
“SO CONVINCING THAT YOU QUICKLY FORGET YOU’RE WATCHING HUMAN ACTORS.”
“A MAGICAL, UPLIFTING SCORE by The Octopus Project.”
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“THANK THE CINEMA GODS, MIKE LEIGH IS BACK.
Some fi lmmakers make movies that feel like you could use them to reconstitute cinema if the art form ever vanished. MIKE LEIGH MAKES MOVIES THAT FEEL LIKE YOU COULD USE THEM TO RECONSTITUTE HUMANITY if we ever vanished.”
“Marianne Jean-Baptiste is Oscar®-worthy in Mike Leigh’s captivating new film. Sure to be one of the BEST PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR.”
“A MESMERIZING PERFORMANCE.”
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MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISTE
Saoirse Ronan
As an addict in The Outrun and a mother in Blitz, the Irish actress and producer explored new territories
BY CARITA RIZZO
Saoirse Ronan is having a moment. Which is not necessarily a new experience, given she has four Oscar nominations to her credit. Now 30, the Irishborn actress frst made the Academy cut at 14 for her supporting role in Atonement, which she followed with leading roles in Brooklyn, Ladybird and Little Women. But this year, playing a single mother in Steve McQueen’s London wartime drama Blitz, and a woman fghting her demons in Nora Fingscheidt’s addiction story The Outrun Ronan’s frst project as a producer—the goalposts for what she can achieve have been widened.
At this stage of your career, when you’re thinking about what you want to do next, do you choose in terms of personal challenge or people you want to work with?
I would say it’s both of those things. It’s become more about the type of flmmakers I want to work with, the older I get, because I think the richer your personal life becomes, the more it takes for you to be convinced to leave it. So, you really want it to be with people who are not crazy, are nice to be around, do great work, and do the kind of work that you align yourself with. I think that’s become more important, the older that I’ve gotten. But always, the heart of any decision I make to do something, is personal growth as an actor, trying something that I, hopefully, haven’t done before that will just stretch me out a little bit more as a performer.
What was it about Blitz that drew you to it?
I’ve never played a mother before, and the relationship between mother and child is one that’s incredibly precious to me and has been very formative in my life. Being able to explore that, and embody it on screen, especially with a flmmaker who is so about achieving truth and realism—to know that that wasn’t going to be skimmed over, and it was going to be given the time that it deserves—really intrigued me.
You came out of a self-imposed break to work with Steve McQueen? What is attractive about his flmmaking?
I love his taste. I think he’s a very smart flmmaker. I think that he manages to create work that isn’t didactic, but it always gives you a sense of refection while being entertained. I think that he is one of the few directors who’s managed to come from the visual art world and is just as much about performance and the actors having their time, as he is about making the frame look beautiful. You don’t often get both. When it comes
to the respect that he gives to the actors, it’s a nice energy to be around. It’s supportive, and it makes you feel like nothing’s really off the table.
You’ve seen his work onscreen. What is his process like to achieve that?
He will never overdo something. Because Steve did a lot of still frames in his artwork, it feels like once he’s able to capture truth in the simplest of ways—and that’s not demoting it at all—he’s more than happy to move on. In general, a scene on any movie will have, at least, four setups, if not six, if not 10. It depends on the scale of the production. And this was of massive scale, and we had all the money in the world, but more often than not, he would feel that when he had achieved everything he needed to, and he was able to tell the story in an effective way— he would never tax his artists, as he says—we’d just move on. The power of the image is something that still he believes in completely, and once he feels that he’s captured that truth, he doesn’t push you further than you need to be pushed—which is amazing, because so often, you hear about directors that make actors do, like, 85 takes. For what, I don’t know. I don’t think it really achieves anything at all. So, to be working with a director who would never milk it, is lovely. You really feel valued as a performer.
What was the challenge of portraying a mother, and how did that character evolve through conversations with Steve?
I’m not a mother. So, the biggest challenge is trying to embody a role that is important to all of us without having experienced it frsthand myself. I could only go off secondhand experience and information, and the relationship with my own mother, and how open she’s always been with me about her experience as a mother. I learned a lot from those dynamics. I think I am quite maternal. That’s a
state that I feel quite comfortable to be in. I think what evolved over time was the companionship that you see between myself and Elliott [Heffernan], onscreen. That was really built off our relationship off-set. We became very close. Really, I just wanted him to feel that we could be pals without anything ever feeling contrived. I think that the relationship that you see onscreen was really born out of that and the acknowledgement that Rita is still a young woman. She’s absolutely lived a life. She’s gone through a lot of loss and tragedy, and she’s had a huge amount of responsibility put on her shoulders. But she is still young, and I wanted to incorporate that into how she is as a mother.
Would you have believed that this was Elliott Heffernan’s frst acting gig? As your son George? No. I really wouldn’t have. He was so professional, so diligent and studious, but also very confdent and relaxed on set. He was just really in his element. I remember the frst time I met him, he would barely look at me, and I just kept ripping the piss out of him until he was like, “Oh, you’re just like a big child.” But he found his place on set very quickly and loved it. You could tell he was empowered by it all. He took direction beautifully and he’s great at improv, which is quite unusual for anyone, but, especially for such a young person. There were so many scenes that, in terms of the dialogue and the interactions between characters, weren’t scripted. We would just try out different things, and I would take the lead, and move the scene in one direction or another after having a conversation with Steve. And Elliott was so open and confdent in what he was doing. He was very malleable, but also was able to take the lead as well.
Were there any unexpected challenges in doing Blitz?
You know, what was hard was not being in all the time. I had just done The Outrun, where I was in every frame of it, so I thought, “Oh,
great. I’ll just shoot for a couple of days, and then we can go away for a bit, or I can go up to Scotland, or I can go home to Ireland—how nice!” which was lovely, but when you aren’t in every single scene, or you’re not in every single day, you don’t get the chance to build up that stamina, which you have to then rebuild from the bottom up every single time. That was actually quite diffcult, from an energy perspective, to have to rev yourself up every single week, when you’re only in for a couple of scenes at a time.
You also came from having control of The Outrun as producer to solely acting again. Was it hard to revert back to that?
Actually, weirdly, it was a relief, because I have this new insight into all of the drama that goes on behind the scenes that’s kept from the actors. Having been through all of that, and really having to have very grownup conversations about budget, and whether the movie’s going to go ahead or not, or whether we can get this actor, or can scheduling work out with this person, or, “Oh, shit. We’ve just lost that location, which is for a really pivotal scene.” All those
things I really enjoyed, but to then go onto Blitz where I could just see the producers in the corner scratching their heads, trying to fgure something out, I was relieved to have a little respite from that. But I will say, in general, when it comes to the development of a project now, I think I would fnd it very diffcult not to be as involved as I had been on The Outrun, because I feel like the older you get, and the more experience you gain, the more you want to be in the driver’s seat.
Why was Rona, in The Outrun, the role you needed to play?
As an actor, Rona gave me access to a performance that I don’t think I would have gotten anywhere else. I was able to, in one person, play someone who had the capability, as every human does, to be ugly, beautiful, tragic, chaotic, at peace, poetic, just everything. And my performance could really refect all the ebbs and fows of that. So, from a performance perspective, it just widened the goalposts. Nothing was really off the table in terms of the type of performance that I could give, and what I could do, what emotions that I could access, everything.
From a personal perspective, having loved ones who have struggled with alcoholism, some of whom have made it out the other side, some who haven’t, some who maybe never will, the pain that that makes you feel stays with you forever. The confusion and the frustration that you experience, as a loved one watching a family member or a friend go through something like that can be quite stifing, and I really needed to work through that. I needed to get to a point where I wasn’t just angry at the thing anymore. I’d spent my whole life just being angry at the thing, because that’s the easiest emotion to feel. I needed to get to some semblance of understanding, or empathy, which will always be diffcult. But The Outrun has, certainly, given me the gift of empathy and understanding in a way that I wasn’t willing to experience before.
Were you emotionally in a place where you felt stable enough to go to those places, or maybe, professionally, more able to separate character from person? I think it was absolutely essential that I didn’t separate it too much. The reason I signed up to this is
Saoirse Ronan as Rona in The Outrun
because it was a personal feat that I had to overcome. And I think if Jack [Lowden, Ronan’s husband and producing partner] had read the book maybe two, three years prior, and suggested we do it, I, personally, wouldn’t have been ready for that, as an actor or as a woman. But I was at a point where I feel so secure in my life, and secure in who I am, and feel safe enough—because that’s the other thing about alcoholism, or any substance abuse, you can feel so unsafe as the loved one—so, to fnally feel fundamentally that I am safe—and that is largely to do with Jack—I was able to go to those places. There were moments where it was fairly overwhelming. But I’m so grateful that it came along when it did.
We often talk about how the body doesn’t know the difference between you and your character screaming and crying all day, but this feels tough even in smaller moments. Was it hard to shake it off at the end of the day when it’s so personal?
No. It wasn’t hard because, actually, it was my therapy. It was my way to work through it, and once I was able to do that in a safe space it felt like the pain was being used for good. That’s what [author]
Amy Liptrot says about the book. She says that nobody comes out worse in that book than she does. Like, she’s not doing herself any favors. But while she was writing it, and while she was still pretty early on in recovery, she was doing it for something that was bigger and more important than her. I think we all felt that, and it’s a testament to Nora Fingscheidt, our director, that she was able to create a space for myself, Paapa [Essiedu], Saskia [Reeves], Amy and all of the crew, who would have been triggered by it at different points. We felt like we were a part of something that was calm and supportive. If anyone needed time away from set, we could have it. If I direct one day, I will always want to have that sort of atmosphere on my set.
There’s such a “dance like nobody’s watching” quality to this flm, whether it’s her drunken elation, or singing with seals. But you are not alone. Do you get self-conscious anymore when it comes to your work?
Oh, not at all. The thing that I was most self-conscious of was singing in Blitz, but when it comes to that full dance scene that we did, when I’m singing in the kitchen, when I’m howling to the seals... I get embarrassed at stupid things,
but I’ve never been embarrassed in that way. Some of it is just who I am, but I think a lot of it is just a gift that I’ve gotten from being an actor. I realized that recently actually. Little Elliott was interviewing me and he asked me, “What advice would you give to a young person?” And I don’t know why, maybe because it was a kid that was asking me, I just thought, “The key to it is you can’t be embarrassed.” Any sense of being embarrassed, or having any inhibition, that needs to be gone, because that is when you’ll truly feel free to give a performance that is unstoppable. I’ve always felt very proud of what I do. As in, the job that I have. I feel very unembarrassed by it. There’s a power that the camera has over me, which I haven’t really experienced onstage. The camera has a power over me where it just gives me this permission to tap into something regardless of what I look like, or what people might think, which is incredible. That’s also paired with wanting people to think that your performance is good. It’s such a strange contradiction, but the feeling of it is very freeing for me.
Why was the singing particularly nerve-wracking?
Because that’s not my job. I’ve always loved music, and I’ve grown up listening to the best singers in the world, and I have a newfound respect for someone who is able to translate emotion while still having technical control over their voice, and, also, has something unusual and unique about their voice. I think that’s a gift from God. I can hold a tune, but I’m not a singer. So, to get up there, and to be that vulnerable, and for your voice to be your tool, I just felt very exposed. I loved it, and I would love to do more of it where I get more time to properly prep, but it was nerve-wracking, for sure.
I want to ask about the lambing scene in The Outrun. I understand it was quite complicated to cap-
ture that. Other than being able to do something very unique, why was it important to the flm? So, we actually did it before we started. We did principal photography in the summer, and lambing up in Orkney is around April. At the time, I had just fnished another job, and I was like, “Really, Nora? Do we really need to go up to Orkney now? I’m tired.” And she was adamant that she wanted to do this. So, we went up, and it meant that, six months prior to us starting principal photography, me and all the creative team had to establish what Rona’s look was going to be, what her hair look was going to be, which is a big decision to make so early on. Then, we’d get ready at, like, 4 a.m. to be in the shed for half past four, and we would just wait. What we got was so incredible. It’s shown as the contrast between Rona’s life in Orkney, and the life that she’s left behind in London. It’s also showing us, at the end of the day, how black and white life can be. You’re either alive or you’re dead. There’s a brutality to it. To start a movie about addiction like that—and make the audience so shocked by the natural world, which is what we will continue to immerse ourselves in throughout the flm—was such a great tone-setter. Even for me, as the person playing Amy Liptrot, it gave me a sense of how Amy grew up and what was expected of her, and any kid that grows up on a farm. I’m glad she made me do it in the end. I delivered, like, seven lambs.
Was it just the coolest thing?
Yeah. It was terrifying. It was so intense, and the noises that those ewes made were insane. I’ve never heard anything like that in my life, but as an at-the-time 28-yearold woman, who would love to have her own kids one day, to pull a baby animal out of another animal, and give this baby back to its mother, and watch them totter off together was incredible. It was so magical. ★
Saoirse Ronan as Rita in Blitz
A BROADCAST THAT WILL CHANGE HISTORY
INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS
“THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS HERE NO MERE ABSTRACT CONCEPT; IT’S AN EMBODIED MORAL IMPERATIVE” / VARIETY, MANUEL BETANCOURT
“HAVING BEEN A RADIO PRODUCER FOR MANY YEARS, I WAS PERSONALLY VERY TOUCHED BY THE FILM AND HOW RADIO ALWAYS PLAYS AN IMPORTANT PART IN HISTORICAL UPHEAVALS” / ARP SÉLECTION, MICHÈLE HALBERSTADT
John Magaro
How the actor prepared to tell a harrowing real-life experience in September 5
BY BAZ BAMIGBOYE
John Magaro is the glue that holds September 5 together. He stars as ABC Sports producer Geoffrey Mason, who was covering the 1972 Munich Olympics when Black September terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage in the Olympic compound. Magaro must convey the enormous pressure and responsibility placed on Mason as he is suddenly thrust into the hot seat to produce live coverage. Director Tim Fehlbaum chose Magaro because, he says, “He’s one of the best there is.” Next, Magaro is set to appear with Michael Fassbender in the spy drama The Agency, followed by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s flm The Bride
You weren’t even born then, but what did you already know about Munich ’72?
I knew about it. I don’t know why I knew about it. I mean, I’ve always been a lover of history. My mother’s Jewish. I was raised Jewish, so I think there was part of that in the air. I remember, as an American growing up, that when there was an anniversary, there would be specials on about it. I do remember that image of the Black September member on the balcony being in my brain at a very young age. I remember hearing discussions about it. I was also an extra in Munich [Steven Spielberg’s 2005 classic about how Israeli operatives hunted down those responsible].
What scene were you in?
It’s when Eric Bana is walking across the street in New York. I’m this skinny little boy, fresh off the boat into New York, walking across the street from him.
So, I saw Munich again. It’s very different, and I really want to hammer it into everyone’s heads that September 5 is not Munich for so many reasons. Munich is something totally different.
Yes, September 5 is a fast-paced flm about people adapting. Munich’s about retaliation. In a lot of ways it’s a vengeance movie, and this isn’t. I wouldn’t say this is apolitical. I just don’t think it’s a political movie. It’s about journalism and journalists have politics. But anyway, I knew about Munich. I didn’t know that it was the frst time that the Olympics were broadcast globally. I didn’t know all that went into putting the Olympics together, even in that rudimentary form. It’s a full circus. ABC Sports comes to town, sets up, builds a city, and then leaves. It’s kind of crazy.
What were the circumstances of you landing the flm’s key role?
I was shooting another flm at the time in New Mexico. This little flm that I did with Steve Zahn that I was actually a producer on, called LaRoy, Texas—a really fun, dark comedy. It had some good life to it and people seemed to enjoy it. I was out there in Albuquerque alone doing my job, coming home at night, bored, trying to be good and focus on the work. Especially when you’re lead number one on a call sheet, I think you feel this responsibility
that you really want to guide the ship and set a good example. I’ve learned that from watching other people I look up to and admire, how they operate when they’re number one on the call sheet.
Like who?
Brad Pitt. We worked on War Machine and The Big Short Working with Fassbender right now on The Agency, he’s doing that. But all those guys, [Steve] Carell, his work ethic on The Big Short was really impressive; Cate Blanchett on Carol. You see these people and how they work, and you see why they’re so revered and so successful, because they’re not just great actors, they’re lovely people to be around. So yeah, I was doing LaRoy, but then I got a script, and it gave me something at night to read. At that point, Peter Sarsgaard was already attached, and Sean Penn was already on as producer. So you see that and you immediately know it must be OK, there must be something here. I don’t see how Peter would’ve signed on and Sean Penn would’ve signed on if this was just a big stinker. So, I sat down and started to read
it. It helped that it was about ninety pages, so I knew I could get through it, but it also helped that it was just captivating and that the ball, once it started rolling, it felt like it kept rolling, and new things were being unveiled, and it really just kept me going. By the end, I was really excited about it.
Your character fnds himself controlling the news broadcast. Selfshly, as an actor, you also want your character to be good. And I thought Geoff was really a cool character, because I love that he was positioned in this way of having the angel on one side and the devil on the other side, where you already have Roone Arledge [Sarsgaard] who’s pushing the limits of journalism and potentially doing things that maybe aren’t the right decision. And then you have Marvin Bader, Ben Chaplin’s character, who is this mentor and guiding force and drawing him back to what you’re really supposed to do, just having no time to think and going on that ride. I saw that and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. It was a pretty quick decision. I called right away and was like, “Yeah, let’s do this.”
What was the key stuff you learned from Geoff? Did you meet in person?
Once I was cast, Geoff really wanted to talk to me right away. I could sense it in that frst conversation with him that he was really nervous about this, really worried. I mean, almost to the degree where it felt like he may just take it and run away if we didn’t put him at ease, which I totally get. We didn’t meet until after, but we had a lot of Zoom sessions. This was still during Covid, and he lives in Florida, and I was in New York. So right away we got on Zoom and we started talking. I let him know that the way I work is to just tell the story, to be as honest as possible, and to do my work so I can try and portray what he was doing on that day as authentically as I can. He also didn’t really know my work, so he’s like, who is this guy?
So, he hadn't seen First Cow [Kelly Reichardt’s 2019 feature]? [Laughs] I don’t think that made it down to Florida. In fact, he did say he went off and watched a couple things I did. It might’ve been The Big Short or something like that. So we just kept talking. I was picking his brain. I wanted to know what he went through on that day. And sometimes talking to real people can be unhelpful, but this time it was really helpful. When I was talking to Geoff, it didn’t feel like he was protecting himself in the story. It felt like he was protecting his team. He was really concerned that everyone else got their due. And unfortunately, in the story, obviously we had to tighten it up. And the role that I do play in the flm is sort of an amalgamation of two or three people. There was a director on the ground and then there was also Geoff as the producer. And we had to sort of fuse those roles together just for narrative purposes. But I tried to assure him that we would still give some sort of homage to that person. And we did. Daniel Betts, a great English actor who I had
worked with on War Machine, plays the director in the frst scene who goes off to the Alps on vacation, and we gave him the name Dan Wilson. That’s a tip of the hat. So, Geoff was really concerned about not forgetting anyone, or leaving anyone behind, which I really respected.
What was the essence of what Geoff told you about being there that day?
He made it clear that on the day it was just go, go, go, go, go. No time to think, no time to be emotional. You just did your job. And it wasn’t until after that you went home and cried and let the tragedy wash over you. Then he got me obviously into [real-life] control rooms, which was huge. I couldn’t have done it without that research.
Is Geoff also Jewish?
No, he’s not. And so, the character is not Jewish… We know that the room and the broadcast compound was full of people from all over the world, a lot of Germans, a lot of French. There were French Muslims in the compound, but as far as I know, the only American Jew was Marvin [Bader], Ben Chaplin’s role. [Bader] certainly must have felt something beyond what Geoff could have felt in that moment. But again, if you ask Geoff about it, he was just focused on doing his job. It wasn’t about being Jewish, it wasn’t about being Arabic, it was about being a journalist. That’s part of why I don’t think Tim [Fehlbaum] wanted to make this some statement about the politics of the matter, because journalists ideally leave their politics behind, and especially back then, more so than nowadays, it wasn’t about thinking about what side you want to promote or what side you don’t want to promote, it was just telling the story. I think Roone’s view was to make clear that the Israeli hostages were the
vulnerable ones and the Black September terrorists the aggressive ones. I have to pick my hero and villain here, and that’s how Roone’s brain operated.
I love that scene of Geoff helping to wheel that big mother of a camera out into the compound. That camera was so cumbersome. It moves this way and that way on its axis, but it doesn’t move the other way. We crushed Peter [Sarsgaard] against the wall. It was a real camera. All that equipment was real. These Germans, I don’t know how they do it. They found all this stuff. I went down to the CBS broadcast facility on 57th Street. They took me down to the basement where they have the retired equipment. This stuff has gone into the place in Beetlejuice where the dead people go. It’s retired from retirement. Our production designer had to fnd some random collector in Germany who had it. He traced it down and then we had amazing technicians who got them all up and working. Same with all the TVs, same with all the phones, I think.
What else did you learn about Geoff’s duties?
Well, going back to the base, which was at CBS Sunday Sports and ESPN, at the Madison Square Garden, learning that language of the control room, that was two months, learning how to do that, going home, watching sporting events, mock calling the show as I would watch sporting events. I’d start to say the language I was learning in the control room to the TV, like a mental case, just calling a show. Like, “Camera 5! And 6!” And then, on top of that, I think hopefully I brought just what I try to bring as an actor inherently to what I do. I mean, I hope what I offer is something unique.
Did Geoff talk to at all you about the ethical pressures they felt?
He’s pretty much like steel about that. He says it was tense, but he doesn’t really acknowledge the pressure. He sees it as he was just doing his job, and whether it was covering the boxing on that day or covering what happened on that day, it would’ve been approached very similarly. I think that’s how that team thought about it in the moment. Like I said, it wasn’t until after that they went back to the hotel room and had a few drinks, and all of a sudden that party atmosphere of the nights before was gone, and the guilt of what happened and the grief of what happened laid over them, the drinks didn’t go down as easy and the tears started to come up. It was very clear from the conversation with Geoff that those thoughts did not happen while they were calling the 22 hours of that day.
But views are exchanged in the flm about ethical matters? They did have those conversations. They had the conversations about, can we show someone being shot on live TV? Did they see this broadcast live on TVs in the apartments? These were conversations they had, but again, they had to keep going. There was no time to really wallow in those moments or hyper-analyse. They aren’t psychologists, they’re not geopolitical scientists, they’re not humanitarians. They’re sports journalists. They’re not even proper journalists.
Well, hang on, a lot of sports writers have been general news journalists, at least in the U.K. and Jim McKay was also a former crime reporter.
And that’s not a dis to them. It’s just they are sports journalists. Everything that they had been trained to do could not have prepared them for that moment. So why is the flm not more political? Because it’s sports journalists who are there. You have Peter Jennings trying to get them on board, but I think that’s also what makes this story special, because it was these people who were not really prepared for the events of life to fall upon them. And now they have to take the reins and unbeknownst to them forever change the way news is covered, and that’s fucking crazy. ★
Magaro as Geoff Mason, left, with Ben Chaplin as Marvin Bader in September 5
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION IN ALL CATEGORIES INCLUDING
BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR
Gia Coppola
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Kate Gersten
BEST ACTRESS
Pamela Anderson
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Jamie Lee Curtis | Kiernan Shipka Brenda Song | Billie Lourd
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Dave Bautista
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE Andrew Wyatt
BEST ORIGINAL SONG “Beautiful That Way”
Written by Andrew Wyatt, Miley Cyrus, Lykke Li
Performed by Miley Cyrus Music by Andrew Wyatt
Jeremy Strong
The Apprentice actor on balancing the anguish and the brutality of Trump lawyer Roy Cohn
BY CARITA RIZZO
Playing Donald Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice is not the frst time Jeremy Strong has tackled recent American history. Before the actor became synonymous with Kendall Roy in Succession, he played parts in The Big Short, Selma and Parkland. While the actor feels a slight discomfort discussing acting choices for a flm whose main subject “poses such a clear and present danger to you and I,” Strong is no less proud of the work. “I am happy with how it turned out and happy that I went for it,” he says. “I almost didn’t.”
What made you run toward this role and this flm?
You run towards it, because it’s so dangerous. Because it’s been done before brilliantly. It was done by Al Pacino [in Angels in America] in a really defnitive way, that had such an impact on me. It was done in Citizen Cohn by James Woods, and Matt Tyrnauer released that brilliant documentary, Where’s My Roy Cohn? It almost felt like after the Matt Tyrnauer documentary came out, there was no reason to do something mimetic or narrative. Because the picture that it offered felt so defnitive and complete, how could you possibly improve upon that? But I want to fnd a precarious limb to go out on. I feel like that’s where you grow as an artist. This one felt like it lit up all those columns in me of something that I wasn’t sure if I could do. And that felt terrifying in all the right ways.
What was the most insightful thing you found out while researching Roy Cohn?
I remember reading an interview with Dustin Hoffman years ago where he said, “The question that you have to ask is, ‘How is this character in trouble?’” And Roy Cohn just had so much pain underneath the... I wouldn’t even call it a facade because it was pretty well integrated into who he was. But somewhere deep down in there, there’s a cleft in his spirit, and that was the part that was most interesting to me—how to try and embody that and how to both render him in an exact way as possible to who he was in life, without gilding anything or imposing an interpretation of it. I don’t want to make him more or less sympathetic than I found him
to be. I guess I found an anguish and a loneliness in him as well as a brutality and a ruthlessness. And those polarities always make the most fertile soil as an actor.
What made you feel like you were safe in Ali’s hands?
Ultimately it came down to that. It’s a choice, to bet on a flmmaker. His flm Border is so wild and visionary. It has this phantasmagoric but very controlled quality in the flmmaking. I thought in Ali’s hands it would yield an unknown variable, the punk rock sensibility that he has. And beyond that, I got a sense, when I frst met with him, that he would give me the freedom to do my thing, which I needed in this case. He would give me a lot of latitude, freedom to improvise, freedom to have the sense of authorship of what we were doing. I think my approach to these things is not just learning the words on the page. My approach is trying to prepare the whole life of the character and then show up ready to express that life. You have to really master your subject in a way that maybe even the flmmaker hasn’t, and I always feel like my job is to fght for the character. I had a sense that I could trust that Ali would be collaborative in that way, which he was.
In this movie, Roy Cohn starts out strong and his health and strength decline throughout. What were the challenges in embodying him physically? All that stuff is challenging. I think voice is such an important part of character. It might be the most integral part in a way, our voice is so fundamental to who we are. It is like cracking a code. It’s a war of attrition that you have to wage
L to R: Strong as Cohn and Sebastian
for months and months until the voice becomes your own. That was probably the most important thing for me. The rest is almost surface stuff. Wardrobe is such a tool in telling a psychological story of character. I have a belief, though, that that stuff has to be unconscious, otherwise it’s cheap. My intention is never to plan or prescribe anything, but if you spend enough time absorbing it, I do trust that by some process of osmosis, those things enter into your unconscious and then they just come out of you at different moments, unbidden. That’s where it can transcend caricature.
How do you feel about essence vs. accuracy?
I feel a great responsibility to be accurate. I don’t feel like, oh, it’s my interpretation and I can do whatever I want. So, when Roger Stone said that this was the Roy that he knew—as dubious a source as that is and as ambivalent as I feel about getting that from him—it actually was very gratifying because my goal, at the end of the day, is to be faithful to Roy, even more than being faithful to the flm. I don’t think I agree with
anything Roy ever said or did. I’m very different than he is, but I do feel like my job, and I take it so seriously, is to be faithful to him and who he was.
Both you and Sebastian Stan, as Donald Trump, are playing real-life people who are very distinctive. Was it tough to nail the broadness of it?
It’s interesting because it is broad. These are larger-than-life characters, and they’re monolithic in terms of our understanding of them. But I think about, well, two things. There’s something that Stella Adler said: Sometimes you have to be as large as life. People have size and you have to be unafraid. I would not claim to be fearless because I have plenty of fear, but we did have to be fearless in our work on this. That’s something that Sebastian was, and this one required me to be. The other thing I think of is Laurence Olivier, in his autobiography, wrote about this idea of theatrical courage. My favorite performances in flm have always had that—a kind of theatricality and size, which takes a good deal of courage to do on flm because flm is an
unforgiving medium if it detects dishonesty. So, you have to fnd a way for it to be both authentic and large. And that was a great challenge and one that I think Sebastian and I both embraced and were very daunted by.
What did the pressure from the outside feel like?
This experience was really feet to the fre every day because we were aware of what was at stake in terms of getting it right and the feeling that it could come out in the world at a time that could be impactful in terms of this election. Washington Post journalist Robert Kagan said that fascism won’t come to America with jackboots and salutes. It will come with a television huckster. That’s what the movie’s about. And that’s so deadly serious right now that I almost feel conficted doing press. The themes of this and what it’s exploring are so dark and pose such a clear and present danger to you and I and everyone we know that it’s a strange thing [to talk about] the aspects of movie making that become about you and your performance. But I am happy with how it turned out and happy that I went for it. I almost didn’t do it.
You almost turned it down?
Yeah. I just didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t have a lot of time; I came on late. And I knew how prepared I’d have to be. I just didn’t know if I’d get to the place where it caught fre. But then I had dinner with a friend of mine, a great Danish writer-director named Tobias Lindholm, and he said, “What would you do if you were not afraid?” And then I said yes.
I walked out of the theater thinking how messed up it was that I’m out here feeling sorry for Roy Cohn. It’s also brilliant storytelling. Did your perception of him change as a result of doing this?
Yeah. The magic trick of the flm is that you think Roy Cohn is the devil, and then you see that transference
happen and you realize that it’s a Frankenstein movie: the monster that he’s created has surpassed him, and Roy still has some vestiges of humanity in him. Roy really believed the things he did was for the good of humanity and for the good of America. And it’s scary, even as an actor, to fip over into the other side of seeing things. But I also think we live in this time where everyone is so intractable in the way they see things, and it’s so easy to demonize anyone who doesn’t see things the way we do, that it’s a part of what I do that I fnd really illuminating. And I was able to see through Roy’s eyes, as dark as that is.
It is interesting how much conversation there is about whether or not we should humanize monstrous people. Do we need to be that reductive?
As an actor, you can’t afford to be reductive. And it’s not either/or, it’s both/and. He can both have tenderness and sweetness with his llama Lollipop who lived with him in Greenwich, Connecticut, and with his different lovers, and in his life in Provincetown—which was a secret life that he had, in which he was more openly out and more accepting of himself. And at the same time, he could be the most vile, hateful, odious person imaginable. And I guess as an actor, that’s the degree of diffculty that you prepare for your whole life, to be able to attempt something like that.
You're Springsteen's manager Jon Landau in the upcoming Deliver Me From Nowhere. Has that been a something of a relief?
I will say, I’ve been deep in Springsteen World the last couple of months. And god, Bruce’s gospel is a gospel of hope and redemption and love. That has been his whole thing since the early ‘70s. And being a part of that, and just spending time communing with his music and with those guys, it is a great tonic to Roy Cohn’s gospel of belligerence and hate. ★
Stan as Trump in The Apprentice
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
The Nickel Boys actress channels her ancestral pain as she explores a dark chapter of Florida’s history
BY BAZ BAMIGBOYE
Aunjanue Ellis Taylor was raised in McComb, Mississippi, a one-time battleground in the struggle for civil rights, and says she carried a lot of the pain her maternal forebears endured. Undoubtedly, that informed her powerful performance as Hattie in Nickel Boys, writer-director RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s book. When Hattie’s grandson, Elwood Curtis, is unjustly charged with car theft, he’s sent to the Nickel Academy, a brutal reform school based on the real-life Dozier School in Florida where, in 2013, skeletons of Black boys were discovered in unmarked graves. Here, Ellis-Taylor describes working with Ross and his poetic, upclose point of view.
I know you were raised in McComb, dubbed in the 1960s as the ‘bombing’ capital of the world. In the summer of ’64 there were 14 bombings. Yeah, we had all those bombings, and then there were shootings and beatings. There’s a record of it, of all that stuff that pretty much happened, as you said, in that concentrated span of time. A lot of that happened in ’64. My grandfather’s church was bombed, and he was arrested for bombing his own church.
Would you say the source of your powerful performance as Hattie in this flm is connected to your roots in McComb?
I think that’s fair to say. I talked about this a little bit to a woman the other day and I said: I think that Black women’s tears on flm can be exploited. And so, I’m really conscious of that, and how do I do that in a way that honors this specifc woman, that honors Hattie’s pain in particular. I have to be really, really, really conscious of that. But yeah, I carry a lot of the pain that my grandmother had, and my mother had, and my aunts had. And women like that, where no one will ever know about them. But what they did in terms of building communities through their pain, listen, if in some sort of way, I get to that place in the work that I do, it means everything to me. I mean, I think that you get the pain, and you get their strength as well.
How do you heal after those heart wrenching scenes with Ethan Herisse as Elwood and his close friend Turner (Brandon Wilson)? The last few years there have been this concentration of these women who have come into my life through movies (Origin, The Color Purple, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat) I’ve been doing and a little bit of TV as well (When They See Us, Lovecraft Country), who are at these kind of pivotal moments in their lives. And that kind of work has been
required of being on your knees emotionally. And I think for me, honestly, I haven’t had to do the work of post-flming healing because I bring so much of that with me, honestly. It helps to have a place to take it.
There’s a scene where Hattie visits Elwood and has to tell him the lawyer has run off with all her hard-earned money and because of that, hope is lost. You both cry. RaMell said he gave you no direction for tears. Tell me about that?
With that scene, it was weird. RaMell and I talked about what it should be, and we felt that Hattie should maybe come into it that she was even a little mentally at her wits’ end and not really being in control of her emotions, because when I had my costume on it was unbuttoned, she was going to look disheveled, and then we did a take of that, and he looked at me and I agreed. I was like, “No, that’s not it.”
Because Hattie in that moment had to be together?
Yeah, yeah. But he had to see it. We both had to see it to say, “No, that’s not right.” It’s controlled emotion. And that makes it more effective. So, I’m doing it, and I was trying to be controlling. And I remember this bird, there was a bird that few in and I heard the bird. And then as I’m talking to him [Elwood], and I did not want to cry, I then, I don’t know, something happened. I guess the weight of what I was doing hit me. I didn’t plan on that.
There’s another scene: Hattie goes in her Sunday best to visit Elwood but he isn’t allowed to see her. So you ask Elwood’s friend Turner if you can hug him instead because you have so much love to give. And that boy has never been hugged before. We did quite a few takes of that. And the takes had to happen a lot of times because of the [POV] process of doing the flm and the
way that RaMell did it. It was a lot of technical stuff that had to be achieved outside of the acting work. But as far as that moment, I think there was something desirous in her to touch him. He was a proxy for Elwood. And RaMell was like, “I think you need to do it again.” So, we went through it a few times until he felt that that’s what he was seeing.
I was fascinated when I read that acting for you at a young age wasn’t the beating passion it was, let’s say, for Maggie Smith who wanted to act from birth.
Rest In Peace, Maggie. Shout out to Maggie Smith. Come on. I knew there was something creative in me. I knew that I knew there was something strange about me. And so did my family members. Something was going on. Girl, what are you? We all had to be in church plays and school plays. Every child was a thespian in McComb. But I didn’t know where it would rear its head in terms of a profession. I never thought it would. I’m a kid from the back woods of rural southern Mississippi. We were poor, but we were not impoverished. And my grandfather actually owned his own farm. He wasn’t a sharecropper. They ate off of what they grew at our farm. They grew corn, peas; name it, they grew it.
After my grandfather died, my grandmother had to raise me on government assistance. And so to choose a profession that would further challenge my grandmother or anybody in my family
to have to support me in any way was irresponsible. You have to choose something that is going to make things less hard for the other people in your life. Acting wasn’t one of them things. It just wasn’t a possibility.
What could you see from your bedroom window when you were growing up in McComb?
I had my own room. And then there was another room in our house, it was sort of like my spacecraft. And it was where I kind of knew that I wasn’t like the other children. That creative thing we talked about? Yeah. My grandmother had this rocking chair, and I would set it in this room. And I think of it in the way that probably Virginia Woolf talked about in A Room of One’s Own. It’s about a space of being allowed to create. And that’s what this room was for me. And I had this chair, it would be right in front of the window, and it looked out onto a feld, where all that stuff was grown. And there was a fg tree out there. There was a house where my grandmother washed clothes. There was another house that was devoted to smoking meats because my grandmother used to cure her own meats.
What was the conversation when you frst met RaMell?
That was a cheap date! It came around in a very ordinary, conventional way. My agent was telling me, they’re thinking about doing something and RaMell may do this. And I was just like: “I don’t care what he’s doing. I’m there.” Years before, when I saw his [2013] documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, I tried to fnd him. I had been at Brown [university] and I knew he was an associate professor of photography there. I remember that number. I tried to call him. It wasn’t like, “I want to work with you.” I just wanted to tell him how much that movie made me feel. So, this coming around in this way just was wish fulflment.
I was about to say that RaMell has found a new way of making movies about the experience of African Americans, when
actually, it’s a new way of making movies about people. Yes, that’s right.
Rather than categorize—I mean, I never say that the actors are “playing white people”. Because that’s never asked of them, ever. We did the junket for The Supremes at Earl’s All-YouCan-Eat. One of the questions was: “Is this a Black flm?” My co-workers were saying, “It’s a universal flm blah, blah, blah.” And I was quiet. What I said to them was, “Are y’all going to be mad at me if I’m a dissenting voice here?” And I said, “It doesn’t have to be universal. Why is the demand of Black flmmaking or Black flmmakers for it to be universal?” It is sort of like, “We are making you feel better. It’s universal. All of us can share in that.” But no one is asking of—name one of those guys—“Is this a universal flm? Is this a white man’s flm?”
Nobody asks that. It’s always our work that gets that.
You worked with Ethan before, right? You portrayed his mother in When They See Us. I was his mama. Now I’m his grandmama [laughs]. I told him, “I’m going to be your great-greatgreat grandmama the next time.”
So how was working with them and the experience of making the flm with RaMell’s specifc close camera point-of-view? Well frst of all, I had to get used to using a camera as a scene partner. When I read it, I didn’t know that… I just thought it was going to be conventional and I just thought they’d left it out of the screenplay. I said to RaMell, “It’s not in the script. When’s the camera going to be on the other person?” He’s like, “It’s not.” The air just got rarifed. It was weird. I’ve never done anything like that before, using a lens as a scene partner. It was restraining, you know. I try to be as free as possible, but you had to fnd a freedom within that constraint. And I love Ethan. I just think he’s so lovely, and Brandon as well. And to not be able to look at him and to feel what I wanted to feel in these scenes, it was challenging. It made me feel more what Hattie was feeling.
Maybe that’s the thing?
It was isolating, the process of doing it. I couldn’t lean into the things I usually lean into, lean on and lean into my scene partners. I didn’t have that at all.
It demands that an audience pay attention and it involves them emotionally and intellectually. It’s extraordinary that this flm was made by a studio. You have to salute that.
They didn’t have a lot of money. So that added to a lot of things that he might’ve tried to do but couldn’t do because of time constraints. When you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have a lot of time. But I think everybody who has been a part of this is tasked to feel what these folks were feeling. The actors in it, and now the people who are watching it. I’ve had people say: “Well it’s a tough watch. Where’s the hope in it?” And I’ve had to think about that, and it’s been hard for me to hear people have that reaction and it also kind of hurt me, it was depressing. Then I said, “OK, wait a minute. You should feel that way. That is how you should feel.” First of all, that’s another demand of Black flmmaking—that it has to offer hope.
No one demands that of Chekhov, do they?
Nobody. Exactly. But somehow with Black folks, when we tell things, tell the truth, we have to offer hope as well. It’s another kind of labor. I don’t want to chastise anybody, but I think that we have become accustomed to coming into a story like Nickel Boys and feeling like, OK, the movie will tie it up in a bow and it will all be fne. Now I know about this moment in American history, and I can go about my day. But this is not that. People have to understand this: RaMell did this with intention. He did it on purpose for you to feel what you are feeling, for you to feel discomforted. You are supposed to feel that way and I think it does something. I hope people will be open to that feeling, because that discomfort should make you feel you want to do something about it. ★
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Nickel Boys
Denis Villeneuve
The Dune: Part Two director on the reality of a desert shoot and his approach to the upcoming final chapter
BY MIKE FLEMING JR.
With Dune: Part Two, director and co-writer Denis Villeneuve is in the homestretch of realizing an ambition he’s had since age 14: to transfer his vision to a movie screen; to capture the survival of the Fremen in the inhospitable deserts of Arrakis amid the spice harvesters and ruthless House Harkonnen; to capture the giant sandworms’ majesty, and to tell the love story between Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and Fremen warrior Chani (Zendaya). With Villeneuve now headed toward an inevitable third installment, Dune: Messiah, he discusses the benefts and diffculties of shooting in the desert heat and his love of Frank Herbert’s work.
Watching Timothée Chalamet reminded me of watching Tom Cruise as he grew into manhood. How close has he come to your hopes when he was boyish and you set him for the frst flm? We have to remind ourselves that he had done the work before, tremendously strong work. Like for instance, the work he did on The King, where David Michôd put on absolute display of power that I knew that he could tap into. Some kind of inner power that I would need for the second flm, as an actor, and that authority inside him. The truth is, casting is a gamble, but I knew we would be able to do it. I had seen it before. But there was nothing to prepare me for the day when we did a big scene and I saw him exploding in front of the crowd, in a very Shakespearean way. I was really proud of what they all did on that day.
It's also Zendaya's flm. Her Chani provides the moral compass and makes the romance feel real. Paul is the main character, but Chani is our moral compass. It’s a big difference. That’s where the movie differentiates itself from the book. In the book, she’s a believer, she’s in Paul’s shadow, but I decided to transform our character in order to bring this idea that the movie will be a cautionary tale and not a celebration of his ascension. When the frst book was released, Frank Herbert said he was disappointed by the way the book was perceived by some readers who saw in Paul a hero, and saw the book as a celebration of Paul. Herbert wanted to do the opposite. He wanted to do a cautionary tale, a warning against the embrace of charismatic fgures. In order to correct this perception, he wrote a second book called Dune Messiah, that made sure that his initial intentions will be more clear. And me knowing this, I made this adaptation having this knowledge. I tried my best to be, let’s say, more faithful to Frank Herbert than to the book.
And for me, in a way, this is
where the story of Dune gets so interesting. Where it becomes a tragedy is what Paul will betray. He loves the people, and their culture, and he will betray what he loves in order to rule, to get power. In fact, the book is inspired by the story of T.E. Lawrence…
The character played by Peter O’Toole in the most revered of sandy epics, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia… In Lawrence of Arabia, he fell in love with the Arabic culture and asked the Arabic people to fght for England. And at the end, he betrayed that culture and that kills him, it breaks his heart. And it’s that tragedy, that betrayal… I wanted it to be very clear for the audience. In order to do so, I gave Chani much more substance, and I gave her her own political views. The movie is seen through the lens of their relationship, the birth of their love, how their love grows, as Paul discovered the culture, learned about the culture. And then how their love is tested by the politics of the world and where there’s a separation between both of them. And in the third part, we suddenly follow from her point of view, which becomes our moral angle, the moral compass, as you described it.
Why did you make that choice? So, the audience could understand that Paul is moving in the wrong direction and she feels betrayed. I felt that Chani had that beautiful charisma, and anything she does on screen, she’s a movie star. She has that. As you’ve said, you cannot take your eyes from her. She is very magnetic, but I love actors that are good listeners, people that, when everybody is talking in the scene, you can keep your camera on. Like Zendaya, you can feel all grammar unfolding in the way she reacts and deep inside her eyes. I put a lot of chips on it, I put a lot of pressure on her shoulders because I removed all… she has no lines toward the end. The third
act is almost there as a presence that reacts emotionally to what’s happening, and to the betrayal. I kept saying to my crew, “If we don’t believe in their love story, there is no movie.” So, my focus, the entire movie view, was to make sure that I will protect that journey between both characters, and to make sure that the relationship will come to life.
Well, she doesn’t need words to get her point across. I feel like that last look from her, I’ve gotten that one from my wife. What did you say to her?
Listen, she’s a tremendous actress. She knew it was clear, from the screenplay. What’s important for me is that she can convey in her attitude that she’s been betrayed as a woman, but also as a Fremen. It’s a dual betrayal. Paul betrays her love, but more importantly, I think for her, is the fact that he takes power in the name of another culture. The idea was that they were supposed to bring Fremen to power, to relieve them from colonialism. And now Paul will embrace again this colonialist approach. That is the big betrayal, the political betrayal. I wanted both to be intertwined, embedded one into the other. It’s the end of the nobility, a very cruel moment where a human being is fghting to keep their dignity.
She’s trying to keep her dignity. I absolutely love the moment where we go from where the society will bow in front of the emperor, and we go straight into the intimacy
of the interaction between both characters, and then the ones that are still standing are this princess who will become his wife for political reasons, and Chani, who is betrayed and leaves the room. It’s a moment that was essential to nail on the day as I was directing, and I am very deeply happy about how Chani brought it to the screen, and also how Paul ultimately did it. That was a deep sadness they brought to life.
You frst got hooked on Frank Herbert’s books at age 14?
There was something about the idea of a boy that fnds home in another culture that I thought was absolutely beautiful. The idea that it’s like if you fnd yourself in another country and suddenly you feel that the culture, the habits, the behaviors of that culture feel more like home and you consolidate your identity into it. And you become an adult in that society. I thought that was a beautiful idea. I loved the idea of how Frank Herbert used biology to create and to go deep into the description and creation of the ecosystem on this planet. He brought so much detail and reality and love into it that it felt so real, so rich. And the way he explored the impact of this ecosystem on the culture, and how the Fremen learn to adapt to the desert. How they develop and use technologies, to how the desert impacted their religion, their ways of belief, their behaviors, their culture in general, even art. There’s
something about that that when I was a kid, I was amazed, just foored by the poetry of it.
Now you are onto the third flm, your last. You’ve set the stage here to at least temporarily leave the sand behind. What are you most excited by?
That’s the thing about Frank Herbert, it was quite precise, the way he approached the idea of colonialism, exploitation of natural resources, the danger of language and politics together. There’s something about all the power of AI, that was after the book, but there are things in there that feel even more relevant today than when it was written. I cannot comment on the next movie because when movies are in the process of being written, they are very fragile. But let’s say that it is absolutely deeply inspired by the book, Dune Messiah. I think there is the potential for a very strong movie there, and I absolutely believe in it.
The frst flm fell into Operation Popcorn in the pandemic, where Warner Bros. put theatrical flms on streaming. Then you jumped right into Dune: Part Two. How did the time after this flm differ from the rush after the frst? When the second flm was fnished, I did feel that I had fnished the journey. I feel that I said that I will one day do the adaptation of Dune, and I had fnished it, and that was a very beautiful, profound feeling of deep joy and melancholia because you are facing your success and your failures. I’m still pinching myself that I had the privilege to do this, and I’m still digesting that. There’s two sides of me; the active side that is the flmmaker that works, but sometime I take some distance and I say, “Whoa, that’s wild.”
What were the most challenging aspects of shooting in the desert?
The heat. There was a moment in the day where the brain felt like a bowl of warm soup. An hour and a half in the middle of the day where
I was feeling that actors, myself, everybody, was getting a bit numb and stupid because of the power of the heat. So that I took very seriously. We brought the crew to rest around noon. It was too hot to work, even though we were in a cooler season. Those environments, the heat, is taxing and you get tired very quickly under these circumstances. And also, it sounds silly, but to create shadow in the desert is not a given. You need powerful infrastructures to do that. And the wind is so powerful. You need debris, strong devices that will be able to create shapes of shadow where the character will evolve. If you have, for instance, an attacker under the harvester, we build just a little part of the machine, you cannot build the whole machine. It means we have to create shadows that will bring a reality, and those shadows are not easy to create. That sounds silly, but it’s not a small detail.
What could you not have replicated on a soundstage? I would not have captured the sense of the movie, which is the impact of that landscape on the minds of the characters. It would’ve been impossible in most of the shots to bring the scale on a stage. Mother Nature is the main character of the book, and I wanted Mother Nature to be the main character of the movie. When I frst met with the studio, my only condition was that I wanted to shoot in the real desert. I wouldn’t do it on a backlot. I wanted to be inspired by the impact of those landscapes, and for my actors and the cinematographer and all the artists on the flm seeing the impact of nature.
Is it fair to say this was an unforgettable life experience?
I don’t want to speak for my crew, but we saw things that were quite spectacular and memorable. As flmmakers, one of the beautiful things is that it is an adventure, making movies. And this was a real adventure. ★
From left: Denis Villaneuve and production designer Patrice Vermette on set.
SPOTLIGHT
Cinematographers
Alice Brooks, Paul Guilhaume and Lawrence Sher on capturing musical magic
By RYAN FLEMING
What makes a great musical?
The immediate things that come to mind are obvious: singing and dancing. But the beauty of a well-choreographed ensemble number, or the power of a stunning duet don’t mean so much if the lighting is poor or the lensing isn’t up to snuf. That’s where the cinematographers come in. The musical flms of this year show of the best versions of what the genre can be.
Wicked takes themes of light, dark and color to the extreme for a unique vision of Oz. Musical numbers take control of the images in Emilia Pérez. And anything goes in Joker: Folie à Deux, where fantasy and reality meet in the middle.
Above: Karla SofÍa Gascón and Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez; Right: Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux
Cinematographer Alice Brooks is no stranger to musicals, even working previously on In the Heights with Wicked director Jon M. Chu. “Musicals are just a full extension of expression, and in musicals we get to see a character’s inner dreams and thoughts expressed through music,” says Brooks. “As a cinematographer, I then get to do it through light and camera and movement… I got my camera operator in there to learn all the choreography so it was ingrained in him.”
For Wicked, the main themes became focused on light and darkness. “Light is not always the light, and darkness is not always the darkness,” she says, “and we decided nature was going to bring that theatricality to our lighting.” The sun played a pivotal part in this as a spotlight for characters and lighting cues, but Brooks also had the idea for the sun to always rise for Glinda (Ariana Grande) and set for Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo).
“Through ‘Popular’, you witness a full 20-minute sunrise from the dark scene of them on their bed, all the way to where we have the pink sunrise and Elphaba is the
opposite. The last 40 minutes of the movie is all one long sunset through ‘Defying Gravity’.”
The goal was always to create a new version of Oz, which Brooks says was achieved through a lot of testing with lighting and colors. “I started reading the L. Frank Baum The Wizard of Oz books, and every single paragraph has this very vivid color description that was so inspiring,” she says. “Somewhere through prep, I decided that I would intentionally pick scenes and light them with every color of the rainbow.” Each color is representative of something in the flm, like orange being hope and excitement or pink as the continued theme of love between Glinda and Elphaba. “The blue of the Ozdust Ballroom was something we found when we started doing lighting tests and put Cynthia with her green makeup against the wall. That blue just made the green so much more beautiful and there was something about it that made you just completely drawn to her. This is the moment where Elphaba and Glinda fall in love with each other and fnally see each other for the frst time… The closeup of Elphaba just melts your heart and blue became her color.”
Above: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Glinda in Wicked; Below: Erivo and Grande during the number “Popular”.
For cinematographer Paul Guilhaume, it was important to fnd a consistent approach to the look of the flm while respecting each musical piece. “Something is always unfolding during a song, so very often the song was calling for the way we would actually shoot it,” he says.
One of the best examples of this is “El Mal”, where Rita (Zoe Saldaña) dances and sings at a charity gala while hopping onto tables. “It’s all about exposing people,” says Guilhaume.
“She takes control at this point, not only of her life or the story, but she takes control of the whole flm. In the musical piece, she actually directs the camera with her body and the Steadicam was dancing with her. She’s also pointing the light, and we had automatic lights in the ceiling that were controlled with infrared cameras that would point exactly where we wanted it to go.”
That level of control over camera and lighting was achieved by flming in a studio near Paris, rather than on location in Mexico as was originally planned. “We had everything controllable by a console and we could get as many cues as we wanted, and when you are doing daylight in the studio, which is the hardest thing to achieve, you can just turn of the sun or switch of the sky on a specifc line,” he says.
The use of light and shadow became a large element of the story in certain scenes, especially the ability to completely turn of the lighting of the world. “When Jessi (Selena
Gomez) is singing about feeling trapped in this big house, in the script it was written that she would walk into this dark room where the dark ideas are dancing,” he says. “We used a big set with a missing wall of her room, replaced by two strong lasers to create a laser wall between her world and the dark world. As soon as she crossed the laser wall, the sun and sky would switch of in her room and the single light in the dark world would switch on, and as she walks back in the laser wall the sun comes back. That’s something that was only possible to do in the studio.”
Above: Zoe Saldaña as Rita in Emilia Pérez, performing “El Mal”; below: Selena Gomez as Jessi (center).
As the cinematographer of the 2019 Joker, Lawrence Sher says there wasn’t actually a huge change in his work when he signed on for Folie à Deux. “The only thing that was a little bit diferent was a couple of sequences in which we would be in these fantasies outside of the continued look and feel of the frst Joker,” says Sher. “So, we were trying to fnd the best way to seamlessly integrate the original style and DNA but include something that was a bit out of the box, which was that people would be singing.”
The most important aspect of the cinematography to keep consistent between the frst Joker and the sequel was the enhanced realism. “That manifests itself basically in environmental lighting—as much as possible, we like to light the spaces and not the faces,” he says. “We like the environment to be a fully realized sort of world, which the actors and the characters can exist within, and then we can choreograph the camera in a real, improvisational way.”
To present an extension of the existing style without creating too much of a shift, Sher actually refrained from watching any of the choreography ahead of time. “I know that’s not traditional for what would be considered a musical, but we never watched it in advance intentionally,” he says. “Our philosophy was to let them work the environment and for us to discover it in real time.” Rather than breaking up songs into verses and choreography for his team, Sher would watch the masters once the choreography was fnalized and ready to shoot before adjusting lighting and cameras. “We didn’t want the camera to control things, and we didn’t want the choreography to control the camera. It was a little bit unique in that regard.”
Although the cinematography doesn’t change for musical numbers where the singing is an extension of dialogue taking place in the real world, fantasies are a diferent story. “The fantasies introduce more theatrical lighting,” he says. “There’re spotlights, much more vibrant color, more saturation. It’s still dirty, but it’s more expressionistic lighting introducing them in a black void.” The design became more reminiscent of ’40s musicals, in both production design and cinematography for fantasy scenes like on the roof of the Hotel Arkham. “It basically changed the lighting from being completely naturalistic to more expressionistic and much more colorful.” ★
Above: Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Frick; Lady Gaga as Lee. Below: Lee and Joker (Phoenix) at the courthouse in a musical fantasy.
Courage and Convictions
With a cast of 13 convicted criminals, two professional actors and an Oscar winner, prison drama Sing Sing is the awards season dark horse that no one saw coming
Colman Domingo frst met Clarence Maclin on a Zoom call in 2022. Domingo’s slate that year included playing Mister in the remake of The Color Purple and the title role in Rustin, a biopic about Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin that would earn him an Oscar nomination. Maclin, by contrast, was a decade out from serving his sentence of 15 years in New York’s notorious Sing Sing prison for robbery. “We started talking about the bonds of brotherhood that Shakespeare illuminates,” says Domingo. Shakespeare, they agreed, was key to the flm they were about to make together.
Sing Sing, director Greg Kwedar and co-writer Clint Bentley’s prison-set drama—more than eight years in the making—frst screened to rave reviews at the Toronto Film Festival in 2023.
Now, after a slow build, it is a buzzy Oscar contender. Domingo plays John Whitfeld, A.K.A. Divine G, a leading force in the prison’s theater group, supported by New York’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (R.T.A.) program. Maclin, known since his youth as Divine Eye, plays a reworked version of himself; he’s the hard man of the exercise yard. It was the real G who persuaded him to join the theater troupe which, he says now, made it possible for him to turn his life around.
Kwedar read about the R.T.A. when he was working on a documentary in another New York state penitentiary, Green Haven. The organization had been helping prisoners put on plays since 1996. It seemed to work—the recidivism rate for R.T.A. alumni was 3%, compared with an overall rate of 60%—but what really inspired him was an Esquire magazine account of one production, “a time-traveling musical comedy” called Breaking the Mummy’s Code
That play, written with the prisoners by professional director Brent Buell, had everything from zombie mummies to Freddy Krueger.
“There was something about the playfulness of the work juxtaposed against its environment,” Kwedar says. “The joy of the process that just leapt of the page. I wanted to experience some of that joy myself.”
He contacted Buell, who had stayed in touch with many of the old Sing Sing gang. Buell invited Kwedar and Bentley to meet them over breakfast. “Around that table, there was just a special energy,” says Kwedar. “Just the camaraderie, the New York accents, the humor, the deeper vulnerability. And we were just like, ‘If we could just take how this feels and put it in a movie we’d
B y STEPHANIE BUNBURY
“The answer that you need to sort out in your soul is: what keeps you going?”
have something.’” He started working with the R.T.A. himself as an acting teacher; meanwhile, he and Bentley labored over the writing.
For years, it wasn’t working. What they should have done, they realized, was work the same way the theater group did. “We needed to open up our writing process,” says Kwedar. “It couldn’t be so traditional. Because we were making a movie about a community, and so our process needed to embrace that mindset. And so, the real Divine Eye and Divine G came into the storytelling process with us at that point. And immediately it was alive on the page in a way it just never had been before.”
The Sing Sing cast includes 13 former prisoners and three professional actors. Everyone, including all the crew, were paid the same. On one corner of the script, Kwedar had written the words “Colman Domingo”, not expecting that bit of dream casting to come true, but Domingo jumped at it. He wanted all of it—the fat payscale, the mix of professionals and R.T.A. alumni, the themes, and the fact that Kwedar wanted him to bring every skill he had: writing, producing and directing as well as acting. “They really asked for everything of me, and I gave it all,” says Domingo. “Leading the flm, and fnding the soul of the flm, and highlighting these men who are usually not examined in their fullness. And because I’m with those men, I thought I can’t just put on a performance. I have to bring a bit more of myself.”
Above all, he brought the positivity that
illuminates Divine G’s sad story. The real John Whitfeld struggled for years to prove he had not committed the crime for which he was jailed. The parole board rejected his appeals repeatedly but, as the flm shows, he never gave up trying. Domingo found a parallel with his years when he was struggling and penniless, long before he became a leading theater actor, star of Euphoria and Oscar nominee. There were dark years.
“When I learned that about him, I thought, Oh, I understand that man. I understand him deeply,” says Domingo. “And that’s the part of myself that I brought to this flm. What happens when things are hopeless or dire? I’ve had those moments where I didn’t have money, or success. I guess the answer that you need to sort out in your soul is: what keeps you going? And I kept going because of faith, believing that there was something for me.”
He never interviewed the former prisoners or asked direct questions. “Instead of interrogating them about their experience, I just said, ‘Let’s sit and have lunch.’” Maclin describes it as a “subtle enfolding”, saying that he seemed simply to absorb the real Divine G until he began to look like him. “You’d be looking out of the corner of your eye and catch a glimpse of Colman, and you’d swear that was Divine G. And he did a lot more listening than talking, when he could have come in, like, big. He’s Colman Domingo!”
Neither of them sees Sing Sing as a prison movie. It doesn’t deliver the clichéd shocks
of a conventional prison drama: there are no stabbings in the shower block, no rapes in the corridor. If anything, it is more like one of those Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney flms where a bunch of kids put on a show. For Domingo, Sing Sing is about the redemptive power of making art. “You do know that outside of these rooms, in the safe spaces that they created, there’s violence, there’s terror, there’s sort of hell on earth of the prison industrial complex,” says Domingo. “But inside this program, there’s grace, and tenderness, an opportunity to be gentle, and to use language, and art.”
They shot the f lm primarily in a prison that had only been decommissioned two weeks before they moved in. It was grim. “You knew how it all felt: how the air was stale, how you couldn’t f nd your true north, and what that does to you psychologically,” says Domingo. “Every time we had a break, I needed to go outside. While you’re in there, you’re like, ‘This doesn’t feel like a place for human beings, no matter what they’ve done or not done.’” People might reasonably expect the f lm to be gloomy. “But what I love is that there is so much light,” he says, “and joy, and hope. And it’s really funny.”
Kwedar says simply that he can’t believe how far they have come. When Sing Sing had its premiere in Toronto, A24 snapped it up the same week. After that… silence. A 2024 release was always planned, but Kwedar was worried that the magic dust would wear of, that it would just sit on a shelf forever. “And then we came back at SXSW, and it was almost more overwhelming.” There was even a screening in Sing Sing itself, in the theater space where Breaking the Mummy’s Curse was originally performed. They screened it in San Quentin. And now it’s in the Oscar race. “Anytime I pause and really think about what’s happening with this movie,” Kwedar says, “I just lose my breath.” ★
From left: Director Greg Kwedar and Colman Domingo on set; Domingo as John “Divine G” Whitfeld; Domingo with the inmates.
The State of the
With no frontrunners in sight yet, here’s a look at who’s jockeying for position BY PETE HAMMOND
It’s November—a month where everyone still thinks they can win. Oscars, that is. And as usual, the campaign activity is thriving, and maybe this year the idea that anyone can win—or at least get nominated—is not that far-fetched. The lingering efects of the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes are still being felt, due to those productions that were halted and releases put on hold, and a more robust lineup of awards contenders has really failed to materialize because of those delays. 2025 is looking pretty good. 2024? Not so much. This isn’t to say there aren’t several worthy contenders, but just about any pundit you talk to will tell you this is a weird year, without a single take-it-to-thebank frontrunning contender emerging in this nascent race. It could be anyone’s ballgame. The excitement of 2023’s Barbenheimer contest that managed to ignite both the box ofce and the Oscar voters looks like the distant past at this point. However, there’s this still unreviewed and just now being seen November 22 release duo: Universal’s adaptation of Broadway smash musical Wicked, and Ridley Scott’s near quarter-ofa-century-awaited sequel to 2000 Best Picture winner Gladiator, called simply Gladiator II. Those flms might help fll that gap in theaters and at the Oscars, which desperately needs
recognizable and exciting flms for the 97 th Annual Academy Awards. At tastemaker screenings, where social media reactions were encouraged, both flms were rapturously received.
Still both studios, Universal and Paramount, held back actual critical reactions, with review embargos pushed to mid-November. They are among the handful of 2024 contenders being unveiled outside of the flm festival zone, which launched most hopefuls, starting with Cannes in May, and then the ofcial beginning of the season: Venice, Telluride and Toronto. Movies emerging out of those festivals then go on a virtual circuit of regional fests to stay in the Oscar spotlight.
At press time, Focus Features’ Nosferatu, a Christmas Day release, has just been revealed in a splashy screening on November 7 with Guillermo del Toro moderating a Q&A with flmmaker Robert Eggers. So now, the only movie set to remain a complete unknown in the race is Searchlight’s Christmas opener, aptly named A Complete Unknown. The James Mangolddirected biopic about the early Bob Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet is expected to start screening sometime around Thanksgiving. The trailer is certainly intriguing.
The earliest so-called Oscar contender that 2024 has produced was Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, in March (after being pushed from 2023). This second part
continues the story following the 2021 pandemic-impacted release of Dune, which became a Max day-and-date release with theaters thanks to an ill-fated Warner Bros. decision for all flms that year. Still, it performed impressively and was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. It swept the crafts categories, most of which were relegated to an of-air pre-ceremony (another ill-fated decision). Dune: Part Two is likely going back to the Oscars and Warner Bros. is working a robust campaign to get it there, but sequels can be problematic, and this year nearly all the hopefuls that are also driven by box ofce seem to fall into that category, including the aforementioned Gladiator II, which I have seen and can tell you delivers on all its promises. Warners had high hopes for George Miller’s Mad Max follow up, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which like Mad Max: Fury Road successfully debuted at Cannes, but then it disappointed at the box ofce. That pretty much knocked
out its hopes to repeat Fury Road’s Oscar success (10 noms and six crafts wins). Another Warners release, Joker: Folie à Deux—Todd Phillip’s audacious musical sequel to the billion-dollar grossing, Oscar-winning Joker—simply fatlined, both at the box ofce and (for the most part) critically, killing a possible repeat visit to the Dolby. And then there are the sequels that exploded at the box ofce and won good reviews. The year’s No. 1 flm to date, Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2, might be a sure bet, if it wasn’t animated. In recent years, Oscar voters have looked down on lifting ’toons out of their own category, so that makes its prospects dicey outside of Animated Feature. The terrifc No. 2 flm, Deadpool & Wolverine, is being campaigned by Disney, but the question is, will voters respond after not nominating the frst two Deadpool movies for anything? It could frst gain recognition at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards though, which might be friendlier territory.
There's a boatload of movies that can crack the race with their performances, if not the films themselves.
Wicked Gladiator II
Anora
A Complete Unknown Nickel Boys
Race
If I had to analyze the state of the race in terms of Oscar nominees you could take to the bank right now, I would say the well-received Vatican thriller, Conclave, is certain to be in the top tier, putting Focus Features—which has yet to win a Best Picture Oscar—up front. Also, there’s Netfix’s rapturously reviewed Emilia Pérez. Netfix, like Focus, has yet to win the big Best Picture prize, but this Jacques Audiard-directed Spanish language musical drama just might be the ticket. Especially judging by reactions at its prize-winning Cannes debut, through Telluride and Toronto (where it placed in the telling People’s Choice competition higher than any other 2024 release), plus the enthusiastic response at an AMPAS screening. It could also wind up with acting nominations for its stars, including Lead Actress for Karla Sofía Gascón, who would be the frst person identifying as trans ever to win. A third flm looking to crash the ceremony at the Dolby is undoubtedly NEON’s latest Palme d’Or winner, Sean Baker’s wildly fun and inventive Anora. Not to be counted out is the little indie that could: A24. It’s gaining buzz as usual with a large lineup of talked-about movies. There’s Brady Corbet’s three and-a-halfhour drama, The Brutalist, a Best Director winner at Venice; the sexy Christmas Day drama Babygirl, which entered the race with a Best Actress Venice win for Nicole Kidman; Luca Guadagnino’s complex Queer, with a game-changing Daniel Craig performance; Sing
Sing, with the superb Colman Domingo, and more. A24 has shepherded two Best Pictures in its young history: Moonlight and Everything
Everywhere all at Once, so they know how to navigate the race.
In what is increasingly looking like an indie-centric year, one indie-turned-studio release to watch is Paramount’s riveting thriller September 5, which chronicles the horrifc 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attack from the point of view of the ABC Sports broadcast crew that suddenly found themselves covering a global event. So far under the radar was this flm, that it turned up in a sub sub section at Venice (where I reviewed it with high praise), then got talk at Telluride, and almost slipped through Paramount’s hands, as the studio was initially trying to sell it rather than release the acquisition through their small indie label, Republic Pictures. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and now, in the spirit of the crazy season this is becoming, September 5 could be their most serious contender on a slate that also includes Gladiator II and the Robbie Williams musical biopic Better Man.
Also in the mix are Searchlight’s Sundance hit A Real Pain, from director-writer-star Jesse Eisenberg, co-starring Kieran Culkin, and Netfix’s Maria, with a spectacular Angelina Jolie as opera star Maria Callas in her fnal days. Then there’s Netfix’s August Wilson adaptation The Piano
Lesson. Amazon/MGM Studios could also have a pair of contenders, with yet another Guadagnino entry from earlier in the year, the sexy and entertaining Challengers, and the adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s book Nickel Boys, from writer-director RaMell Ross, which employs a stylistic POV camera approach that pleased critics but divided Oscar voters I spoke to after its Telluride debut. There’s a boatload of movies that can crack the race with their performances, if not the flms themselves. The Best Actress race is torrid. Look for Marianne Jean-Baptiste—devastating in the depressing Mike Leigh drama Hard Truths; Demi Moore, with an excellent shot at a frst Oscar nomination in the terrifc and amusing horror flm The Substance; a devastating Florence Pugh in A24’s fne We Live in Time; a surprising Pamela Anderson as an aging Vegas performer in late entry The Last Showgirl; Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton in Pedro Almodóvar's Venice Golden Lion winner The Room Next Door; a brilliant Fernanda Torres in the Walter Salles Brazilian entry I’m Still Here; Amy Adams going for a seventh nomination in Nightbitch, and an impressive Ryan Destiny in The Fire Inside. Saoirse Ronan too, with two flms: The Outrun
and Steve McQueen’s British WWII drama Blitz. Plus, there’s the aforementioned Jolie and Kidman, and Anora’s Mikey Madison. There are many Lead Actor possibilities too, in addition to Craig and Chalamet. I’m rooting for recognition fnally for Hugh Grant in a wild turn in the A24 horror flm, Heretic; Sebastian Stan as the young Donald Trump in The Apprentice; Andrew Garfeld in We Live in Time; Paul Mescal in Gladiator II; Adrien Brody in The Brutalist; a way-overdue Ralph Fiennes in Conclave; Harris Dickinson in Babygirl; Jude Law in The Order; and maybe a couple of deserving longshots, including Keith Kupferer in Sundance hit, Ghostlight, and an astonishing tap dancing Jeremy Piven in the upcoming indie The Performance. Also don’t discount Nicholas Hoult, who is going to have a hell of a season with The Order, Nosferatu and an impressive lead performance in Clint Eastwood’s riveting courtroom drama, Juror #2, in which he plays the title role. This is a movie Warner Bros. appears to be ignoring with a limited release, despite high critical praise for what could be the icon’s fnal flm (he is 94). It deserves better. Maybe Oscar voters will discover it on their own. Stay tuned. This race belongs to anyone at this point. ★
A Real Pain September 5 Sing Sing
Emilia Pérez
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Partnership The
Pablo Larraín AND Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie remembers the first time she was set to publicly embody the voice of prima donna assoluta Maria Callas in preparation for the Netflix film Maria. Her sons Maddox and Pax Jolie-Pitt stood watch protectively, like security. “I was so nervous,” Jolie recalls. “My boys guarded the doors.” They were at a small theater in Greece, where, after months of singing lessons and vocal and breath coaching, Jolie would show filmmaker Pablo Larraín she was up to the task of portraying the famous arias associated with the legendary coloratura soprano. Callas died in 1977 and remains as popular now as when she was performing in great opera houses at the height of her fame in the 1950s and ’60s. Like her boys, Larraín was protective of her too, ensuring a level of privacy a director usually reserves for shooting scenes of intense intimacy. Apart from him, only a handful of key crew was present that day: cinematographer, dolly, sound, a pianist and a singing teacher. No one else was allowed to enter the studio for Jolie’s first performance.
In her research, Jolie had watched a video of Callas giving a master class to students where she disclosed that discipline was the frst principle. Callas taught, “Don’t think about the feeling, which is often what I start with,” Jolie says, “I’m a very emotional person.” But it was drummed into her, by Callas, almost reaching out from the past to guide her, to instruct her, really, to apply discipline frst. Then, once the role and the music are understood, the other layers of feelings and emotion can be applied. That way, “You learn exactly what the composer intended, and only when you know that so perfectly well, can you add your personal feelings,” says Jolie.
She had wanted to work with Larraín for “the longest time”, but initially had gotten to know his work as an audience member when she saw his flm Neruda several years ago. Every time a new Larraín movie came out—Jackie, Spencer, you name it—she watched it. “I saw everything he has made,” she says.
Much later, they met for coffee, which progressed to meals of Middle Eastern cuisine, then to ordered-in pizza at her home in Los Angeles. “I can’t cook,” Jolie says.
Larraín says that after observing each other closely, he decided to ask her if she would portray Maria Callas. She needed time to think it over, and mostly, that pause was because she was scared about singing. “It’s the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt,” she says.
Here, the pair share their journey with Baz Bamigboye in a conversation that began up in the mountains during the Telluride Film Festival and concluded in London.
Angelina, you wanted to work with Pablo for so long. What flm of his really encouraged that desire?
ANGELINA JOLIE: Maybe, Neruda [Larraín's 2016 flm about Chilean poet Pablo Neruda]. And then I think it was just seeing them as I continued to watch his work, sometimes you see one thing, but as you watch a few things, you start to understand that even if the flms are very different, there’s a language and there’s a consistency in a way he takes care of certain aspects of flmmaking.
Did you think back then, I really want to work with this guy, he does interesting things?
JOLIE: It’s funny, I always probably put the working with somebody later. I think I was just looking at them as an audience member frst, right?
From left: Caspar Phillipson as JFK, Pablo Larraín and Angelina Jolie on the Maria set.
The Partnership
Yes. And I think like that, watching his flms had an effect on me and that landed with me. And then yes, of course, then we met. And yeah, you just feel sometimes when you meet somebody, you get a sense that you’re like-minded and that there’s a trust there, because sometimes people can be the most amazing flmmaker, but not a very nice person, you know, to be very frank. Right?
PABLO LARRAÍN: Of course, same with actors [laughs].
JOLIE: And I’m not one of those people that can sacrifce one for the other, especially as an actor. If I am going to give all of myself and be open and vulnerable, I need to be with somebody who I think is, and who treats the crew well, who has an approach to life and work and family. All that is important because you’re so vulnerable and you’re giving so much of yourself that you want to have that. If you have that trust, then you can give them everything.
Can you remember that frst meeting?
LARRAÍN: We met a couple of years before we discussed this project.
JOLIE: Maria was the last thing we got to. I mean, we really had spent a few years being around each other a little bit and having a little friendly relationship.
LARRAÍN: That was before the pandemic for sure. It might be 2018 or 2017. It was in Los Angeles.
JOLIE: Everybody came over to the house.
LARRAÍN: We had coffee once. And then we had coffee again, and then we had lunch. I remember with this sort of Middle East food which was very nice. And we had pizza.
You had pizza?
LARRAÍN: Yeah, because I think it was like Halloween.
JOLIE: That’s right, my house was all decorated.
LARRAÍN: And then it was pizza for everyone, for the kids, whatever. So, I go in and I just joined the pizza situation.
Was that pizza that was delivered or did you prepare the dough and cook it yourself?
JOLIE: [laughing] No, no, I can’t cook.
LARRAÍN: I remember it was in these boxes.
JOLIE: I spoiled him. I spoiled him with pizza.
LARRAÍN: I love pizza. It really worked out.
Pablo, you’d obviously been aware of Angelina’s work, but when did you think, this artist has something that I want to know about and understand and work with?
LARRAÍN: Well, of course, by now we knew each other from these meetings before. And then what I remember is that before I even mentioned anything to Angie, we set up a screening of Spencer on the Paramount Lot. And then after that, I called her and I said, “Look, would you play Maria Callas?” That was the frst time the subject had been broached. We were on the phone, and she said, “I need a couple of days to think about it.” And I was like, “OK, sure.” And then a couple of days after that we spoke and she said, “I’ll do it.” And after that, we hired Steve Knight [screenwriter]. From then on, it was like the chicken or the egg. It was always, in this case, I don’t think there’s a movie without Angie playing that role.
And why did you think that? What were the strengths that you saw in her to portray the greatest prima donna assoluta?
LARRAÍN: Well, there are a number of things, but I think the most important one is that I think after all these years of research reading, I think I read over nine or 10 biographies out of the 20 to 25 that are out there, I’d watched pretty much every documentary, read every interview. There was very extensive research. You get to understand that you really don’t know who she was. You think you do, but there’s a distortion in the public eye—the idea that, because that person has some form of exposure, because her work is so well known, that you could almost talk to her and know who she must be. I don’t think that’s what it is. I don’t think this is a proper biopic. That is an invention from culture. I don’t think a movie can actually capture anyone in reality, unless that person is in front of you talking to you.
But it captures an essence.
LARRAÍN: Of course that is the ambition, and I appreciate you thought that, but that process is different from the actual reality. You create an illusion that can capture the spirit of that person. But the reason why I think Maria is very hard to completely understand is because she had a very high level of mystery. She was someone that would choose when to share something and open herself and then when not to. And I think Angelina has that.
Angelina has mystery.
LARRAÍN: Yes, and can also play it and control it. So, even though she’s in 98% of the scenes of this flm, I think, and when she’s not there, it is her younger self. So there is always a Maria, and even though the camera is very close, most of the time, she chooses when to let the audience in and when not. And that is the essence of cinema. So, the audience can complete it [by] looking. And I don’t want to make a movie that is just by myself or whoever is behind the camera. There’s always something that’s intriguing. So, the audience, they have an active job. And also, of course, there’s the basic necessity to have someone that could play that elegance, that could wear that fashion, that could be on that stage, that could create an intense magnetism.
Angelina, you get this phone call from Pablo. What is your immediate reaction to the idea of portraying Maria Callas?
JOLIE: Well, my frst thought is, because I wanted to work with him so long, I was so happy that there was some potential to work together and that he was passionate about something. So anytime you have an artist you respect, and you like their work, and they’re passionate about something, it’s exciting. But I think the reality of her… I wanted a second to understand. I knew of her, I knew a bit of her music, but I wanted a few days to kind of look into her life and sit with the thought of, did I feel
Jolie and Larraín prepare to shoot a performance.
“That day at La Scala was so beyond anything I’d ever done in my life and so beyond my comfort zone, that it was like, I couldn’t even feel myself.”
– ANGELINA JOLIE
I could bring something to this? Because it’s a big responsibility to take on somebody’s life. And to feel that you are the right person to do it. I think I was nervous about this when I wasn’t 100% sure right away. And then of course, the singing was something that I hadn’t done. And so, it was just a big one to take on. But it was knowing that his intention… I felt, I just wasn’t 100% sure. And I think that’s the most exciting thing about being an artist, when you’re a little frightened and you’re not sure what it’s going to be, but you trust your partner and you want to try. And you care about the subject matter.
How did you convey your decision to Pablo?
LARRAÍN: We talked on the phone.
JOLIE: Yes, we talked.
And what reassurances did you give to Angelina, particularly about the singing?
JOLIE: Yeah. [Eyeing him and laughing] What were the reassurances?
LARRAÍN: I feel like there were layers. I elegantly pressured her.
Well put. What did “elegantly” pressuring her involve?
LARRAÍN: Layers, as I mentioned. You know, I said how important the singing is, it’s very challenging. It is not pop music. I have some ideas on how to do it. There’s this trainer here, there’s the other trainer there, and slowly go into the process. And I am not sure, I’m not going to speak for her because she’s here. But I am not sure if you were entirely aware of the size of the talent.
JOLIE: No.
LARRAÍN: There you go. It was because you can’t cheat in opera. If you play, I don’t know, a record of any song from David Bowie or Taylor Swift, you name it, you can probably jump into the car, jump in the shower, or anywhere in your house, and you can sing along and do a decent job. Try that with opera. You just can’t track the melody because of the pitch of the voice. It’s very diffcult. And particularly with Callas, who had this very famous sort of break up and down where it’s just very uneven, unevenly perfect.
And Callas knew where the drama was in those arias.
JOLIE: Yes.
And you did too, Angelina.
LARRAÍN: Of course. It requires a very long and specifc training. And I think the beautiful part of it is that it’s not only the necessity of the technicality, but it was as well the best way to approach the character, the best preparation to play Callas, which is you actually follow those steps in the singing, because then the way you shoot it… Maybe people think that there’s loud speakers on the side and she’s just mimicking the voice. That’s not how it works. She has an earpiece and she’s singing and what the crew, and eventually the other cast, and eventually the extras, are listening to, is only Angie’s voice and nothing else is sounding on the set. We needed to capture that, capture every sound that’s made, and then bring it into the mixing stage, and then choose how to blend both voices. So there’s always a part of a fragment of Angie singing and that’s what gives truth. Otherwise, it won’t be possible. You’ll never believe it.
So, you say yes to this, and he’s elegantly pressuring you—I like that phrase. Do you think, oh my Christ, I want to work with this guy, but I’ve said yes to something that is going to scare the bejeezus out of me for what was it …?
JOLIE: Seven months. It was seven months [laughs]. And then all through the flm, I mean, after flming every day I would go back to the piano to rehearse for the following day. It was living as a singer. I don’t play the piano, but I had to learn little bits. Wherever I went, whether it was a dressing room or hotel room, we always had to have the piano, the keyboard, the teacher nearby, and at night it was the warm-ups.
LARRAÍN: [Interrupts by demonstrating scales] Do, re, mi, la, la, la, la...
JOLIE: Yes, that. And it was a very different way of living and working. I did what he was just doing all the time, morning, noon and night. And we’d be practicing, and then we’d have breaks. He would try to give me… because when you sing that much all day long, I would need sometimes to have a day or two to just rest the voice before I had to do it again. So, he tried to help me to fnd my voice. The loveliest thing is he was taking me seriously as a singer at a certain point, which I think, I wouldn’t have taken myself seriously that way. I would’ve had trouble. But he was taking it seriously. And so, the training around me, the schedule, the way it was considered was very serious. And it did allow me to make that change in my life. But no, I didn’t really understand. I didn’t understand I was going to be the only sound in the room standing on the stage at La Scala. I did not understand that. And I think, there were certain pieces, like [Donizetti’s] Anna Bolena. And he didn’t give me all the pieces right away. I would get a couple, which was the right thing to do, because he knew not to overwhelm me. He would say, “Here’s the frst two to try.”
And I’d kind of jump into them and go, “Oh, OK, it’ll take me a second.”
And then once that was done, then a new one would come in. That was a little more challenging. And then the last one was the most challenging but the most wonderful.
Which aria?
JOLIE: Anna Bolena
That scene gave me goosebumps.
LARRAÍN: It was the scale. We started at a soundstage, you remember, in Paris?
JOLIE: Oh, yeah. I think that was a really nerve wracking day because I had been doing most of my training in LA on my own with the teachers, and he’d been talking to the teachers, but I was even nervous to send video of myself singing. I was just nervous.
Jolie as Maria Callas.
The Partnership
About how he would react?
JOLIE: Yeah, I just felt like I wasn’t ready. “Wait, wait, wait. Let me just try to...” so I hadn’t really done it. Then we had to, he was very gracious and patient, but he was like, “OK, I need to see you sing before we start shooting.” And so, we went to this little sound stage and room in Paris with the piano and a few people.
LARRAÍN: But it was funny because that little sound stage is where most of David Bowie’s recordings happened. There were all these posters of famous singers. It was very intimidating to walk in there. And then she did a great job.
Performing the Donizetti?
JOLIE: No, no, that was just singing. That would be the frst time showing him. I would just stand there with the crew; somebody would be playing the piano and I would just stand there, and I would just sing.
LARRÁIN: I think it was “Ava Maria”.
JOLIE: And he was just able to hear, look, listen, and me kind of perform for him.
LARRAÍN: And then we did the frst singing piece in a very small place, a theater In Greece. And then it was almost like shooting, I always make fun of this, like a sex scene when you say, everyone out! But it was like everyone out, because we wanted to protect Angie.
JOLIE: I was so nervous.
LARRAÍN: It was basically, like having security with, I think it was Maddox on the door.
JOLIE: My boys were guarding the doors [laughs]. I was so, so nervous and my boys were protecting me. My boys, Maddox and Pax, looking out for me. It wasn’t asked that of them. They just moved to the door.
LARRAÍN: The boys were guarding to the door. And then it was me and the camera, the guy on the dolly, sound and your vocal coach. And then the second time there were more people. And the third time there were a lot of people. And we would scale it up until the last time she sang was at La Scala, in the cathedral of opera, with a lot of people there.
And by that time, you had become comfortable with the singing?
JOLIE: That day at La Scala was so beyond anything I’d ever done in my life and so beyond my comfort zone, that it was like, I couldn’t even feel myself. It was such an enormous moment. But I think I was both extremely… The idea that I was doing that, performing as Maria Callas at La Scala, could I pull it off and was my voice going to be good that day? And could I do this thing, and could I perform this? And then the other side of me, it was like, this is the greatest day of my life as an artist. I get to be here with this team of people that I love so much performing in the footsteps of this extraordinary woman that I’ve come to care about, who’s so brilliant, performing this extraordinary piece of music, on this stage with those acoustics. And so, at a certain point, whether I was going to succeed or fail, I would do my best. But I didn’t let it pass me by that I was the luckiest woman in the world to have that experience.
Well, only a supreme artist can portray another and pull it off. You cast her for that reason, Pablo, so you know this, right?
LARRAÍN: Yes, of course, of course. You live in danger. True artists are exposed to a dangerous life. And danger doesn’t mean that you’re
about to jump out the window. It’s the danger of pain, the danger of a weird way of joy, the danger of not sleeping, the danger of thinking that you’re useless, the danger of being diminished by your own work. And that fear can be paralyzing or can be extremely moving and can put you back into the work. I went to this exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery [in London], just down the road, and I saw Francis Bacon’s work, his portraiture. It’s great, but it’s very painful. I walked out and I had all these feelings. It’s so painful, so beautiful. So of course, there’s a lot of joy and enlightenment here. That’s an artist’s work.
Angelina, to discover that joy and pain, to have to dig deep into her psyche and character, did you have to go to places that aren’t always pleasant to fnd her?
JOLIE: I think that’s true, yes. You open up yourself and at times you can’t breathe when you’re performing those arias. It’s deeply connecting to perform something in front of an audience. It’s like the fnal piece after all of the work, the preparations, to arrive at that point. Your vulnerabilities are exposed. What a blessing to be an artist. You live and you study life and emotion and feeling and connection. I can’t explain any further because then you go to a place that’s so personal.
LARRAÍN: What she says in the movie, she says, “There’s no beautiful melody made out of happiness.” That is a Callas quote that Steve [Knight] took and Angie says in the movie.
Angelina, were there any moments where you said, Pablo, I love you, but I can’t do this?
LARRAÍN: I’ll answer that. She did, but she eventually did it.
JOLIE: Oh yeah. And it was the simplest thing in the world. It wasn’t a big thing. It was like a tiny little improvised scene that I felt, I liked the way we’d done it outside. And then it was lovely. And he was right. But it wasn’t something that was like this big challenge I was afraid of. It was just, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t feel it working in the moment, but he was right.
What was the scene?
JOLIE: The card scene, it was an improvisation.
When we met in Telluride you revealed that you hadn’t been able to listen to Callas because it reminded you of, let’s say the joy and pain, of portraying Callas. Has that changed?
JOLIE: Yes, she’s back. I started listening to her again. She’s back, the healing has begun. It was Tosca, “Vissi D’Arte”. I chose that because it was the one that probably I associated with so much pain because of the end of the flm. I hadn’t been able to listen because of all of those associations. I wanted to come back to that. In a strange kind of way, the music, when we were flming, helped heal a part of me.
I felt, watching your performance, that’s it’s the kind of role an artist waits an awfully long time for.
JOLIE: You can wait a long time for this kind of work, for this kind of role. You asked before if it was the role of a lifetime and I suppose so, yes. And I waited a long time to work with Pablo and I see the result as a real gift. ★
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