Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
Amanda Seyfried let loose while making her unconventional biopic of Ann Lee, the 18th century leader of religious group, the Shakers – famous for their convulsions, dancing and vocalisation during their worship. Born in Manchester, Ann experienced visions, believed herself to be the second incarnation of Christ and was radical in her teachings. In Mona Fastvold’s film, The Testament Of Ann Lee (which was co-created with The Brutalist writer-director Brady Corbet), Lee is portrayed by Seyfried as a force of nature, inspiring followers and challenging societal norms. When she prays she and the cast dance and move while singing original Shaker hymns, grunting, keening and screaming in a kind of orgiastic ritual.
‘This did feel like an opportunity where there were just no tethers to anything,’ Seyfried told the press in Venice as the film debuted there. ‘Basically, I follow Mona into the light and anything goes because there’s so much freedom, and the only threat is to not use that freedom to your advantage as an artist to go as far deep as you can go to make the craziest sounds. I’ve never been let loose in this way.’
‘The reason I was able to face these challenges as an artist, was because I felt completely protected, held up and surrounded by loving artists, and in a place where everybody knew the value of making this, and understood Mona’s vision. I have to say it, this was incredibly rare and might never happen again.”
Unlike Ann, Seyfried admits she wasn’t always sure of herself. ‘I kept saying [to Mona], ‘go with somebody English,’ because the accent seemed so hard. But she believed in me, and so I believed in me, and here we are.’ Fastvold told journalists that her star possessed the necessary wildness to inhabit the role. ‘Amanda has a lot of power. She’s very strong, a wonderful mother, and she’s a little mad. I knew she could access those things. I saw Amanda was ready to go full force.’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Testament of Ann Lee premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival Released in cinemas at a later date Amanda Seyfried wears Prada and Tiffany & Co. jewels
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
Though Benny Safdie’s Venice hit The Smashing Machine centres on the experience of real-life UFC champ Mark Kerr, the key to the story – according to the actor portraying him, Dwayne Johnson – is the relationship between Mark and his girlfriend, Dawn Staples, played with a perma-tan and acrylic nails by Emily Blunt. The bond between Johnson and Blunt is also integral to the project. It was clear to see as Greg Williams joined the duo and Safdie for a pre-premiere toast at the St. Regis before riding across the Venice lagoon to debut their work at the festival. In the Grande Salle, the film was received with a fifteen-minute standing ovation and praise for both leads’ performances.
Having become ‘best friends’ while making the action-adventure Jungle Cruise, the two actors discussed next projects, with Blunt encouraging Johnson to follow his heart and ambition in breaking out of blockbusters. When they began to work on Kerr’s biopic, Blunt admits she found Johnson’s physical and emotional transformation ‘spooky’. ‘It was one of the most extraordinary things watching him disappear completely,’ she told the press on the Lido earlier in the day. Blunt’s metamorphosis was equally impressive as she spent time with her real-life counterpart. ‘I got to know Dawn well and she was very generous with her story with me,’ Blunt said. ‘There was a deep profound love and devotion they had for each other amidst an impossible environment.’
Safdie explained the process he went through with both actors to achieve the level of authenticity he was looking for. ‘Dwayne, Emily and I kept thoughts like, ‘What is it like to really be Mark Kerr? What is it like to really be Dawn Staples?’ We wanted to empathise with these characters in a way that felt like our own feelings. I ended up calling this a kind of Radical Empathy. First, because empathy should be cool, and second, because I wanted this movie to exist as a memory for everyone who watches it.’
The film will surely live in the memory of voting bodies come awards season – with Blunt entering the conversation again for another perfectly essayed performance.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Smashing Machine premiered at the Venice Film Festival Released in cinemas 3 October Read our review here Emily wears Tamara Ralph gown with Tiffany & Co. jewellery
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
When Noomi Rapace arrives at the Hotel Cipriani pool in Venice it seems she’s channeling her most recent role as nun and modern-day saint, Mother Teresa, in monochrome menswear. In Macedonian writer-director Teona Strugar Mitevska’s biopic, Mother, which looks as the Albanian-born nun’s pre-celebrity life in 1948 as she attempts to start a new order in Calcutta and wrestles with self-doubt and the issue of abortion, Rapace is seen wearing a black-and-white habit throughout, emoting through a wimple that she describes as ‘acting through a little hole. It’s just my face, and my body is covered’. It’s a role that required her to look at herself as well as the life of a world-famous woman. ‘I didn’t know anything about the person, just saw her with different political leaders, and Lady Di,’ she tells Hollywood Authentic. ‘And then when I got asked to play her, I started doing research. I started reading her letters. Her own words were really kind of the route into understanding her. You know what really surprised me? The eternal pain that she was carrying, and how much she was struggling with her faith, with her beliefs, with her own feeling that she was not doing enough; feeling that she was not worthy. All this self-doubt and pain. She said once, ‘If I ever become a saint, it will surely be one of darkness.’ And that’s fascinating. Also, we need to put into consideration that she’s a woman in a man’s world. She was writing letters, and calling the Vatican for years, insisting, and getting them to allow her – to give her permission – to start this vision, this mission that she had, this calling that had been given from God.’
The film explores Teresa’s inflexibility and her ambition – her single-mindedness in getting her calling accomplished. As an artist, does Rapace relate on some level to that drive and ambition that’s required to succeed in acting? ‘Yeah, the ambition and how determined she was. Coming from this small, isolated, quiet small farm in Sweden – I had no access. I had no connections. I didn’t know anyone in the world outside of the farm. I left when I was 15, and went on a journey on my own; Teresa left when she was 16, and went to join the Loreto Sisters in Ireland. I can find a connecting tissue between us in this very stubborn, determined fight for something. But also a lot of self-doubt. I’m very, very hard on myself. I grew up carrying a lot of pain, and a lot of my journey is very much to find peace, and to be accepting myself, and to forgive and be grateful, and to not be too hard. Teresa was very much ‘no exceptions – rules are for all’ – this was very much me when I was younger. You might sleep two hours, but you still go to the gym. I couldn’t understand people being like, ‘But I’m tired.’’ The actor smiles and admits to being kinder to herself these days. ‘That comes with success and aging. I love ageing. It’s been so good to me,’ she says. ‘I feel so much more at peace, and open. I think I was running away from things for many, many years, or running towards something. And now I’m really practising being in the now, and being in the moment.’
Success with films such as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Sherlock Holmes and Prometheus have also allowed her to take on films such as Mother, lending her name as well as her skills to smaller indie films and working with female directors. ‘I’ve been an actress since I was 16. I worked with so many men; amazing male directors, amazing male stars. But it’s always one woman in a group of men, and the imbalance has been shocking. How do you pave the way? How do you create a field – a stage – for women to practise their skills? I think it’s so important to make conscious choices. Because it’s so easy to take what’s in front of you, a more safe route. And when you work with a first-time director, for example, you do take a risk. So you need to step in, and be like, ‘OK, I commit to this. I’ll stand there with you. I’ll be frontline with you, and we’ll carry this together.’’
Rapace describes the robust relationship of questioning she had with her director on Mother – a freedom she says she might have labelled her a ‘difficult’ with other collaborators. ‘I’ve seen male stars coming in and being really difficult, not showing up, being late, and coming in and being really negative. And then I come in and be like, ‘I actually feel like we should look at this line, because it doesn’t really resonate with what we did yesterday’, it’s like, ‘OK, we really don’t have time for this, Noomi’,’ she laughs. ‘I mean, look at our history, women are witches. We are complicated. We are troublemakers if we come in and cause problems. But I feel a lot of hope. I feel a shift. There are such incredible female directors and producers and production companies. Look at Margot Robbie. Look at Emma Stone’s company. Female actors creating a space, and giving opportunities for other females. I get really moved by it, to be honest.’
Mother is providing space for more female stories she says; ‘It’s a feminist movie because we’re shining a light on a complex human who happens to be a woman’. It’s also an account of a pro-life woman that is pertinent to today’s erosion of female reproductive rights. ‘I was questioning Teona. I was like, ‘Why do you want to have this in it?’ She’s like, ‘Because this conversation is needed’. The fact that still today there are countries where women cannot drive, women cannot vote, women belong to the men, women cannot divorce – I mean, what the Fuck?’
For Rapace, living with the complex Teresa while filming on location in India was a draining experience. ‘We shot in the actual footsteps of Mother Teresa. We shot in the slums, the schools, in the spaces she created. I have a hard time finding words that match the feelings of what I experienced being there. But I felt like I was sort of peeling off layers and layers of myself. Towards the end, I was crying every day. It was just so beautiful to experience it – In the end, I wasn’t even entirely sure what was me, and what was Teresa. I came back to London after filming. I had two weeks, and I was so lost, walking around in my house, just in a circle like a caged animal. And then slowly I started finding my footing, and finding ground again. And then this great sensation of feeling grateful for what I’ve learned from doing this movie, and allowing this person to live in me. Even though I don’t really like or agree with her, it was a really challenging and powerful experience.’
As an actor she admits to being ‘obsessed with the human psyche’ and an advocate of therapy. ‘I’m fascinated with how we become who we are, and what tools we are given from an early age. How big is our emotional, psychological toolbox, you know? I’m a firm believer that you can go pretty fucking far in your own healing. I’m working on myself, you know? I do think that it’s important to protect yourself, but also to keep reminding yourself of “What is my journey? What am I interested in? And not what they want me to do, and not what pays me the best.’ So the moments when I close my eyes, and I listen to myself, and I can’t hear my own voice – that’s been moments that it’s like, ‘t’s time to change. I need to change something here, and redirect my life route, to start hearing my own voice again. Because it’s the only one I have’.
That voice wants to work with Andrea Arnold, Kathyn Bigalow, Tilda Swinton, Molly Manning Walker and Chloe Zhao and has taken her on projects such as Maria Martinez Bayona’s This Is The End with Rebecca Hall, which she just wrapped on. ‘I came off set every day just filled with joy,’ she enthuses. ‘It questions ‘what is life for?’ and holding onto youth.’ And she’s completed Hot Spot with Agnieszka Smoczynska. ‘She describes the movie as a poem,’ Rapace says of her director. ‘She works with sound, images, symbols. She’s a very, very special human being. We did one scene – I think maybe 20 takes – and she just kept pushing me. I felt at the end I was a sort of jellyfish. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was completely allowing her to guide me. She’s an extraordinary human. I loved it!’
Mother premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival and will be released at a later date Noomi wears Ami and Messika jewels. Styling by Jonathan Huguet
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
The transformation of Dwayne Johnson into UFC champ Mark Kerr isn’t just in performance – though that’s revelatory with Johnson’s best dramatic work to date. It’s also about evolving as an actor and public figure. As he arrived at the Venice Film Festival to premiere The Smashing Machine, which he also produced, he told journalists that he’d wanted to take on a role like this for some time and that he and his director, Benny Safdie, and co-star, Emily Blunt had discussed the process for a while. Blunt, he said, had encouraged him to make the leap to such a challenging role.
“The three of us have talked for a very long time about, when you’re in Hollywood — as we all know, it had become about box office,’ the star of Fast & Furious, Jumanji and Moana said. ‘And you chase the box office, and the box office can be very loud and it can become very resounding and it can push you into a category and into a corner. This is your lane and this is what you do and this is what Hollywood wants you to do.”
‘I looked around a few years ago and I started to think, you know, am I living my dream or am I living other people’s dreams? You come to that recognition and I think you can either fall in line — ‘Well, it’s status quo, things are good, I don’t want to rock the boat’ — or go, I want to live my dreams now and do what I wanna do and tap into the stuff that I want to tap into, and have a place finally to put all this stuff that I’ve experienced in the past that I’ve shied away from.’
In the A24 film Johnson charts a three year period in Kerr’s career when he was fighting an addiction to painkillers, defining the now-huge UFC world and riding a rocky road with his girlfriend, Dawn (played by his Jungle Cruise co-star and friend, Blunt). He shows a vulnerability audiences haven’t seen from the actor before in a performance that already has awards heat. Johson brought the real Kerr to the festival with him and told the press that the process of playing the fighter had changed his life. And he thinks that the film will offer something to audiences too – not just athletes and sportspeople. ‘It’s not about the wins or the losses … it’s also a film about what happens when winning becomes the enemy. And I think we can all relate to that pressure.’
Winning might be something Johnson has to get comfortable with as we head into awards season given the glowing reviews he’s received out of the festival. The star was greeted rapturiously by crowds on the premiere red carpet after he travelled there with Greg Williams – and the film received a 15 minute ovation, reducing the actor to tears. ‘I’ve been scared to go deep and go intense and go raw until now, until I’ve had this opportunity,’ Johnson admitted. Facing the fear looks like it was worth it – it’s a knockout turn.
The Smashing Machine premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is in cinemas 3 October Dwayne Johnson wears Prada and Chopard
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
MIU MIU’S WOMEN’S TALES: FRAGMENTS FOR VENUS The last time director Alice Diop presented a film in Venice with Saint Omer in 2022 she won the Grand Jury Prize and with the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future award. She was also overwhelmed. ‘It actually took years to revisit that experience, and to digest it,’ she admits over tea and biscuits in the Baglioni Hotel, perched on the Grand Canal. She returned to the Venice Film Festival to serve on the First Film jury, but this year she presents her short film, Fragments for Venus as part of Miu Miu’s twice a year Women’s Tales strand. ‘This film is as important as SaintOmer. I don’t see a difference between short films, feature films, etcetera. But the stakes are lower in that this is a film that is going to live its life. It doesn’t have to make a big splash coming into the industry. So the only stress is really whether what I’ve put into the film will be heard. The moment you let your work go, there is a lot of anxiety and fear around that. I’m certainly not in the same state that I was in with Saint Omer, which I think I was actually in a state of disassociation going into that premiere. This time, I’m welcoming the pleasure and joy of presenting a film.’
Her film explores the way the Black female form has been portrayed in worlds of art throughout history, set to the powerful poem ‘Voyage of the Sable Venus’ by Robin Coste Lewis. As the stanzas list the titles of different works of art an actress (Saint Omer’s Kayije Kagame) wanders a gallery looking at the pieces. Later, the film tracks a young poet (Sephora Pondi) as she finds inspiration in the streets of Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. Both actors wear garments from Miu Miu, but that’s the only involvement the fashion house had in creating the project, says Diop, noting she’d been asked to participate numerous times but only found the time was right recently. ‘The only reason that I agreed to do this project is because there was absolutely no directive other than using some clothing from the latest Miu Miu collection. So it was an absolutely free commission. I had total freedom to create and think. It’s not enough for me to simply respond to a commission. To make a film, I need to be driven by an imperious necessity – a really strong desire. Eventually they came at a perfect moment where this film provided the ideal occasion to go further with things that I was reflecting on already.’
Diop worked with a translator, Nicholas Elliott, while on a residency in New York and it was he who found and translated Coste Lewis’ work for the writer/director. It was the title poem from her collection Voyage of the Sable Venus that particularly struck a chord. ‘It revisits the entire history of art and the construction of the gaze, and shows how the Black female body has been objectified and fetishised throughout that history. It’s a highly political poem and very experimental, but also very simple. And it truly was instrumental in inspiring this film which questions the representation of the Black female body, and of trying to use cinema as a way to repair the deformation of these images. Kayije’s beauty, her way of moving – in contrast to this great, classical, European art – creates meaning. And I hope it allows the viewer to see the way that we have been forced to accept a certain type of beauty, and exclude others. So to see her beauty in contrast with this art, interrogates the absence of certain beauties. As for Sephora Pondi, the power of her body, her beauty, her presence – it allows us to open up, and free the idea of the Venus, and to offer Sephora and all these women that we encounter in the streets of Brooklyn the opportunity to be Venuses.’
Diop has been instrumental in changing perceptions of Black women in cinema through Saint Omer – so does she feel more hopeful about the representation she is seeing in today’s art? ‘My expectation and my hope is that there will be more of us who have the means and the audience to revisit these deforming, secular visions. There aren’t many of us now. I would like for there to be more. For instance, at a major festival like the Venice Biennale, I’m not sure if there’s even one racialised filmmaker this year. There’s maybe more in the fine arts happening. Cinema still has a lot of work to do. So I’m not sure I would say that I’m confident. But, in any case, I’m hard at work, and I expect to be supported in my work by more colleagues – all of us driven by this collective effort.’ She’s currently working on a new secret project but she smiles enegmatically when asked what we might expect from it. ‘I am certainly at work, but it’s still too fragile to really talk about…’ she says as she disappears to get ready for her premiere.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Women’s Tales: Fragments for Venus premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival Alice Diop wears Miu Miu
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Jude Law arrived on the Venice Lido to premiere his latest role as Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas‘ taut political thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin and shook off suggestions that the modern-day ‘Tsar’ might not like his spot-on portrayal. He told the press. ‘I felt confident, in the hands of Olivier and the script, that this story was going to be told intelligently and with nuance and consideration. We weren’t looking for controversy for controversy’s sake.’
The film is based on Giuliano da Empoli’s 2022 bestselling book by the same name, and fictionally tracks Putin’s rise to power through the eyes of a theatre director-turned TV producer-turned spin doctor, Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano). A created character based on real people surrounding Putin, Baranov relates his story to an American reporter visiting Moscow in 2019 (Jeffrey Wright), explaining the manipulation of Russian voters via vertical power and the background to world events (the Ukraine revolution, the sinking of the Kursk submarine, internet sabotage). Along the way Baranov betrays friends and lovers – including Tom Sturridge’s billionaire and Alicia Vikandar’s performance artist.
Law wears a wig and light prosthetics, and adopts the gait, expressions and mannerisms of Putin so that it’s difficult for audiences to tell the difference between historical footage and the actor. ‘The tricky side to me was that the public face we see gives very, very little away. There has been a term for him and that is ‘the man without a face’. There’s a mask. Understandably, Olivier would want me to portray this or that in a scene with a certain emotion, and I felt the conflict of trying to show very little.’
After The Wizard of the Kremlin premiere where the film received a 12 minute standing ovation, the actor was back to his open, real self as Greg Williams joined him on a boat heading to the AmfAR gala. At the event Law presented director Julian Schnabel with a tribute award of inspiration.
The Wizard of the Kremlin premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival and will be released at a future date Jude Law wears Brunello Cucinelli
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
History of Sound actor/producer Paul Mescal brings his period romance to Cannes as he reflects on masculinity and love.
When Paul Mescal last came to Cannes he was arriving off the back of hit TV show Normal People and wowed the festival with his delicate portrayal of a father in crisis in Aftersun in 2011. Now he’s bringing a film to the Croisette in the wake of All of UsStrangers and Gladiator II – and as a producer. Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound, based on Ben Shattock’s short story, follows music student Lionel (Mescal) who falls for fellow undergrad David (Josh O’Connor) and embarks on a folk song collecting expedition through 1919 rural New England.
The role is another nuanced role from Mescal who says that cinema is shifting from dated male stereotypes. ‘It’s ever shifting,’ he says. ‘I think maybe in cinema we’re moving away from the traditional, alpha, leading male characters. I don’t think the film is defining or attempting to redefine masculinity, I think it is being very subjective to the relationship between Lionel and David.’
He and O’Connor have followed a similar trajectory in their careers and knew each other before getting on set together, which only added to the actors’ ability to get into character and craft a heartbreaking love story. ‘We’ve known each other for about five years and we were definitely friendly so that foundation of safety and play was there, but that relationship really deepened in the three or four weeks we were filming. I felt very lucky that myself and Josh knew each other well enough to begin with but we had a canvas to keep painting on during the filming process.’
The journey to showing the film to audiences at Cannes has taken a number of years, with Mescal first reading the script at the age of 24, filming at 28 and presenting it in France at the age of 29. For the actor it’s been a rewarding experience to track a project from start to finish both in front of, and behind, the camera. And the end result is a feature that explores love without words. ‘What I found so moving about the screenplay is that it’s never really described in words, it’s described in actions and things you don’t see … That’s something I’ve learned in my own life, kindness is wildly underrated in romantic relationships and should be celebrated.’
The History of Sound premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival and is out in cinemas now Read our review here
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
The lead of Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme tells Hollywood Authentic how Cannes was the secret ingredient in their latest collaboration.
Though he’s been to Cannes many times to premiere many films before, Benicio del Toro admits to still getting nerves when he climbs the famous red Palais stairs to sit in the dark with an inaugural audience. ‘It’s the best,’ he says of the festival and the experience. ‘Always fun but always nerve-wracking. You bite your nails, you feel good, you feel bad, you feel good, you feel bad, you feel good, you know? But then you try to leave on a good note.’
He left the cinema on a good note this year; his headlining performance as tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda trying to get his business deal off the ground via international funding in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme was warmly received by critics. The premiere was a full circle moment for this project – the actor was last in Cannes with Anderson in 2021 with anthology The French Dispatch where he appeared in one of five stories, and it was during that festival that the auteur first told him about his plans for this film. ‘He was saying he was doing his next movie, and he wanted me to be a part of it. When he sent The French Dispatch to me he sent me just the pages of my part, so when he sent the first 20 pages of The Phoenician Scheme, I thought it was going to be something similar, because he’s been doing these films where there’s a lot of characters moving around, and with several stories. But then he sent the next 20 pages, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m still in it’… When he sent the next 20 pages, the fear started to take over. And then it was like, ‘Wow, this is heavy’. But, at the same time, his writing is so three-dimensional and so thorough. Aside from original, unpredictable, and funny, there’s also this heart to it that is super-exciting and one hell of a challenge for any actor. I just took the challenge and went for it. It’s really an honour. A gift.’
The heaviness that del Toro refers to is the fact that he appears in practically every scene, juggling the machinations of a complex business deal with an emotional arc that see the tycoon reunited with his nun daughter, Leisl, played by Mia Threapleton. ‘Then there’s also, you could say, the reconstruction of Zsa-zsa. But through the relationship with the daughter, is what will help him become a better person.’ The most challenging aspect of balancing a business arc with one of redemption and parental love was hard to pick for del Toro. ‘I had to know where he’s going to be. At the end, he will lose everything. I had to make a choice. How could this man have been working for decades, and has all this fortune – why would he throw it away? He has this ‘win at all costs’ mentality – and that remains the same until the end.’
As a veteran of Anderson’s films, del Toro surely had advice for newcomers to the stable, Threapleton and Michael Cera, who plays Norwegian tutor, Bjorn? ‘No advice,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Mia was probably the youngest of the group, but most of the time she behaved like a veteran. She is strong as an actress, prepared. But there were moments that we were getting tired. I was like, ‘Let’s just have fun. Don’t forget that this thing that we do – it’s at its best when we’re having fun, you know?’’Anderson’s intricate sets, huge casts and practical effects look like a great deal of fun, so Hollywood Authentic wonders if del Toro and his director were cooking up another treat during this festival that they might serve up in the Croisette in another three years time? ‘I would love to work with Wes again,’ del Toro smiles. ‘We’re not talking about something in the near future, but he knows that my door is open for anything he needs. And I like the pressure…”
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
When Hollywood Authentic meets up with Adria Arjona and her Splitsville castmate (and co-producer) Dakota Johnson in a suite at the Majestic Hotel on the Cannes Criosette it doesn’t take long for talk to turn frank. ‘In your penis scene, you saw balls?’ Arjona asks. “Not in your penis scene. In my penis scene,’ Johnson replies. It has to be said, Splitsville has a number of penis scenes to choose from in a comedy that charts the emotional fallout of two couples – Arjona’s Ashley and her spouse Carey (Kyle Marvin) and Johnson’s Julie are her other half Paul (writer/director Michael Angelo Covino) – as they break-up and try to negotiate open relationships. That’s explored by male nudity, destructively funny house fights, goldfish on rollercoaster disasters and an opening scene that sees Arjona singing The Fray during a car ride that starts with a handjob and ends with death and divorce.
‘What it’s about is something that has always really intrigued me,’ Arjona says of the lure to both acting and exec-producing on the project from the team behind TIFF hit The Climb. ‘This is fun – a movie about messy relationships. And I’ve never played a character like Ashley. I was like, ‘Oh, I get to be bonkers for a little bit’. Johnson nods; ‘It’s very authentic,’ she laughs.
Johnson’s company TeaTime Pictures part-financed the film and she is used to producing, but for Arjona this was an opportunity to refine her behind-the-camera experience further and give herself more agency within the industry. ‘I’ve produced the last couple of things that I’ve been in. [Last year’s AIDs drama] Los Frikis was the first that asked me to do that. And I learned so much. You have a seat at the table. You have a little bit more ownership over your character. And then you’re so much more invested, I feel, as an actor. It’s not that I’m not invested in movies that I don’t produce. But when you do produce them, you get the best schooling in the world. You get to be a part of the edit, and you get to really understand how movies are made. As an actor we do our job, and then we leave. And a whole other movie is formed without us being present. So really getting to understand how filmmakers’ brains work, has been a really big gift. I think I’ve become a better actor by producing, because you’re just understanding planning, the schedule, the budget and the editing. You see the world completely differently. I’m acting but I’m also thinking ‘we’re losing time. We’re losing light…’’
It sounds like Arjona, who has recently worked with Zoë Kravitz on her directorial debut, Blink Twice, might be working towards helming a picture herself? A huge smile breaks out across her face. ‘I would love to direct. It’s probably one of my biggest dreams. But I’m terrified. I’ve got a lot more filmmakers to work with before I decide to make my own movie, and I also haven’t found the story yet.’
For now she has a full slate to continue learning from in preparation. She’s got Adam Wingard’s horror-actioner Onslaught upcoming in which she plays a mother fighting to protect her family opposite Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall. She also produced. ‘That one is a wild one. It’s crazy. It’s Adam going back to what he’s great at, what he proved to the world he could do with The Guest. So I played in the service of Adam’s vision. It’s the most extreme thing I think I’ve done. And it was a great experience.’ She’s also just completed filming on Amazon Prime’s buzzy new show, generational mob drama Criminal, acting alongside Charlie Hunnam, Richard Jenkins and Emilia Clarke. ‘Charlie is insane. He’s so cool and so sweet. It’s broken down into two sections. I’m four episodes, Emilia comes in the other four. It was a cool experience.’
Cannes, she says, is also a cool experience – and a switch-up from when she visited three years ago with Olivier Assayas’s TV show, Irma Vep. Then she was a relative unknown, now she’s the star and producer of the film she’s presenting to the festival, having made waves since in Hit Man and Andor. ‘It’s a very different experience. Irma Vep was a big ensemble cast and it’s very much Alicia [Vikander’s] show. So coming now, with this, and being with these guys, was pretty special. In a way, it kind of felt like my first time.’She’s also glad to bring the rom-com vibe to the festival. Splitsville is certainly romantic and comedic – but with a modern twist. ‘Oh, man, rom-coms are my favourite. You make all these movies, but then you come home, and you’re like, ‘I just want to curl up, and watch a really good romcom.’ And to be a part of them, too. I think we’re in this really interesting era of redefining what that is, or what romcoms are for this generation. And what resonates for people – the more I watch things, or watching people’s reactions – is things that are a little bit off-centre, and things that touch on complex subjects. Because there’s nothing more fun than watching people fall in love, fall out of love, and then fall back in love. And messily…’
Splitsville premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival
Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
Mission: Impossible’s tech nerd tells Hollywood Authentic about his directorial dreams, DJing and what he’s learnt from Tom Cruise.
Simon Pegg moved to his current home in Hertfordshire 13 years ago from London when the experience got to be too much like living in one of his own films. ‘I was living in Crouch End, and that’s where we shot Shaun of the Dead,’ he explains as he welcomes me to his country house. ‘So I couldn’t really complain when people came up to me on the street. I don’t mind it but obviously after a while it gets a little tiring.’ The move to the country was also prompted by needing more space for his growing brood: he lives in this home with his music publicist wife, Mo, daughter, Tilly, two Schnauzers and a Cockapoo, called Cookie. The Schnauzers, Willow and Branwell, are currently winding round his feet as he gives me the tour of his garden.
He shows me his ice plunge which he jumps into every day (‘I do 3 degrees for three minutes’) and his DJ spot – a music room at the end of the garden kitted out with CDJ-3000s and shelves of vinyl. Pegg now DJs at parties and festivals having self-taught himself three years ago. ‘DJing reminds me of doing stand-up comedy, in that you have an audience, and they react immediately to what you’re doing. Stand-up is like, they either laugh or you die. With DJing, they either dance or you die!’
He’s a long way now from where he started doing stand-up gigs. A Gloucester boy who grew up around musicians at his Dad’s music shop with a cinema just down the road, Pegg’s love of acting was fostered by an amateur dramatic mum and movie-fan dad. He attended Bristol university to study theatre, film, and TV where he started a comedy club with Dominic Diamond, David Walliams, Jason Bradbury and Myfanwy Moore. His stand-up there led to getting an agent (he’s still with the same one) and a role on Big Train. The experience moved him onto co-writing and appearing in cult TV show Spaced and then to writing and working with Edgar Wright and Nick Frost on Shaun Of The Dead. That built out to the ‘Cornetto Trilogy’ and acting in films such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Ice Age and Mission: Impossible.
Nowadays the writing is done in his office, located away from the main house and a treasure trove of film memorabilia (also the setting for a Rick Astley music video). Inside he has the numbers from the house in Spaced, artwork based on Edgar Wright’s work, a photograph of Harrison Ford cracking his Indy whip at Elstree, an oscilloscope from his film Lost Transmissions and a bloodied shirt from Shaun Of The Dead. ‘There’s one here, and then there’s one in Peter Jackson’s museum in Wellington, and then there’s one in a museum in Seattle. They’re the only three I know the whereabouts of.’ Part of the Cornetto Trilogy, Pegg laughs as he recalls the genesis for the recurring ice-cream gag. ‘We came up with the idea of [Nick Frost’s character] Ed eating a Cornetto in the morning because he was hungover – that was Edgar’s hangover cure, a strawberry Cornetto. And then at the Shaun of the Dead premiere, we got free Cornettos, and we were like, ‘Oh, man, this is great. We got free ice cream. We should put one in the next film as well.’ So we did. Shaun is red-and-white strawberry. Hot Fuzz is blue and white for the police. And The World’s End was green mint choc for the aliens.’
It’s in this private sanctuary that Pegg writes, he’s currently adapting a book he holds the right to and hopes to direct. ‘When I work with Edgar, it’s the ideal situation because we write the film, and then when we’ve written it and we’re happy with it, he becomes the director and I become the lead actor. That way, we have total autonomy. I think as a director, if you can write the thing, you’ve already done half the job by the time you actually get to set, because you’ve envisioned it, and you’re aware of the shots you want to use. But it’s such a weird time in the film industry because everything’s changed so much with exhibition and the way we consume cinema. Cinema’s pricing itself out of the market slightly, and the idea of going to see a small drama at the cinema now feels like: ‘Well, why would I do that? I could just watch it at home. What’s the point of seeing it on the big screen?’ But it’s not just the big screen, it’s the community of watching a film with other people, you know? A whole vast array of differing people who you might not agree with politically on various reasons, but you all share this experience. It’s a tribe of ours that I think we’re losing. When I was a kid, there was the television, and there was the cinema. TV was a square. You couldn’t see films. You saw a cut-and-shut version of films. You didn’t see them until five or six years after they’d been on at the movies. Now that’s totally different. We all own TVs that have the right aspect ratio for cinema, and we can get them immediately. We can see them in cinematic terms because the sound and the picture is so good. It’s no one’s fault. I think lockdown had something to do with it. People started to realise they didn’t have to leave their house, you know? But then concerts have gone back. Other collective events have gone back. It’s just cinema that seems to be clinging on by its fingernails at the moment.’
His latest project is cinema writ large. He’s reprising his role as tech whiz Benji in Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning, apparently the final film in a eight-movie series powered by cinephile and champion of the theatrical experience, Tom Cruise. ‘Tom has only ever done movies. He’s not interested in doing anything else. For him, that experience is really important. And I agree with him. It’d be a terrible shame if theatrical exhibition disappeared. It would be a tragedy. That’s why I like being part of the Mission franchise. It’s wildly exciting, and big in its scope. But it’s also a kind of twisty-turny story, and there’s great characters in it. [Producer/director] McQ and Tom are always very, very insistent that we concentrate on character more than the stunts, because the stunts don’t mean anything if the characters aren’t relatable or you don’t fall in love with them. There’s art in entertainment. But there doesn’t have to be entertainment in art. Entertainment is an overrated function of art. There you go. That’s my university head talking.’
We leave the office to shoot some hoops with a Louboutin basketball and onto Pegg’s soundproofed screening room guarded by a storm trooper, with signed Laurel and Hardy photos on the wall. Pegg and his daughter watch at least two movies a weekend in the chilled out space that boasts curtains in front of the screen and a Kaleidoscope system where Pegg has digitised his vast DVD collection. Next door, his gym is signposted with a pub sign from The World’s End. Fitness is a key part of his sobriety, having given up drinking 15 years ago. It also became more important as he made Mission: Impossible films. ‘The first time I really rediscovered keeping in shape was on Ghost Protocol and then it just became part of my everyday. I got in shape for Hot Fuzz, and then I let it go again. If you watch Ghost Protocol, I lose about 20 lbs in an edit. There’s a scene of us outside in Red Square and then it cuts indoors, and I’ve got cheekbones! But now it’s part of my mental health routine as well. If you have an addictive personality, then the trick is to swap out the addictions for something that’s better for you, you know? It gets the endorphins pumping, and it makes you feel good. When I’m working I’ll do some calisthenics in my trailer before I go to make up.’
We head back outside to another passion of Pegg’s; the pizza oven. He talks me through his routine of getting the temperature to 300 degrees and having the patience not to put the pizza in too early. ‘I’ve had a lot of abortive pizzas, I’ve got to say. But eventually you get the technique, and then they come out beautiful.’ The artisan nature of his pizzas brings him back around to considering cinema. ‘There’s a lot of talk about the sheer number of IP-based cinema… but it was an interesting year at the Oscars for independent cinema and these films that were brilliant movies that weren’t relying on any kind of brand recognition. Which does show that there’s a market for that kind of stuff. I suppose the key to success is, it’s always the low production value – or low production costs – and a big comeback. That’s the golden egg. You make the film for nothing, and it makes everything. But the trouble is, it’s hard to make a film that everyone is going to go and see, if it’s small and thoughtful, you know, because people like big things. And I guess that’s what every producer wrestles with. Every film, every studio – how do you make great art and make money?’
‘My background is comedy, and the trouble with doing comedy is that no one subsequently ever takes you seriously. It’s a very overlooked skill-set, I think. They’ve just announced a category at the Oscars for stunt performance, which is great, but I’d like to see a category for comedic performance, because not everybody can do it. If there had been a category for comedic performance, then Jim Carrey would be weighed down with Oscars, you know? I’ve seen so-called straight actors attempt comedy and fail. But I’ve seen a lot of very good comedy actors be very good at dramatic acting.’
For now Pegg is consolidating everything he’s learnt in his career for his next steps. ‘I’ve learned a lot from Christopher McQuarrie because he always professes that he’s learning all the time. Steven Spielberg blew my mind when I worked with him because he just sees in film – that’s how he sees the world. I’m always really impressed by people that can do things I can’t do. You know, musicians or artists or people that have an amazing skill that I lack. But with directing, I feel that’s attainable. Having worked with Edgar so much, I just feel like it’s time to have a crack at that.’
I ask what he’s learnt from Cruise over the years. ‘I get asked about him all the time because he very rarely speaks about himself in public. You know, even in private, he’ll always switch the conversation back to you. But everyone’s so desperate for some kind of concrete information about him because he’s such an enigma. But I think that’s part of his success, that he’s maintained that. He’s maintained the interest in himself simply by just taking a step back, because he can. His journey is extremely simple when you look at it. He’s just always given 100% to everything that he does. Everything. To him, it’s quite simple: if you do that, then you get to be that, you know? He’s an eternal student of film. He’ll know what lens suits a scene, or he’ll know what piece of equipment we should use. He is across every facet of the production. But he’s just so diligent, and so invested in what he’s doing. The idea of doing it and half-arsing it, or phoning it in, would never cross his mind. He’s just not that way. He sets the tone, really. ‘Perfectionist’ is often used as a backhanded compliment. Edgar’s a perfectionist as well. Mediocrity is not in either of those people’s vocabulary. It makes for an intense experience. You know, I’ve been in these films for 20 years now, and every one of them has been an adventure, in the truest sense of the word, whether we’ve been in Vancouver or Morocco or the Arctic Circle or Venice or Rome. Tom sacrifices a certain amount of normality, I think, for the life he lives. That’s not to suggest he deserves any kind of pity. But I think he has given up something I really value, which is complete normality. But I think he knows that’s what it takes to be him, you know? He’s the last movie star, I think. I don’t think there’s anyone else like him.’
I point out that Pegg doesn’t live a totally ordinary life himself and he laughs. ‘I can still walk down the street quite easily and not be seen. The downside to having a career where you become recognisable are far, far less than the upsides of doing your hobby for a job. That, I really relish. But it’s just keeping a balance. As a rule, I try to never be away from home for longer than four weeks, if I can.’ He’s about to hit the road again with the Final Reckoning global press tour – possibly the last time he’ll be promoting the series. ‘It’s a whole IMF go-bag of mixed emotions,’ he says of the close of this chapter of his life. ‘It’s exceeded my wildest dreams. Twenty years of my life, that started with an unexpected phone call from JJ Abrams. It’s been a wild ride, literally at times. I feel very lucky to have been a part of it.’
