Profiles - Hollywood Authentic

November 15, 2024

Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

Slave Play alumnus James Cusati-Moyer tells Hollywood Authentic about the art of ‘holding on tightly, letting go lightly’ and the seminal nature of a Rodgers & Hammerstein score.

When Hollywood Authentic meets one of the leads of hit controversial West End show, Slave Play, in his dressing room at the Noël Coward in the heart of theatreland, he’s near to tears thinking about the imminent end of the production’s run. It’s hardly surprising – the 35-year-old has had a long journey with the show. After playwright Jeremy O. Harris wrote the part of Dustin with him in mind, he originated the role off-Broadway in 2018 then on-Broadway in 2019 before Covid, returned to it after shutdown and was nominated for a Tony before transferring to London in July 2024. A challenging, polarising play that explores the intersection between race and sexuality via couples therapy, James has been wrestling with the emotional and physical demands of essaying the character of gay actor Dustin for six years. After 13 weeks of living a London life, he’s preparing to fly back to his adopted New York and finally let go of Dustin.

‘I think any stage actor will say this – when you finish the completion of a play, it feels like a death in the family. It feels like someone died. There’s an emptying out, internally,’ he says. ‘This one is even more significant because this is probably the last time I’ll do this play. When I close it’s also letting go of something that’s been in my DNA for six years; I think it’ll be a similar death. But there’s something beautiful in that. And the play will live on, and be done around the world by many other beautiful, fantastic actors and directors and theatres and spaces. That relationship with the audience is what I’ll miss the most, because I’ve never felt so connected – as if I was breathing the same oxygen as them – as I have on this play.’

Certainly the play asked audiences into an uncomfortable conversation in terms of subject matter, and to reflect on their own relationship with race during the performance – not least via the mirrored set. The production also provided ‘blackout performances’ during its runs on Broadway and the West End, creating an exclusive space for Black-identifying audiences. During the potent two-hour show James is stripped to his underwear, physically grappled and emotionally flayed – quite the endurance when undertaken for eight shows a week. He smiles wryly when asked how he does it.

james cusati-moyer, slave play, hollywood authentic x n.peal, greg williams

I wouldn’t want to do anything in my day that robs the audience of any bit of energy from my performance. It’s really about conserving the energy and the stamina . And that’s by sleeping, eating well, and exercise – and then saving it all for [the stage]

‘Well, to quote Elaine Stritch via Ethel Merman, you have to live like a fucking nun! The rigour and demand of the play is sometimes so intense that there’s not much life outside of it. But it’s a happy sacrifice. I wouldn’t want to do anything in my day that robs the audience of any bit of energy from my performance. It’s really about conserving the energy and the stamina. And that’s by sleeping, eating well, and exercise – and then saving it all for [the stage]. Then right after curtain, it’s straight home. It’s probably the most difficult job I’ve had in my life.’

The Pennsylvania native’s life is something he doesn’t take for granted. Growing up in working class Allentown in a Syrian/Italian blue-collar family, he reckoned with death at an early age; the literal scar of which can be seen on his chest and in his approach to life. ‘I had open-heart surgery when I was 14 years old. They found four holes in my heart. They said if this would have gone on undiscovered or unnoticed, that I wouldn’t have made it past puberty. Being that close to death, that close to not being actually supposed to be alive, that second chance that I got – that’s what stays with me.’

A kid who grew up singing along to the Rodgers & Hammerstein records his grandma loved and played (The King And I was a favourite and he sometimes still plays the music before going on stage), James can’t recall a time when he wanted to do anything other than act. ‘I think it was just one of the first thoughts I had as a child. My grandmother had the VHSs. I would watch. I just knew I had to memorise it all and perform it all in the living room. I knew that this was going to be my profession and my life.’ His mom’s was across the street from a community theatre and the budding thespian started hanging out and performing as a youngster – grasping at opportunity with both hands. ‘When I wasn’t in school, that was where I was. I wasn’t playing in the streets with the kids. I wasn’t doing any sports. I wasn’t getting into trouble. I was in the back of the theatre. I went to an arts high school that was formed right when I was a freshman. That saved my life. I moved to New York. I went to college, then went to Yale School of Drama for grad school.’ If that sounds like an effortless trajectory – the theatre kid who transitioned to Yale, Broadway and on to TV and film – it wasn’t, he says.

‘I had two figures in my life – my mother and my grandmother – who kept saying, “yes”. And I’m really grateful for them. But I’m also grateful for the people in my life who told me “no”, and there were many of those in my family. Many teachers that didn’t encourage me to continue. That contrast flooded into my experience. Whenever those things happen, it just gives you room to spread your wings and fly. It shows you what you don’t want, and it shows you what you do want. I’m just always grateful for both. I got kicked out of school, I got dropped by agents… it’s all informing me. Everything is a lesson and a gift.’

It was while at Yale that he met Slave Play writer Harris and after Cusati-Moyer debuted on Broadway in Six Degrees Of Separation, the duo worked together on bringing Slave Play to stages. At the same time he also juggled TV and film work, in 2022 starring in both Netflix hit Inventing Anna and DC blockbuster Black Adam. Last year he appeared in Maestro and this year, Tyler Perry’s Sistas. ‘Those opportunities were very different from anything I’ve ever done in my career, since I got out of drama school. I never thought that I would be on the set of a superhero film! It’s what you dream of as a kid. You’ve got to remain open to the jobs that come. My acting teacher used to say it specifically about the craft of acting, but I think it applies to the spiritual practice of the industry: “Hold on tightly, let go lightly.” When you have that job, hold on, but also let go. Have some fun. Enjoy it. It’s play.’

Now that he’s finished with Slave Play and is flying back to NY with ‘British biscuits and tea’ in his bag, James has more world-building to create. Firstly, his immediate surroundings. ‘Listen, like any true New Yorker, I’ve got to find an apartment when I’m back,’ he laughs. ‘That’s almost as difficult a job as this one. So that’s actually the first task.’ Then he needs to find the next project to pour himself into. ‘I have so many dreams and things that I want to do. If I could orchestrate my life and the next job that comes in, I’d say, “Oh, I want to do this hit TV. I want to do this hit movie. I want to go to the Venice Film Festival next year. I have a list of filmmakers I want to work with.” But sometimes you’ve just got to flow where it’s warm. I just want to keep on working. That’s the goal of it all.’

Work is, he says, important to him transactionally as well as artistically. ‘I don’t come from money. I grew up very, very poor. So the ability to be able to pay my bills, pay for my food, pay my rent, and do what I love – that’s happiness. The rest of any glitz and glamour that comes along with this profession sometimes? Fantastic. But if I can keep doing this and pay my bills, I’ll be good.’

His grandmother passed away in the last couple of years but must be very proud that the little boy who stomped around the living room to The King And I is still marching to the beat of his own drum. ‘What a gift she gave me,’ he smiles. ‘And now she’s gone. But she’s not gone. She’s here, and she’s on the stage with me.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘This play has shifted my DNA – I’m forever changed because of it. I’m stronger. I’m wiser. I’m more naïve. At the same time, I have more humility… You know that innocence of a child in a playground where the world is a wonder to them and it’s scary? I think that’s the place that any good work or any play or any good acting performance rests in. It’s that fine line between fear of the unknown and yet simultaneous ecstasy of discovering everything all at once. If I can maintain that feeling that I’ve achieved in this play, with any other job, then I’ll be really happy.’

Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
James wears the Hollywood Authentic × N.Peal cashmere collection

hollywood authentic, greg williams, hollywood authentic magazine

Family Ties

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS

November 15, 2024

Photographs by CHARLIE CLIFT
Words by JANE CROWTHER

Siblings John David and Malcolm Washington tell Hollywood Authentic how their parents Denzel and Pauletta raised them surrounded by art and why their new film, The Piano Lesson, became a family affair.

Director Malcolm Washington insists that he and his older brother, actor John David, didn’t fight as children. In fact, the opposite was true growing up with acting parents and as a pair of brothers with two sisters, Katia and Olivia. ‘I just feel like we did so much as kids. Any time I needed anything, I feel like my family are the people that I would go to. If I was moving, or needed help to take apart and rebuild my furniture, I would call them.’ Which is why when he decided to make his feature debut directing and co-writing an adaptation of Pulitzer prize-winning playwright August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, he called on the Washington clan. Father, Denzel, has long protected Wilson’s work as designated custodian of his output – a series of 10 plays known as the ‘Pittsburgh Cycle’, including recent movie adaptations Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – and has made it his mission is to see all the plays adapted for film with reverence. Washington Sr directed and starred in Fences on the big screen in 2016 and John David played The Piano Lesson’s Boy Willie (originated by Samuel L. Jackson in 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theatre) in a Broadway revival in 2022. The story of a brother and sister, Boy Willie and Berniece (Daniel Deadwyler), in 1936 Pittsburgh, The Piano Lesson explores systematic racism, the legacy of slavery, identity and generational trauma as the siblings argue over the fate of a piano once owned by their family’s slaver owner. Sharecropper Boy Willie wants to sell it to buy Mississippi land; Berniece wants it to remain in the family as a testament to their ancestors. It’s an intense, thought-provoking play that Malcolm has described as ‘sacred’. No pressure then…

‘The fact that it was high pressure made it even more reason to go to the people that you know,’ he smiles as the two brothers attend the London Film Festival. ‘And working with him,’ he points to John David sitting next to him, ‘I was such a fan of him that I wanted to do that anyway. He’s a great actor, you know?’ The brothers also had their dad onboard as exec producer (‘He’s an expert’), sister Katia as producer, plus sister Olivia (who has just finished an acclaimed run in the West End’s Slave Play) and mum Pauletta as cameos. Longtime family friend, Samuel L. Jackson, also joined the cast. To have that level of expertise in the material and trust in family was invaluable, he says. ‘It instils confidence in everybody. It’s like: we have the opportunity to make a film of great performances. Let’s live out that promise.’

The performances have been attracting awards attention as the film has played at festivals throughout the year and John David admits that getting a chance to interpret the role a second time after his Broadway stint was something of a gift. ‘That was the most intriguing part – the new lens that this story is going to be told through, which is Malcolm’s, to serve as a nexus between the OGs, the Wilsonians, and what the new generation of artists and storytellers have to say about unfortunately antiquated issues in the underbelly of America – which this story revolves around. But it’s also obviously the family dynamic and heirloom. What side are you on in the brother/sister argument? But all of those prospects and those opportunities to tell the story in a new way, to open up the play.’

The experience of digging into the themes of the play was enlightening and personal, Malcolm recalls. ‘It inspired a lot of conversation. When I met with Samuel L. Jackson for the first time to talk about doing the story, we talked very briefly about the story, and then it quickly turned into him showing me family photos of his grandparents, and where he’s from, and his people. We were always tied into that larger thing.’ And the idea of legacy is something that both brothers are aware of as children of feted actors, and part of a family of artists. ‘To me, I had this idea of like: this is what was passed down – it’s the ability to tell stories, and being able to do it professionally,’ John David nods. ‘The fact that we’re doing it together is something that is significant.’

malcolm washington, the piano lesson — Malcolm Washington

I definitely wouldn’t call working together an inevitability. But along the way, it became more and more important to tie all of our stories into it, so that we all had stakes in the game. We all had skin in the game

Making this a Washington family project wasn’t initially the intention, explains Malcolm, who co-wrote the screenplay with Virgil Williams. ‘This whole project is just a snowball of something that started really small, really intimate and really personal. And then along the way you collect these other moments, and it all comes into focus. I definitely wouldn’t call working together an inevitability. But along the way, it became more and more important to tie all of our stories into it, so that we all had stakes in the game. We all had skin in the game.’ A former student of the American Film Institute who graduated at the top of his class, he dug into his academic approach in prepping for the film – visiting the Pittsburgh neighbourhood, the historic Hill District, where Wilson lived and was inspired. Malcolm ultimately planted an Easter egg in the film of Bella’s Market, where Wilson grew up, and discovered the playwright’s close relationship with his mother. That bond is something he also recognises: ‘The more I learned about August, the more I saw myself in his story and in his work.’

Denzel and both of his sons have talked about the importance of Pauletta Washington at the heart of their family and The Piano Lesson is dedicated to her; ‘for Mama’ appears on the end title card, nodding both to her role as Mama Ola and her impact on the director. She only discovered his tribute when she saw the film for the first time with the family. ‘It was wonderful. She wept,’ Malcolm remembers. ‘My mum used to take me to the theatre, and we watched so many movies together. She took me to see The Tree of Life when it came out. It was a movie that affected both of us so deeply. I remember sitting in the theatre when it ended, and we were both holding hands, and just crying together. It was the first time I remember doing that – you know, crying and being so deeply affected by a movie like that. So when I showed her my film – we saw it in a theatre, and we cried together. I just immediately thought of that moment of like, ‘Wow, now I’ve made this thing that affected you in the way that we were both affected.’ It made me even more empowered, and fall in love with the art of filmmaking even more.’

Denzel is an equally artistic force in the family, though he hasn’t ever sat down and given John David acting advice. ‘I guess it’s like Mr Miyagi-style, you know what I mean?’ he laughs. ‘You wash the car, and paint the fence, and then you apply it to the work later. Like, years later. I think he might have been preparing me my whole life for something. I put God into everything – every project. I feel like every character I take on, there’s something I’m learning about myself as well. He’s so protective of the [August Wilson] works. Also, Samuel L. Jackson. So getting the co-sign, and getting the encouragement from them, emboldened me to be my better self, and to be my best self.’

john david washington, the piano lesson — John David Washington

Both my parents had a strong consciousness to them, and were constantly putting us into spaces that we got to engage in – in art, in Black entertainment, the legacy of Black artists, and the legacy of Black greatness outside of art as well

For the Tenet, BlacKkKlansman and The Creator lead, that acting truth is hard won, having fought against following in his dad’s footsteps by becoming a professional football player before injury made him reconsider the lure of telling stories. ‘I chose something else first. A lot like Boy Willie, I was conflicted. I had an internal warfare. I chose football, I chose pain, I chose broken ribs and hernias in the name of independence. I had this rebellious quest to be my own man. But, really, I was just working out a character, I think, because I wanted to do this my whole life. Inevitability – it’s a spectrum. But I am so thankful that I am doing it because it’s what I wanted to do the whole time. This project definitely helps me with this. I’m seeing the kind of actor and the kind of performer that I’m striving to be. And I needed this rite-of-passage text to do that.’

Malcolm’s artistic route wasn’t quite such warfare. ‘I think the conditions in which I grew up definitely inspired my path. I’m the youngest in my family. My siblings were always really into art and music and film. We just watched so many things growing up, and just got to engage in it. Both my parents had a strong consciousness to them, and were constantly putting us into spaces that we got to engage in – in art, in Black entertainment, the legacy of Black artists, and the legacy of Black greatness outside of art as well. Those things were always instilled in me, and I always had a strong feeling and confidence that if I set my mind to something, if I studied hard and worked hard, I could achieve whatever. As I got older, I looked in the mirror one day and I was like, ‘Oh, wait, I think I’m into telling stories’.’

For both brothers, making The Piano Lesson has been a way of proving something to themselves as well as their dad, who ‘there’s no question’ would not have let them take on this adaptation simply because they were his offspring. There are still seven more plays to be adapted, so the Washingtons may yet be brought artistically together again. That’s if Hollywood Authentic hasn’t instigated their first fight. When we ask who took the beautifully carved piano at the centre of the film home with them, Malcolm admits to on-set purloining. ‘We had an amazing team working on the piano. The panels from the piano actually are in my house right now. They’re in LA.’ John David looks at him surprised. ‘I didn’t even know! Didn’t get a choice!’ he exclaims. He shakes his head in mock outrage. ‘Wow…’

Photographs by CHARLIE CLIFT
Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Piano Lesson is streaming on Netflix now

Dispatches

RUMOURS

October 25, 2024

DISPATCH: RUMOURS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

Surreal political satire Rumours premiered at the Cannes Film Festival before travelling to TIFF and various festivals before landing in the UK’s capital this month at the BFI London Film Festival for a party hosted at Lasdun by Universal Pictures. Written and co-directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, it follows the seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies at the annual G7 summit, where they attempt to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. But as night falls and their staff disappear the leaders discover their own fallibility and lack of agency – unless it’s a quick romp in the woods. The cast is as international as the characters: Cate Blanchett plays the German Chancellor, Charles Dance is POTUS (with an English accent, because – why not?), Nikki Amuka-Bird essays the UK PM and Alicia Vikander is the President of the European Commission who finds something mindbending in the mist…

Blanchett, Dance, Amula-Bird and their directors celebrated the UK bow of the film at a party attended by friends and colleagues. Greg Williams captured the fun…

cate blanchett, charles dance, evan johnson, galen johnson, guy maddin, nikki amuka-bird, rumours, philipp kreuzer

Rumours is released on 6 December

Dispatches

GEORGE CLOONEY & BRAD PITT

September 27, 2024

DISPATCH: GEORGE CLOONEY & BRAD PITT WOLFS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

George Clooney and Brad Pitt have been working together since they first made Ocean’s Eleven in 2001 – sharing credits in the 23 years since on Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen and Burn After Reading. And the off-screen friends were looking for another opportunity to re-team when they were pitched Jon Watts’ original script, Wolfs. The story of two ‘lone wolf’ fixers who are assigned to the same clean-up job when a DA’s dalliance with a young man ends in accidental death, the comedy-actioner premiered at the Venice Film Festival to a standing ovation. Greg Williams traveled with the duo by boat as they attended a press conference and the premiere on Venice’s Lido.

‘We kind of figured there’s gotta be a good reason to get back in a film together, something we feel like we could build upon what we’ve done before,’ Pitt told journalists when he and Clooney discussed the project without their director who had caught Covid on the journey to the floating city. ‘But also, I gotta say, as I get older, working with the people that I just really enjoy spending time with has really become important to me.’

Pitt recalled that both he and Clooney immediately liked the first draft that Watts wrote and pitched to them, and was pleased that the verve of it was retained throughout production to filming in New York. ‘It’s never happened where someone presents you with an idea and you get a first draft of the script and that’s what you end up shooting.’

Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Jon Watts, Wolfs

As grouchy hitmen, Clooney and Pitt banter and squabble throughout a long night where they try to unravel a conspiracy – and their teasing affection was on display when they sat down for their press conference and, later, boogied to Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’ (a key track in the film) as the credits rolled in the Sala Grande. ‘There’s nothing good about it… It’s all a disaster,’ Clooney joked when asked about working with his 60-year-old friend. ‘He’s 74 and he’s lucky at this age to be still working!’

Wolfs is in select cinemas and available to stream on Apple TV+ now
Read our review of Wolfs here

Dispatches

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

September 13, 2024

bettlejuice bettlejuice, catherine o'hara, jenna ortega, michael keaton, tim burton, winona ryder

DISPATCH: JENNA ORTEGA BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

With the Venice Film Festival marking the move of summer into Autumn, it’s perhaps fitting that a Halloween movie opened the 81st festivities. Thirty five years after Beetlejuice was first released, its sequel reunited the original cast alongside Jenna Ortega on the Lido’s red carpet – something director Tim Burton had never envisaged for a film he admits he doesn’t quite understand the success of. A quirky horror comedy starring Michael Keaton as a potty-mouthed, green-haired ghost who haunts the Deetz family when they move into a new house, it was the film that made a star of Winona Ryder (aged 15 when she filmed) and cemented a decades-long collaborative process between Burton and his two leads.

In the years since, Beetlejuice has become a cult classic and after the success of other legacy sequels such as Top Gun Maverick and Ghostbusters: Afterlife it was only a matter of time before ‘The Juice’ returned to haunted audiences anew. And on a balmy August evening Greg Williams joined the cast pre-premiere at their Venetian hotel as the film received warm reviews from critics tickled by the return to practical effects, a Ryder-Keaton re-run, Ortega’s snarky charm and the daft fun of Burton’s distinct signature touch.

‘Over the past few years, I got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry, I sort of lost myself,’ the director admitted to journalists earlier in the day. ‘For me, I realized the only way to be a success is that I have to love doing it. For this one, I just enjoyed and loved making it.’ For Burton that meant working with Ryder, Keaton and Catherine O’Hara again. Having worked with Burton on other projects, Ryder felt safe to step into a new story with the director again. ‘My love and trust for Tim runs so deep and there was a sense of a certain playfulness and readiness to try things,’ she said, confessing that one of her favourite things about returning to the role of Lydia Deetz – not a TV medium and mother to a teenage daughter – was staring into Keaton’s eyes again. ‘It had been such a special experience the first one and just to be able to come back to it was just a dream come true.’

Burton calls Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ‘a weird family movie’ that examines the rifts between parents and children as Lydia returns to her original haunted house after the death of her father. Her teen daughter, Astrid, may not believe her mum can see dead people but she soon changes her mind after a run-in with a ghost and the afterlife. Burton credits some of his creative rejuvenation to making the first season of Wednesday with Jenna Ortega so she seemed the natural choice for the role of Astrid. Ortega – whose red-carpet custom Dior dress nodded to Lydia’s wedding dress in the original film – has had a similar fast rise to fame as Ryder and the two women bonded immediately on set, not only as mother and daughter but as actors who have become emo icons of their generation. ‘The way Winona and I got on was quite weird,’ Ortega says. ‘It was like we could read each other’s minds a little bit.’ Ryder was, she says, immediately warm and welcoming. ‘It was at a time where my career was taking a different turn. I didn’t realize that I needed that from somebody who could relate, but I did.’

Also along for the ride are Willem Dafoe as an afterlife detective who used to be an actor on a TV cop show, Monica Bellucci as Delores, a long-dead vamp with unfinished business with Beetlejuice; and Justin Theroux as Lydia’s odious boyfriend and manager.

Burton also brought SFX guru Neil Scanlon onto the project to ensure that the low-fi, fast and fun ethos of the first film was resurrected – so just like the original, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features tactile practical effects to add to the comedy and off-kilter vibe (the waiting room is rammed with ridiculous deaths via piranha, chimney, cats, sharks and hotdogs). The result, says Burton, is a movie very much in the spirit of the original and ‘a very simple emotional movie’ – one that gained a standing ovation post-premiere. ‘The Juice’ is very much loose.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas now
Read our review of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice here

Dispatches

KEVIN COSTNER

September 10, 2024

hollywood authentic, venice dispatch, venice film festival, greg williams

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, Kevin Costner, Sam Worthington, Sienna Miller

DISPATCH: KEVIN COSTNER HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 2
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

Kevin Costner wasn’t meant to be in Venice. The original release plan for Chapter 2 of his sweeping Western series, Horizon: An American Saga meant that the actor/director would not have been able to attend the film festival in the floating city. But like all things Costner seems able to manifest, the release date changed and festival director Alberto Barbera asked the Californian to bring his epic oater to Venice where Costner was mobbed by fans during a standing ovation at the premiere.

‘It’s been a perfect experience, really,’ Costner tells Hollywood Authentic of the way things turned out, not least because he brought his 17 year-old son, Cayden, along for the ride. The four days the duo spent at the festival turned out to be a teaching moment about the nature of resilience and the ability to get things done despite roadblocks. ‘He’s seen me labour over the course of this movie. For his entire life he’s known that I’ve talked about this thing,’ Costner says of his son. ‘And then to see me not let go of the opportunity, and the hope of it, and to actually go out and make two of them – he was able to see the culmination of that. It’s a weird thing when you look at your dad, I think, and see suddenly this movie playing, and the people standing and clapping for it. I think, maybe, he saw something in not letting go of a dream, and that you keep pushing.’

It’s a drive and self belief that makes him something of a pioneer in the wild west that is the Hollywood studio system… ‘I don’t see that correlation because there’s people that hide behind corporation momentum, and look at numbers,’ he says. ‘They wouldn’t survive out in the West. That’s a whole other corporate mentality that allows you to be cutthroat.’ Costner, who plays lone gunslinger and cowboy Hayes Ellison in the films seems cut from the same cloth as his character; a resourceful man who has a definite destination in mind. ‘Maybe my individualism is what you’re looking at,’ Costner acquiesces, ‘and then I’m kind of a unicorn in my own business, by using my money. I don’t like doing that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t even know why I do that. But when I do, I do a lot of sharing of work that could be revisited and revisited. And I certainly think Horizon qualifies as that because I promise you: if you watch it a second and a third and a fourth time, you will see something new.’

Hollywood, and Costner’s fans, await to see if the unicorn manifests chapters three and four of his saga. Our bet is that he will…

Costner certainly has form in not letting go of dreams – his 1990 revisionist western Dances With Wolves was considered a folly by critics yet the actor pressed on and saw the film a crowning success which went on to win seven Oscars. The same is true of Horizon – a saga Costner has long imagined as an epic four-parter and put his own cash into when studios didn’t share his vision. He’s made two chapters of the tale with plans to continue filming three and four later this year. ‘I don’t fall out of love that easily,’ Costner laughs of his decades-long drive to make the movie he dreamt of. ‘I don’t pretend to be the last say on this subject. I don’t try to be a person who’s trying to reinvent the western. I just simply want to go at it historically, and apply human behaviour to the themes that I think tell the story.’

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 will be released later this year
Read our review here

Dispatches

KODI SMIT-MCPHEE

September 8, 2024

alfonso cuarón, kodi smit-mcphee, disclaimer

DISPATCH: KODI SMIT-MCPHEE DISCLAIMER
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

‘I should have stayed in my seat,’ Kodi Smit-Mcphee smiles when he recalls premiering Alfonso Cuarón’s new Apple+ limited series Disclaimer on the Venice Film Festival red carpet directly before the premiere of Maria, in which he also stars. In Disclaimer, based on Renee Knight‘s 2015 bestseller, Cate Blanchett plays an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Catherine Ravenscroft, who’s past comes back to haunt her when she receives a novel in the post. Told via three different perspectives and two different time periods, Smit-Mcphee plays the directionless son she shares with Sasha Baron Cohen. In Pablo Larrain’s biopic of Maria Callas starring Angelina Jolie, he appears as the personification of her sedative medication who manifests as a TV reporter questioning her in the week of her life. ‘’I’m literally named Mandrax, which is this suppressant kind of medication that she takes. It’s these therapeutic conversations that she’s ultimately having with her subconscious – but with me,’ he tells Hollywood Authentic when we sit down overlooking the Grand Canal in the St Regis Hotel. Both projects gave him the opportunity to work closely with powerhouse actors in Blanchett and Jolie. ‘It was great in the sense of just how generous and giving and safe and comforting these women are. I really feel like both took me under their wing, and made me feel welcomed and good. And a couple of Angelina’s sons were also on set. So I hung out with them quite a bit. They were really beautiful as well.’

Venice hosted two red carpets for the premiere of the seven-part Disclaimer – the cast photographed on both occasions by Greg Williams – and for Smit-Mcphee coming to Venice gave the actor the chance to spend time with co-stars he didn’t meet during filming as their characters’ timelines didn’t cross on-screen. He and Leila Geroge, who plays the younger Catherine, and Louis Partridge – who essays a young man who has a life-changing impact on her – compared notes on filming as Smit-Mcphee spent six months filming on sets in London (and adopting an English accent) while George and Partridge filmed for seven weeks in Italy.

For George the role required the actor to play two very different versions of the character as well as perform key explicit scenes with Partridge. The part required her to go to some dark place. ‘I use music quite a lot for when I have to shift into another place emotionally. Different playlists for different things, and that just immediately triggers something for me,’ she says. And the intimate scenes were an additional challenge. ‘It’s really important, of course, to have an intimacy coordinator so that everyone feels that there’s someone that they can go to, and feel safe. So there’s that side of it – the technical side of it. The other side of it is just getting to know [Partridge], and feeling safe with the person as a friend. We had so much time in Italy before we did those scenes. We’d go to each other’s trailers before we’d do something like that, and be like, ‘How are you feeling about the day?’ Communication and check-ins. And then just being able to let it go. Just leave it behind.’

‘It was kind of like a dance. It was all rehearsed,’ Partridge agrees. ‘And so, in some ways, it was more helpful to be in your own space, and occasionally checking in. Because we knew what we were about to do. And then, at the end of the day, we’d have a little dance, and shake it all off.’

Smit-Phee laughs that he enjoyed digging into playing a ‘grubby, homebody kind of teen’ as Blanchett and Baron Cohen’s son. As for working with Blanchett as his mum, he says: ‘Cate makes you question your abilities in the best way because she can go from this beautiful, light-hearted, joking fun in between takes. But then when she needs to go into something dark and heavier, it’s almost as if there’s a switch. But of course, there’s not a switch. It’s a great deal of work she does to develop these characters and get into these moments. But, my God, it looks like magic.’

The resulting work in Disclaimer is ‘so powerful’ and will prompt important conversation, says Partridge. He’s just completed work on Noah Baumbach’s new film and is currently filming Guinness, the story of the stout dynasty, playing Edward Guinness. ‘It’s brilliant, I’m loving it,’ he enthuses. ‘Do I get a lifetime’s supply of Guinness now? It wasn’t in my contract. That was a mistake, perhaps…’

alfonso cuarón, louis partridge, disclaimer

Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October
Read our review of Disclaimer here

Dispatches

SOPHIE WILDE & HARRIS DICKINSON

September 5, 2024

DISPATCH: SOPHIE WILDE & HARRIS DICKINSON BABYGIRL
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

As she looks out of Venice’s Grand Canal wearing a 16Arlington dress teamed with Church brogues, actor Sophie Wilde contemplates her ‘surreal’ 13 months which started with the release of Australian horror hit Talk To Me in July 2023 and culminated with her attending the premiere of one of the buzziest movies at the city’s film festival this year, Babygirl. Wilde attended the red carpet in a Loewe custom look with archive Cartier jewellery from the year she was born. A special moment for the Sydney-bred actor who has been pinching herself since the rave reviews for Talk To Me. ‘We all knew we’d made something special, and that it was something that we were all super-proud of. But for it to have this international response was totally beyond our comprehension. It’s interesting that one project can really shift so many things in such a dramatic way. I’ve signed with US agents and interesting roles are coming my way. So it’s definitely been a shift.’

harris dickinson, sophie wilde, babygirl

One of those roles is Babygirl. Telling the story of a CEO (Nicole Kidman) who embarks on an affair with her younger intern (Harris Dickinson) and explores the spectrum of female desire, the erotic drama sees Wilde play an executive assistant to Kidman. She is a key player in a chess game of power moves. ‘It’s definitely a very interesting conversation that Halina is playing with,’ Wilde says, ‘in the sense of women of different generations, and how they approach their womanhood. And their relationship to power and progression.’

Wilde was sent the script after impressing Reijn with her work in Talk To Me and was immediately hooked on the project after a meeting with the writer-director. ‘I think Halina’s a literal genius. She’s amazing,’ she ethuses. ‘She’s curated such an incredible film. I think what was interesting to me was the characters. They all felt incredibly infallible. There was a sense of moral ambiguity around everyone which I really liked. It was like, no one was right or wrong. It was just complex, like human beings are, and how relationships are.’

The gig also offered the opportunity to work with Kidman, who Wilde describes as ‘very much an Australian icon’ and a trailblazer for Antipodean talent breaking into Hollywood. ‘Watching someone like Nicole work is such a privilege. She’s honestly such a master of her craft, and such a powerhouse. I feel like I’ve very much grown up watching her films – Moulin Rouge is literally one of my favourite films. So it’s amazing to be able to work with someone who’s been such an inspiration. And to have someone of her calibre just there, supporting you, and backing you, and championing you – it’s really special.’
Babygirl is very much the kind of work Wilde wants to do going forward, she says. ‘There’s something so interesting about doing smaller, auteur-driven work that is very character-driven.’ Before she arrived in Venice Wilde finished shooting Watch Dogs, an adaptation of the video game which she describes as unlike anything she’s done before. And then there’s the possibility of her returning to Talk To Me 2. ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ she teases. ‘All I know is that I find it exciting, that range of creative spaces you can enter.’

Babygirl is released in cinemas later this year
Read our review of Babygirl here

Dispatches

DANIEL CRAIG

September 4, 2024

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

DISPATCH: DANIEL CRAIG QUEER
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS

Well before Bond, Daniel Craig impressed with his range and bold choices (which he then brought to the iconic franchise), but his raw, funny, vulnerable and ultimately transformative performance in Luca Guadagnino’s fever-dream adaptation of William S Burroughs’ autobiographical Beat generation novel is masterful and deserving of awards nominations.

Paying a boozy heroin addict in desperate love with a young man (Drew Starkey) in fifties South America – Queer impressed and shocked in equal measure when it premiered at Venice Film Festival in the main competition. Burroughs’ explicit book translates into a trippy, romantic voyage with erotic sex scenes in the hands of Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes and Guadagnino, showcasing Craig at the height of his powers as he cruises the streets of Mexico City and struggles with all of his character Lee’s addictions: love, lust, drugs, the search for a higher plane… With costumes by Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson, an anachronistically cool soundtrack (Prince, Nirvana, New Order) and gorgeous sets built in Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios, Queer is a sensory delight that asks questions about love, life, death and everything in between. Little wonder it was snapped up for distribution by A24. ‘If I wasn’t in this movie and I saw this movie, I’d want to be in it,’ Craig says of the project. ‘It’s the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there.’

Though he’s known Guadagnino for years and wanted to work with him ‘for a long time’, Queer finally offered the opportunity for collaboration. Craig and Guadagnino worked together in the key casting of Starkey as former US-serviceman Allerton, the locus for Lee’s attention. They saw the Outer Banks actor early in the process and returned to him despite seeing hundreds of other potentials. Required to dance with each other throughout the film – physically during a trippy sequence in the Amazon, as well as emotionally and sexually – Starkey and Craig worked together for months before production on choreography and movement to nail the connection between the two men.

‘There’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set,’ Craig told journalists when he arrived on the Lido. ‘You’re in a room full of people watching you. We just wanted to make it as touching and as real, as natural, as we possibly could. Drew was a wonderful, beautiful, fantastic actor to work with, and we had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.’

The resulting scenes are striking as much for their eroticism as they are for their tenderness, with Craig bringing a moving sensitivity and humour to his portrayal of a man who is light years away from the assured swagger of James Bond – even if Guadagnino does have him sip a cheeky vodka martini (or two) during one drunken scene in a hat tip to his most recent role. ‘One of the characteristics of the great actors that you love and see onscreen and are affected by, I would say is the generosity of approach, the capacity of being very mortal onscreen,’ Guadagnino said at the Venice press conference. ‘Very few are, and very few iconic legendary actors allow that fragility to be seen, and one of them is Daniel.’

Queer is released in cinemas later this year
Read our review here

Days of Thunder

NICHOLAS HOULT

August 28, 2024

Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

I’ve arrived in Watkins Glen in upstate New York at dawn on a July weekend. It may look like a sleepy rural town but the main drag used to echo with the revs of car engines from 1948 to 1952, as sports cars raced through the streets on a 6.6 mile course. The danger of the sport and the risk to onlookers forced the building of a proper track, the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Course, which is where I’m heading today with Nicholas Hoult as he runs laps in a Ferrari 296 Challenge car as part of his training to ultimately parlay a passion to actually race. Though he’s busy with on-screen work – his latest, The Order, is out in cinemas in December – Nick is feeling the need for speed.

Actors have been drawn to racing for decades; from James Dean, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen to James Garner, Patrick Dempsey and Michael Fassbender. Nick recalls listening to Clint Eastwood talk about Newman as a racer. ‘He told me that he went to the track with Paul Newman one time, because he lived up in Northern California – he said that was fun, having a few beers with him.’ However, it wasn’t Eastwood who inspired Nick to turn a childhood fascination into a serious vocation, nor his About a Boy producer, Eric Fellner, who gave the 12-year-old child actor his first ride in a 550 Maranello. This was also the film where we first met. ‘I’ve always been excited by racing – I grew up watching F1 with my dad,’ Nick recalls as we head to the track. ‘That was our tradition on a Sunday. You’d make your cheese and pickle sandwich, and then sit down and watch the F1. Then I got a couple of little chances to get on a track and try things out. I was working with Michael Fassbender on the X-Men movies, and he started to do the Ferrari challenge. I was excited to learn about it because whenever you think about racing, Ferrari is the brand that’s synonymous with it, in every form of racing. And the cars are just magic. So to get a chance to get out on a track in one of their race cars, and to then learn how to do it properly – I’m someone who likes to try new things, and challenge myself.’

As a performer who’s moved from child actor to leading man, he’s used to bending to the needs of a director, challenging himself to portray different characters in varied genres. But racing is something that can’t be approximated. ‘For an actor, you can kind of fake it until you make it in lots of things,’ he explains. ‘And then people will make you look good in the film, whether it’s holding a sword or whatever it is. You do it to the best of your ability, and then practice, and practice, and hopefully it works on film. In racing, there’s the engineers and your coaches and everyone who’s there to teach you. But then ultimately you have to do what’s required. There’s no hiding behind “Oh, the dialogue wasn’t good” or “the scene doesn’t work”. There’s clear statistics of: you’re on the brake too early; you didn’t release it early enough; you didn’t get on the power, and you lost half a second through the corner, and now you’re slow. It’s fun to do something where the metrics are so precise and clear – but also an adrenaline rush.’

Nick began working with Ferrari – starting out training with the Corso Pilota programme, then moving on to driving a F8, a range of road cars, the 812 and the 488. ‘You go through that programme with lots of other people who are enthusiastic about racing, and then you see their racing journeys continue, and you see them at the track. It becomes a nice little travelling circus and a community,’ he says as we pull up and check out his car waiting under an easy-up beside the track – gleaming red in the early sunlight, his name decal-ed on the windscreen.

It’s fun and it’s exciting. But it’s also something I take seriously. I want to be good at it, and not embarrass myself. And to also drive within my capabilities. To be pushing it so that I can improve, but also not taking silly risks or making mistakes that could hurt anyone or myself

As he admires the car, it’s clear how seriously he takes this, the ambition to race competitively. ‘That would be the plan,’ he nods. ‘Once you finish the Corso Pilota programme, Club Challenge is a way to get on track, and get used to the environment of that. Technically, today, we’re not racing. We’re just lapping. We’re getting time in the car. Tomorrow morning, we’ll have a time attack. That’s when anyone who’s in the Club Challenge will go out and try to set their fastest lap time. So there’s a competition there. But this is more to get time on the different tracks that are a part of the challenge circuit… Suddenly you’ve got the radio in your ears, and the team are talking to you, and there are the pits, and you’ve got to manage the monitors – there’s just a lot of extra stuff alongside the actual racing. You have to be so focused, and try to stay calm, otherwise everything goes so quickly.’

We head to the trailer for Nick to get suited up and briefed on the track by his team, headed up by Stefan Wilson. His new race suit is based on one of Mario Andretti’s suits from 1971 (Andretti won races in Formula One, IndyCar, the World Sportscar Championship, and NASCAR). His helmet, or lid as he calls it, is designed by Mike Savage with a HANS device [head and neck restraint system]. His team talk him through the bends he’ll need to navigate, the braking distances, the points at which he’ll need to push the car through the turn.

‘I’m excited now. Yesterday, we went out for a couple of sessions, and yesterday I was scared. The speed and everything, particularly when it’s a new track I’ve never been on before. And it’s a fast track. There are a few moments where you have to really commit and trust that you’re going to make it through the turns. It’s a funny thing because the car is always more capable than me. So it’s trusting that it can do it and that you’ll make it.’

Watkins Glen hosts Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and I Love New York 355 at The Glen, and was a Formula One course from 1961 to 1980. As Nick walks out to the car, he remembers his first of these Challenge weekends. ‘The first time I was at Sonoma Raceway in California, and my name went up on the big Jumbotron… It’s weird, because I don’t particularly get excited about seeing my name on movie billboards. But it’s a different level of excitement for me, seeing that.’

As we watch other racers, we hear that one participant has crashed during lap practice. The front of the car can be seen obliterated in close-up on the big screen. It’s sobering. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I am doing this when I’m going around the track, and it gets a bit scary,’ Nick laughs. ‘I think: why? And should I be doing this?’’ I ask what his missus thinks of him racing. ‘She’s a little nervous about it. She tells me to be safe.’ His young son is getting the driving bug with him though. ‘I’ve got a little racing sim setup at home to practise. My little boy was like, “Dad, when you go out, let me know. I’m going to jump in the sim.” He stuffs the back of the seat with a beanbag. He pulls the pedals right up, he’s got a plastic astronaut dress-up helmet. He puts that on. He knows how to do the gears and the pedals. He’ll do it seriously for a little while, and then he’s like, “Right, I’m going to see how hard I can send this car into a wall.”

Thankfully the driver in the crash is unhurt and Nick gets ready to go for a circuit. He reflects again on the different disciplines of acting and racing. ‘There is a point when you zone in. On set, obviously you can prep and learn about the character, and do all the research and learn your lines. And then when you’re on set, before they’re rolling, that’s when you can start to get yourself into the headspace. Today it’s interesting because we’ve been talking about how because my track time is limited, I have to really make the most of it, particularly if I want to try to set lap times that put me into a good stead to get into the races and be competitive.’

‘It’s fun and it’s exciting. But it’s also something I take seriously. I want to be good at it, and not embarrass myself. And to also drive within my capabilities. To be pushing it so that I can improve, but also not taking silly risks or making mistakes that could hurt anyone or myself.’ He consults his notes – numbers and scrawls written next to each corner – before he gets behind the wheel. ‘These are notes from two of the sessions that we did yesterday. So it’s almost like having a script, in some ways, and learning lines because, in theory, you know what you’re trying to do on a track.’ He points to the notebook. ‘I’ve got a curved nibble – turns one and eight. That’s just getting a little bit more on the inside curve as I’m turning, which opens up the angle of the corner so that you can go a bit quicker. Brake for 300 going into that corner. Coming here, there’s a group of corners called the “S”s, where you’re pretty much flat out. You’re probably going at 120mph… Each time you go out you’re trying to figure out how far you can push it. And also just the confidence of keeping your foot pinned to the floor, because everything in the human preservation part of your brain is saying, “You shouldn’t do this.”

Before he heads out, the Ferrari team arrives with a rare 1971 512M that competed at endurance races around the world; Sebring, Daytona, Le Mans, then Bonneville in 1974. Paul Newman himself raced it in salt-flat tests. ‘It’s beautiful,’ Nick nods, checking out the then-regulation spare tyre in the trunk. He sinks into the seat and admires the sightlines of the curved windscreen, relishing the Paul Newman of it all. ‘What are the main things you want me to work on in the first session?’ he asks his coach, Stefan. They huddle together to discuss the lift and braking of turn two before Nick straps in and revs the engine. And he’s off…

Later, after he’s passed in a blur several times, he returns from those ‘S’s and the treacherous ‘bus stop’ corners. He’s downbeat about his lap timing – 1.52.5. ‘I’m a bit hard on myself,’ he admits. ‘There were lots of positives to take from it, and then it was just about cleaning up other stuff, and stringing everything together in one lap. But it’s also being in the moment where my brain… It’s doing a backflip, I guess. You have to overcome it a few times to do it. So once I do it, and I feel it, and my eyes are in the right place, then I’ll go, “Oh, that’s it”. And I’ll be able to replicate that over and over again. But at the moment I haven’t done that.’

Despite Stefan’s assurances, Nick is gutted – the sign of a serious competitor. ‘If you’re doing something, then you care about it. If you’re making a film, you care about it. You want it to be the best. If you’re doing this, you care about it. I’m not here to mess around and have fun and waste people’s time. Last night, when we finished, and I got out, the team were so excited that I’d done some fast laps and made big gains. Again, I keep going back to that “being on set” thing, but if you do a good take, and people are excited, and the scene is good, and everyone can feel that momentum of “we’re making something special” – that’s what you want to do here.’

The ultimate ambition is to compete in Le Mans; ‘I’d love to’. Nick says ‘It’s a long way away but, keep chipping away. Obviously, growing up as a kid, watching it with my dad, I was attracted to the glamour of the world, and the glitz. And then it’s the smell, the sounds. And then it becomes about the deeper kind of progression of the detail, and also the mindset, and the skill, and everything else that comes together.’ As he sits on a guard rail, he looks over his shoulder at the track behind him. ‘There are so many things coming together, because it’s these outside elements that are beautiful and glorious and just overwhelming.’

The next day, I see he’s posted a shot to his Instagram of him spraying a bottle of champagne on the first place podium. He texts me while I’m looking at it; he’s lapped the track in 1:49.2 and won the ‘track attack’. He’s delighted – and he’s still got Sonoma, Indianapolis and the Finali Mondiali ahead of him in the season…

Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Nicholas Hoult was driving in the Ferrari Challenge, North America.
The Order is out in cinemas 6 December

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Days of Thunder

NICHOLAS HOULT

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