NAOMI ACKIE

November 15, 2024

Blink Twice, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Mickey 17, Naomi Ackie

Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

In her downtime between Blink Twice and Mickey 17, the British actor paints with Greg Williams in London as she contemplates her artistic journey and the beauty of an imperfect canvas.

Naomi Ackie admits she’s a ‘big old perfectionist’ in her work, but when it comes to painting – the messier, the more ‘aimless’, the more imperfect, the better. ‘When you’re acting, there’s this feeling of having to be productive constantly,’ she explains as she sits on the floor of an artist studio off Brick Lane in London, getting her hands dirty with her oil paints. She has arrived in overalls, her hair tied back, ready to get stuck in. ‘Painting feels like a way for me to not be productive but feel creative, even when I’m not actually creating…’ She smears colour across her canvas and stops to admire the way two paints bleed together, discovering the work as she goes. It’s a relatively new hobby for her, born from Covid lockdown after she stole her boyfriend’s painting kit that she’d bought him at Christmas. ‘I don’t really take up a lot of hobbies because I think, ‘If I’m not the best at it, I don’t want to do it,’ she laughs. ‘So then I gave myself a mission, which was to do something that didn’t have to be beautiful. I didn’t have to be perfect. And thus started my ugly painting collection. It felt like therapy. I would have a glass of wine, listen to really good music. And I would just spend hours redoing, scraping… the texture of it makes me feel really good. I love the feeling it gives me.’

Blink Twice, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Mickey 17, Naomi Ackie

It’s possibly a hobby that’s always been waiting for her, given she studied fashion and textiles in college and had been obsessed with Jackson Pollock as a teen. ‘I grew up in Walthamstow [East London] and as a teenager, I would jump on a train and go to the Tate Modern. There was a Jackson Pollock painting called Summertime there. That was my favourite. And then obviously when the acting thing happened I decided that my focus was just going to be on that.’ 

Inspired by the Harry Potter films at the age of 11, Ackie took up drama out of school and progressed to being a student at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. After graduation, she appeared in Doctor Who and miniseries The Five before she made her name in Lady Macbeth alongside Florence Pugh and Cosmo Jarvis. ‘It has stood the test of time as our career starter,’ she says of the film. ‘We did not know it at the time. We were just bumming around in Newcastle for 20 days. I lived with Florence, Cosmo lived two minutes’ walk away in a different house. We’d just drink and chat every evening, and then go in and do some acting.’ That bumming around won numerous BIFAs, including Most Promising Newcomer for Ackie. But while she saw Pugh’s career detonate, her ascent was more of slow burn thanks to a lack of diverse roles. ‘There were no parts available for me to audition for. The path is a bit harder when you’re a person of colour. It’s getting better. But around that time, there was nothing really coming through.’

Things changed after she’d completed TV series The End of the F***ing World and landed a part in one of the biggest movie franchises possible, playing resistance rebel Jannah in Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. ‘It was a big deal,’ she says of the role as well as the importance of representation. ‘I remember going to the office, and J.J. [Abrams, director] was just like, “This is the first time we’re going to see someone, a Black girl… There’s going to be a lot of people looking up to that; a lot of kids looking up to that.” And it was like, “Whoa, that’s really cool.”’ 

The exposure led to roles in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, in Netflix series Master of None and being offered the opportunity to play an iconic real-life Black figure in Whitney Houston. The experience of making the biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody was a learning one for Ackie – emotionally and professionally. ‘With Whitney, there was a technical side that had to be practised over and over again, which is something I’m decent at – but I didn’t anticipate the emotional stuff that I would feel outside of the set.’ I ask what that feeling was. ‘Judgement, mate. Judgement that was sometimes imagined. I wasn’t on Instagram. I didn’t know what was being said, or what people’s expectations were. I purposefully took myself out of it, so I wouldn’t have to deal with that. But I imagined it. We’re in a time where everyone’s like, “You can dance like nobody’s watching” but that’s just not realistic! People are watching. I know they’re watching. Sometimes I feel a quite contrived feeling in this work and in my body – those two opposing forces of knowing people are watching you, but also trying to be yourself. My head goes into a spin.’

Blink Twice, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Mickey 17, Naomi Ackie

Playing Whitney also taught her negotiation skills. ‘I had to really advocate for myself on that job. It’s the first lead role I’d ever done, and I had to learn very quickly how to say no, and how to respectfully put my foot down. For so long, I was just so grateful to be here. But when it comes to the work and the opportunities I get, I’m not grateful to have a job, because I know I’m good. But if you’re performing at a high level, and you are suffering underneath that – that can cost you money and energy in the long run. After Whitney, I was spent. I couldn’t work for six months. I was on antidepressants. I’d never put my body through that before. And neither will I again, because it’s not necessary. There’s an immersive way that audiences view actors now, which I think is about partially not just about the story that they’re telling, but what they have to go through to get there. It adds to the mythology of that actor, right? Dedicated. It sends an interesting message that I know I received, and that’s why I went through what I went through on Whitney. I ain’t doing that again. I’ve got a whole life that I’m trying to live. I’m now protective of my time and my energy. I’m not a robot. I have a service. You’re paying me for that service. I want to do it to the best of my ability. So how do we figure out a way for you to get what you want, and for me to get what I want?’

As she admires the canvas, she considers that painting might have helped her through that difficult time. ‘This feels instinctive,’ she says of the piece as she leans in to create a swirl across the canvas. ‘A “who gives a shit” and “dance like nobody’s watching” kind of vibe. And it’s joyful. I think sometimes I’ve lost – and do lose – the joy in my job. It becomes really complicated and hurtful sometimes, and businesslike and hard. I guess I’m speaking about work so much because it takes up so much of my life and also my brain space. I’m trying to rebalance what I have given so much of my life’s energy towards. Also trying to take this job, the idea of what an artist is, and take it off the pedestal. I’m so aware that I’m in an extremely lucky position. But also, on a daily basis, when I wake up in the morning, I’m not like, “I made a film the other day.” You wake up, and your belly’s hurting because you ate too much bread the night before and you’re like, “I should get up and go to the gym, but I can’t be arsed.” And you go on bloody Instagram, and look at other people who are saying that they’re living their lives in a way that you deem is better than yours, or their waistline is slimmer, or their skin looks clearer… I feel guilt for feeling so normal in an industry that is so weird. I complain a lot!’

I ask what she complains about. ‘I complain because I’m a perfectionist. Because I fear that I will never be satisfied. Because sometimes I feel like I can see the cogs of the industry that I belong to turning, and I can see that something in it is broken. What are we saying to people? We’re setting impossible expectations when I know, inside of it, that I am not reaching any of those expectations. The guilt I have when I post on Instagram. The guilt I have when I borrow someone else’s clothes that aren’t mine but in the moment it makes it seem like it’s mine… Most days, I’m questioning what the fuck I’m doing, how I’m doing it, who’s judging me, how I’m judging myself, where I’m not meeting my expectations or someone else’s expectations or my age. When am I meant to have fucking kids? Fucking hell, I don’t own a house yet. I need to buy a house…’ She explodes into contagious laughter again and holds up her multi-coloured palms. ‘I just paint and breathe.’

Blink Twice, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Mickey 17, Naomi Ackie

I gave myself a mission, which was to do something that didn’t have to be beautiful. I didn’t have to be perfect. And thus started my ugly painting collection. It felt like therapy. I would have a glass of wine, listen to really good music. And I would just spend hours redoing, scraping… the texture of it makes me feel really good. I love the feeling it gives me

I tell her there’s a Leonard Cohen song with lyrics that seem to speak to all of our obsession with the pursuit of perfection. ‘Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. And that’s where the light gets in.’ She nods. ‘My mum always used to say, “You can lie to everyone else, but never lie to yourself.” And I took that to heart. No feelings are invalid. It’s what you do with them. Be honest with yourself. I feel like that’s actually kinder to yourself.’ Her mum’s advice is even more bittersweet now – she died of cancer 10 years ago and was a fierce champion of Ackie’s career, despite having no background in it. ‘They’re children of immigrants,’ she says of her parents with Grenada parentage, ‘where you get through, you work hard, you make sure that your kids can set themselves up in a really secure way. Coming from that to me saying, “I want to be an artist in this field we have no connection to!” I think it freaked my mum out. But she was such a good, strategic person. She was like, “If you want to get there in 10 years, you have to do this…” And especially as a working-class Black girl.’ A former seamstress who worked for the NHS, she and Ackie’s Transport for London-employee father moved the family to Walthamstow from Camden where the shy little girl grew to be  a ‘theatre kid’. ‘I hid behind being an actor, and the pursuit of being an actor,’ Ackie recalls of overcoming her shyness. ‘The acting part was like sheer freedom. It was the voice. It was the process. It was meaty. It’s tangible, and you could dig your hands into it. You make something. All of that is still really cool to me. It’s just got a little more complicated the more I’ve worked.’

Those complications include negotiating the public figure side of bigger, more high-profile jobs. ‘The acting part, I don’t have to think about. I’ve practised enough. I’ve studied enough. That arrives. The public figure shit? I’m like: huh? I thought I was just acting, and now it’s a whole, “What’s your brand? What’s your message? What’s your thing? What do you stand for? Who are your followers?” And then you start to feel a little bit like a product or like a billboard. And it pulls you further and further away from the thing that you did it for. Even artists have to eat. You have to make money. We live in a capitalist society so we have to explore our art in the parameters of those with money. And this is an industry that still exists within a system of Eurocentric beauty standards, of a very clear-cut way of what makes money and what has value, that lies outside of talent sometimes.’

Blink Twice, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Mickey 17, Naomi Ackie

Despite her recognition of a standard-ised ideal of beauty, Ackie admits to feeling intimidated by the template. ‘I go to any event and I’m around what is deemed the most beautiful of beautiful people everywhere. Most of them are lovely and I know they’re feeling exactly the same as me. And yet I go into those spaces, and I leave feeling like, “Oh, I’ve got some work to do. I’ve got to properly gym more. Maybe I should shrink my chin?”’ 

Her face filled the screen in recent feminist thriller Blink Twice, playing the rageful, vengeful lead in an abusive patriarchal scenario. Embraced by audiences and critics, it set Ackie up for her next water-cooler movie, Bong Joon-ho’s subversive sci-fi Mickey 17. ‘I never thought I would be in a Bong Joon-ho film! It’s a really fun, quite cheeky piece of work. And I don’t think it’s what people anticipate it to be. It’s a thing all on its own. It makes me really hope for cinema. We’re in a space where there’s money that needs to be recouped. There are shareholders now. There are owners of these platforms that are not about creating work. It’s about how many streaming people can we get? So this felt like a real breakout of that. And it’s where my heart is at.’

She recently filmed for three days on Asif Kapadia’s docu-drama 2073, exploring the end of the world as we know it thanks to geo-politics, financial inequality, AI and social media manipulation. ‘I’m always thinking that the world is going to end,’ Ackie admits of her attraction to the project. ‘I’m used to thinking about death. I had a little sister who died when I was two and Mum died. So endings are always present in my head.’ After that comes The Thursday Murder Club, an all-star ensemble based on Richard Osman’s bestseller, Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters and Justin Kurzel’s Morning. And Ackie is not only creating oil paintings for herself – she’s written a TV show and a film and aspires to direct. For now though, on the brick floor of the studio, she is focusing entirely on her canvas, in the moment. It’s imperfectly finished. She considers signing it but decides to be more hands-on, leave a mark more unique to her. ‘I’ll put a fingerprint on it…’ 

Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Naomi Ackie stars in Mickey 17, which releases in cinemas on 18 April
Hair by James Catalano, The Wall Group
Make up by Kenneth Soh, The Wall Group

hollywood authentic, greg williams, hollywood authentic magazine

THE DANISH GIRL

November 15, 2024

clara rugaard, verona’s romeo & juliet, desperate journey, hollywood authentic x npeal, cashmere

Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

Clara Rugaard tells Hollywood Authentic how she no longer wants to ‘fit in’ and about the music that has run through her career from her first role.

The corridors of Ealing Studios are echoing with the sound of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ being sung as actor Clara Rugaard recalls her first role as a kid in Copenhagen. She can still remember the tongue-twisting lyrics she belted out as a 10-year-old on the national theatre stage, a game changing moment when she realised what her true vocation was. ‘It was the first time that I’d been given a platform to do what I innately felt like I was good at,’ she laughs. ‘At the time, I was already singing loads, and wanted to be, you know, a pop star! My dad saw in the newspaper that they were looking for kids to come and audition for the lead children’s role in Mary Poppins at the New Theatre in Copenhagen. It was one of those things where I queued up with hundreds of children, and it was all very overwhelming, but really exciting. There was loads of waiting around that day. But the moment they invite you onto the stage, and you’re standing there, and you’re singing the song, and you’re playing with all these other kids in a safe space where it’s encouraged, was something I had never experienced. I remember having that sense of belonging and being like, “I need to be doing this. This is for me.” I didn’t really stop to breathe. I felt the need to do it all, and keep going. It felt so good.’

Rugaard has been chasing the feeling ever since, across theatre, TV and film – before moving with her Danish dad and Irish mum to London as a teen, when her father’s work required a relocation. In her native country she had voiced the lead character in Disney’s Moana in the Danish version of the blockbuster. ‘Your imagination and your creativity is so potent when you’re that age,’ she says of being a child actor. ‘We don’t run around with as many defence mechanisms as we do the more we grow up. When you’re a child, you just take it all in. You’re just feeling it all.’ Then, at the age of 16, she found herself in a new city and life, trying to fit in. ‘Because my mum is Irish, I was like, “It’ll be a piece of cake. I’ll just rock up, have a scone, and I’ll feel right at home,” she laughs as she remembers the move. ‘But you’re quite often reminded that you’re other, or that you’re different. I guess I used to see that as being a bad thing. When I first came to London, I remember I had a teacher at drama school who said that I needed to get rid of my accent, otherwise I’d never work. I then started to feel like I needed to change or fit in in order to be successful or have a career. Which is funny because the older I’m getting, the more aware I am of how brilliant it is, bringing something that’s unique and different and having a different perception of life.’ 

clara rugaard, verona’s romeo & juliet, desperate journey, hollywood authentic x npeal, cashmere

I remember having that sense of belonging and being like, ‘I need to be doing this. This is for me.’ I didn’t really stop to breathe. I felt the need to do it all, and keep going. It felt so good

Rugaard now celebrates her European background. ‘I want to lean into that, I’m super-proud of that now. I definitely feel Denmark is my home, and I do still spend quite a lot of time there. My brothers and grandmother are out there… loads of my family. My parents are in Belgium, but we all congregate and meet in Denmark. However, I’ve been in London for 10 years now, so this city obviously has a very special place in my heart as well. I’ve got my group of friends here and I’ve got a life here.’

The key to making the transition and feeling safe in a new country was surrounding herself with ‘good eggs’. ‘My parents really were my good eggs. They provided a really great safety blanket for me. Even though I was exposed to this big, scary world through my work, they protected me, and kept me grounded, and made sure I never got too excited about myself,’ she nods. She played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet TV reimagining Still Star-Crossed in 2017 and then starred in Max Minghella’s Teen Spirit as a singing teen the following year. Throughout, music was her constant companion – as she played an aspiring pop star on screen she was also composing her own songs. And it’s something she still does now with an EP out soon. ‘It’s all just an outlet for expression. But I have found a lot of comfort in being able to rely on writing and creating my own things from home. Sometimes, as an actor, you feel like you don’t really have the platform unless you’re on set, and you’ve booked a job. And, as we know, actors have quite a bit of downtime. Music is so tangible. It’s within my control, and it’s always there for the taking. So I really love having the musical side of it alongside acting.’

Since moving to the UK, Rugaard has worked in a wide range of genres and countries; playing opposite Hilary Swank in sci-fi I Am Mother in 2019 (‘I can’t really believe that I was in a bunker for that many months with Hilary Swank. She’s incredibly empowering to be around, and to watch, and to learn from’) starring in the Mazey Day episode of Black Mirror, and associate producing as well as acting in period drama Love Gets a Room. That experience has given her a taste for more producing roles: ‘It’s another channel to create – finding things, and then making them, and putting them together. I’d definitely love to explore that more.’

clara rugaard, verona’s romeo & juliet, desperate journey, hollywood authentic x npeal, cashmere
clara rugaard, verona’s romeo & juliet, desperate journey, hollywood authentic x npeal, cashmere

Her upcoming slate is varied; Desperate Journey – a WW2 thriller based on the true story of Freddie Knoller who fled Vienna under Nazi occupation via the world of Parisian burlesque clubs. Rugaard plays a cabaret performer he meets along the way. ‘She’s an empowered woman, very confident. I haven’t played anything like that before. For that reason, it was brilliant and super challenging.’ Then she’ll be essaying Juliet Capulet again and using her pipes in Verona’s Romeo & Juliet, a pop musical with songs by Grammy winner Evan Bogart retelling Shakespeare’s tale. Rupert Everett and Rebel Wilson play her Capulet parents with Jamie Ward as Romeo. ‘She’s more of a modern Juliet, she’s got quite a lot of moxie. I’m very honoured to take on a role like that, and to play something as iconic as Juliet again. We filmed in Verona, Palma and this tiny, little Italian village called Salsomaggiore, where we all lived in a hotel, pretty much the entire crew, in the middle of nowhere. We got some good bonding time in there, that’s for sure!’ She’s also filming murder mystery The Crow Girl for Paramount+ alongside Dougray Scott – and is attached to play Mary Shelley in period drama Mary’s Monster, which looks at the inspiration for and creation of Frankenstein. ‘I’ve been quite lucky to have dipped into different genres and different characters. It feels very explorative for me. I love diving into very different characters’ shoes, and learn from their experience.’

The projects she’s now looking for are those that leave an indelible emotional mark, like the films that moved her as a child. ‘The movies I’ve always loved are the ones that leave you gut-punched. That’s ultimately what I look for when I go and watch a film. I want to be punched in the stomach, and feel something so deeply. I remember watching West Side Story when I was about 10 and it completely shattered me. I think it was the first time that I started to understand this grand concept and idea of love and devastating heartbreak. I couldn’t believe how sad it was. I still talk about it now because I remember that moment so well.’ She smiles as she considers the kid who loved Maria and Tony, who grew to a young actor playing Shakespeare’s doomed lover in Still Star-Crossed and is now headlining that classic role in Verona’s Romeo & Juliet. That 10-year-old standing on the national theatre stage would no doubt approve. ‘It does feel like a full-circle moment to be playing Juliet again, and also with music once again.’ 

Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Clara Rugaard stars in Verona’s Romeo & Juliet and Desperate Journey, both set for release in 2025
Clara wears the Hollywood Authentic × N.Peal cashmere collection

hollywood authentic, greg williams, hollywood authentic magazine

CAPED CRUSADER

November 15, 2024

Christopher Reeve, Hollywood Authentic, Reel Life, Super/Man – The Christopher Reeve Story

Photographs by MARY ELLEN MARK/REBECCA DICKSON/HERB RITTS
Words by MATTHEW REEVE, ALEXANDRA REEVE & WILL REEVE

The children of Superman star Christopher Reeve celebrate his life as a father, actor, director and disability advocate in the wake of his life-changing accident in a new documentary filled with unseen archive footage and recordings. They tell Hollywood Authentic what ‘Dad’ meant to them on and off screen.

Matthew Reeve: We were approached by an archive producer to tell this story, asking if we had home movies, and would we be interested in this type of project – and we had also, coincidentally, had just boxed up our family home. So we knew what we had. We knew where it was. It was consolidated and accessible. We discussed it and we thought it would be a great project to embark on. The timing was kind of right – enough time had passed where [Christopher Reeve’s] story was still relevant. So it’s been really a case of the stars aligning in this lovely way.

Christopher Reeve, Hollywood Authentic, Reel Life, Super/Man – The Christopher Reeve Story
Credit: Mary Ellen Mark

Alexandra Reeve: We’ve been approached in the past, often by people wanting to do a narrative feature, and we had worried that that would be just too much through rose-coloured glasses, and would only tell one very specific angle on his and [his wife and Will’s mother] Dana’s life. It felt important that if we were going to tell the story, we were going to tell it authentically and truthfully; in a way that allows you to connect with the man, and understand that there were lows as well as highs, that actually the strength in his life is all the more impressive because of the things that he overcame. When [directors] Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui got attached, it felt like something we could get on board with and participate in fully. We could sit for interviews where we would speak about loss in our family in ways that we’d never spoken about before.

Will Reeve: We said ‘if we do this, we would give all of ourselves’. I think each of us prepared for that moment individually. The night before I knew I was sitting for my interview, I went through a bunch of my mom’s journals. I have family photos all over my apartment anyway, so it wasn’t like I had to dig up too much. I went in prepared to fully and truthfully answer any question that came my way because I wanted it all on record – my experience and feelings. 

Matthew Reeve: Seeing Will and Alexandra’s interviews, and them sharing their thoughts and feelings and memories – they were really the hardest moments and also the most meaningful and rewarding. Certainly we all lived through [Reeve’s horse riding accident, adaptation to paraplegia and death] together but I think when you have someone else asking a question and you’re sharing a perspective with an outsider, you maybe say things you wouldn’t just say in a conversation between siblings.

Will Reeve: We don’t necessarily go back and deconstruct it amongst ourselves because we’re living our full lives. So then to see, all these years later, those experiences through Matthew and Alexandra’s eyes, and for them to see it through my eyes, and realise that we did have that shared experience, but also have different perspectives… We didn’t need this whole process and this project to bring us closer. But it certainly – for me, at least – gave it a more contextualised understanding of their experiences as they’ve related to my experiences. I don’t think in the weeks, months, or years after my mom passed away that I stopped to be like, ‘Hey, guys, just so you know, I wasn’t actually asleep, right?’ [when the news came of Dana Reeve’s passing 12-year-old Will pretended to be asleep] but that’s an example – of which there are many in this film – that the full and comprehensive reliving happens throughout. We go to places, and so does the film, that haven’t been explored before.

Christopher Reeve, Hollywood Authentic, Reel Life, Super/Man – The Christopher Reeve Story
Credit: Rebecca Dickson

Alexandra Reeve: It’s been amazing to see audience reactions [at film festivals] – just how much people are seeing themselves and their own story in this film. It dawned on us that our family circumstances were unique in many ways, but also that the themes in the film are so universal. So people are coming up, and talking about how they’ve navigated a loved one having a cancer, or being a caregiver, or dealing with loss, or thinking about how to stay a good friend after someone’s circumstances have changed. It’s this beautiful, humbling thing for people to see themselves in different moments, and connect to different pieces of this very human story. [Christopher Reeve] felt that too, very deeply – that for many people, he put a face on spinal cord injury and disability more broadly, because people felt they knew him so well from just that level of fame. And so if he could suddenly allow people to connect to his experience, and see beyond the wheelchair to see that he was still the same person – that really there are important, universal lessons to learn from that more generally.

Will Reeve: I know that it’s been a gift for me to see this film and use it personally as a way to make the image I have of my dad’s life and my mum’s life and our family’s story more vivid, and fill in some gaps, or further shade in some details that I either wasn’t yet alive for, or wasn’t aware of at the time. In psychology, it’s called a compositive memory, where you form an image in your mind that’s based off of photos and videos you’ve seen, and stories you’ve been told. Seeing those moments come back to life was a really touching and meaningful way to revisit the past. And then seeing everything that came before me – the Superman years, and even prior to that – to get to have a 360-degree view of his life in such a cinematic way has been one of the great blessings of this experience. And it was a disorientating experience at first to watch it, being like, ‘No, that’s me. This is about us’.

Matthew Reeve: There is no Christopher Reeve story without Dana Reeve, in the simplest form. It was not mandated by us in any way, but I think as the directors did their research, and we’d done our interviews, I think it became very clear to them just how important she was to us as a mother and stepmother, and how important she was to our father, and just what a remarkable, magical human being she was.

Alexandra Reeve: And to show our blended family, too [Matthew and Alexandra’s mother Gae Exton also appears in the film]. To be able to show that with the nuance, and the thoughtfulness to say, ‘You can have a relationship for 10 years. It can be the grounding moment for you, and then that can change. And then you can find your great love. And that those things can be in harmony together, and you can raise children stably throughout all that turmoil’. That side of a personal relationship doesn’t often get modelled on screen, and I’m really glad that they captured it as they did.

Christopher Reeve, Hollywood Authentic, Reel Life, Super/Man – The Christopher Reeve Story
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Will Reeve: I love that people get to see [my dad’s] silly, goofy, mischievous side. His public image, certainly as Superman, was literally the Man of Steel, and the dashing leading man with big muscles and the blue eyes. But he was human and grounded. He was a fun hang. His active dynamic lifestyle was of just always doing a million different activities, and always being on the go. I’m glad that people got to see his humanity throughout, which manifests itself a lot in his cheekiness.

Matthew Reeve: He was skilled in so many different things: flying aeroplanes, scuba diving, playing the piano, speaking fluent French, flying across the Atlantic solo twice, and gliding. He’d go up in open cockpit biplanes. I don’t think people really knew that.

Alexandra Reeve: For me, when I look back on my dad, the lessons I try to draw are that he was so determined and so self-disciplined in everything he did. And that’s a personality trait that was there way before the accident – it’s what allowed him to excel. And it was what got him through after the accident. Just the strength of character, and to keep persevering, but also to push himself to new challenges. He pushed himself to the limit every single day, no matter what the circumstances were – whether it was getting in shape for Superman, getting really good at skiing, or learning to ride a horse, or going out and directing a film after the accident. 

Will Reeve: The way that my parents remain present in my life now is through the values that they instilled in each of us. I get told pretty often how proud my parents would be of me, which is nice to hear. It’s not always true, by the way – I’m quite human! But they would be proud of my humanity as well. I know that if I live in accordance with the values and standards and expectations set by my parents in the short time we had together that everything in my life will align so that I am living in a way that honours them, and would certainly make them proud. And I don’t have to wonder what they would think or say or feel because I know, based on the time we had together, the proper path as defined by them.

Matthew Reeve: I think Dad would feel proud of this film because it’s a beautiful work of art. And it’s just him on the poster, and he’s had a whole movie made about him. The actor in him would love that!  

Christopher Reeve, Hollywood Authentic, Reel Life, Super/Man – The Christopher Reeve Story
Credit: Herb Ritts

Photographs by MARY ELLEN MARK, REBECCA DICKSON & HERB RITTS
Words by MATTHEW REEVE, ALEXANDRA REEVE & WILL REEVE
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Super/Man – The Christopher Reeve Story is out now in cinemas

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS

November 15, 2024

malcolm washington, john david washington, the piano lesson

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

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ARIANNE PHILLIPS

November 15, 2024

Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead, Joker: Folie à Deux

Words by JEREMY LANGMEAD

Hollywood Authentic’s correspondent, costumier Arianne Phillips, has the tables turned as she looks back at her own illustrious career crafting clothing for films including A Single Man, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Joker: Folie à Deux and the upcoming Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

Arianne Phillips is one of the most prolific, talented and versatile costume designers working in the industry today. She has won acclaim and award nominations for everything from giant commercial blockbusters to influential art-house movies, iconic music videos to Madonna’s concert tours, and worked with an enviable array of directors and actors. Arianne is also a favourite of the fashion world: her costume designs for Tom Ford’s A Single Man, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and Madonna’s W.E. have inspired designers and led to her working with Prada and designing menswear collections alongside Matthew Vaughn for the retailer Mr Porter. She’s also responsible for the costumes of two of the most anticipated films of the moment: Joker: Folie à Deux by Todd Phillips and A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s forthcoming Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. So, it seemed the right time to put Hollywood Authentic’s costume correspondent under the spotlight for a change.

JL: When we worked together on a 2019 documentary that Lenny Kravitz and I executive produced about you – Arianne Phillips: Dressing the Part – we described you as the misfit rebel who became a powerful creative force in both the movie and fashion industries. How did that misfit rebel successfully succeed in two notoriously competitive industries?

AP: Well, let’s see, how did it all begin? It’s not a linear journey. My mom had me when she was 20 and my dad was 24, and my sister and I, we just went on this fabulous adventure with them. In California we were exposed to a lot of art, music, writing and poetry, and I think that was what really stayed with me. I was in an atmosphere of creativity and experimentation. I enjoy taking the path unknown. Because I’ve just worked on the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, I keep referring to his songs, and the lyrics ‘The times they are a-changin’’ resonate with me. I’ve always just kept taking risks. 

JL: Did you study costume at college? 

AP: I wanted to go to college to learn art. And then I quickly got distracted and moved to New York. I was obsessed with British street culture and fashion, and the magazines. I got really great advice from a very respected fashion photographer, Arthur Elgort, who I had the pleasure to meet during those early days. He said, ‘You know, I can’t do much for you. I’m established. Come up with your own way, find like-minded people and collaborate with your friends.’ So I really dug into that, and I met so many wonderful people in New York, as you do as a young person, and I think that was the thing that really propelled me into this kind of multi-discipline career. Until then, if you loved fashion you were either a costume designer for a film, or a stylist for musicians, or you were a fashion editor. Those things did not cross over. But I think I was the new kid who never really wanted to belong to one group, never felt quite comfortable in any of those worlds full-time. And then the connecting thread for me, ultimately, was storytelling through costume, through clothing…creating characters. And I was lucky enough to get to do that, quite early on, with so many great artists – Lenny and Madonna and Courtney Love.

A Single Man, Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead
A Single Man, 2009. The Weinstein Company/Alamy

JL: So it was always creativity, new challenges and inspiring collaborators that drove you forward at this stage?

AP: Yes. The financial aspect of it never really factored in. I knew that if I went down the commercial route – which is easy; I watched a lot of colleagues end up doing commercials for TV and stuff – then I would get addicted to that comfortable lifestyle. I mean, it’s worked out fine for me, but I always chose a project that would be unique. In the last film I worked on, I had 40 people in my department. The new film I’m about to start work on will have just me and two other people, with a budget of only $30,000 for costumes for the whole movie. The average budget for costumes on a big movie is a million plus. And last year I did an off-Broadway play where it was just me and one other person. This approach is crucial to how I try to keep my own self relevant to myself; to keep me a little bit hungry, to keep it real.

JL: I was talking to the actor Dan Levy recently and he was describing how intimidating the first days on set shooting can be when you suddenly have to start working closely with huge teams of people you’ve perhaps never met before. How do you cope with that… especially as you have to have quite an intimate relationship with some of those characters very quickly because you’re dressing them?

AP: It is crazy, at least with actors, because we’re the only department that’s like, ‘Nice to meet you, can you take your clothes off please?’ It is very intimate. But it’s really about building trust, listening to the people you’re working with. It was so hard during Covid when we were masked. And what I ended up doing when filming Don’t Worry Darling was requesting Zoom calls with the actors first so I could get to know them, and read them. Then by the time they came in to the room and we were all masked you already had an understanding.

JL: Do you still get nervous?

AP: I still get butterflies. I can’t sleep the first night before shooting. The night before I was due to work with Madonna for the first time, I was a wreck. I didn’t sleep at all. But at the same time I still get so excited with what I get to do. And still recognise how lucky I am being out there working with such creative people; being in Paris with Madonna and going out to dinner with Jean Paul Gaultier, receiving three Oscar nominations. I mean, there’s just so many ‘pinch me’ moments. 

JL: Which was the first mainstream movie you got work on?

AP: My first big break was doing The Crow [Alex Proyas’ 1994 thriller] but I couldn’t embrace that as a success because it was a tragedy. It was Brandon Lee [who was accidentally killed on set] who had invited me to work on it. So the joy of it was completely demolished. Then I did a small film for HBO directed by Christopher Guest called Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and then I worked on Tank Girl. But I would say that The People vs. Larry Flynt was my first legitimate character-driven, non-genre film. I felt like I could earn my parents’ respect because I had seen Milos Forman films with them back in the day. So that was a seminal moment for me.

Kingsman: The Secret Service, Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead
Kingsman: The Secret Service, 2014. 20th Century Studios/Alamy

JL: When we first met you were working on the Kingsman movies with Matthew Vaughan and I remember coming on set and I was gobsmacked at the number of lead actors you had to work with, extras you had to dress, the multitude of different costume trucks on the lot. The logistics you had to manage were extraordinary.

AP: I dare say Matthew Vaughan is unique in terms of logistics. I mean, he has a nimble quality in the way that he directs. So he directs these large-budget films, but with the attitude and the nimbleness of an independent filmmaker. So nothing’s too challenging, nothing’s not doable. Both of those first two Kingsman movies were really, really logistically challenging, and they took a toll on all of us who were making the films, because the thing about Matthew, and I think the reason why he’s such a brilliant filmmaker, is he takes so many risks and he does kind of the unthinkable. 

JL: You not only had to create the costumes for the movie, but you also knew they were going to become the first of a legitimate menswear collection that would be sold in stores. And that Kingsman clothing brand still exists today. Is it easier creating costumes that will end up in a storage depot or ones that you know will live on in the real world? 

AP: I was really excited about that challenge. It’s quite sad at the end of a movie when you put the costumes away in a box. I don’t keep the costumes, the film studio does. You put them in a box, they go into storage and you usually never see them again. There are a number of film studios that once you wrap a film, they try to recoup money and so sell off costumes. And it’s so sad. There’s also the horrible situation, which has happened to many of my colleagues, and to me a couple of times, where the film studio’s marketing department makes a separate deal with some mass fast-fashion brand and creates a version of the costumes that has nothing to do with you. And it looks like crap. So I thought Kingsman was like a litmus test for me. I kind of felt, not that it was altruistic, but that if I can make this happen, it could be a little bit of a benchmark for my colleagues. 

JL: Are there no proper costume archives?

AP: Well, you know, in different ways. Madonna has a really impressive archive, and I’m sure people have seen the Céline Dion documentary in which she shows the camera crew around her archive. Madonna’s is even bigger. So you have artists who have personal archives. And then you have ones like those at the V&A or the Metropolitan Museum. They have fashion archives where they have certain film pieces that they feel are culturally relevant, but they’re not necessarily pure costume archives. You also have a lot of private collectors. And there’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. They’ve started a really beautiful costume archive. I actually have donated bits and bobs that I have been allowed to keep by producers on certain films. 

A Complete Unknown, Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead
A Complete Unknown, 2024. Searchlight Pictures/Alamy

JL: Well let’s jump to two new movies with extraordinary costumes but in very different ways. A Complete Unknown tells the story leading up to Bob Dylan’s first appearance with electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. It’s directed by James Mangold with whom you also worked on Walk the Line nearly 20 years ago. Is it easier or harder creating costumes for a real character who is known and instantly recognisable or a fictional one? 

AP: Well, being a massive Bob Dylan fan – he is part of the soundtrack of my childhood – I just felt what was needed in my bones. I started reading biographies about him and those who were in his circle, and I learned a lot. Our film is very specific; set over a period of four years at the beginning of the 1960s, it’s about the making of Bob Dylan, the poet, the icon, the rock star that we know today. It’s like his origin story. Personal research is more challenging. It’s like being a detective. The best thing for me as a designer is what I call the character arc. In this film it’s very succinct. The changes he went through from 1961 to ’63 to ’65, they’re very definitive. 

The hardest thing to get right for period films is denim because it changes so much and often doesn’t exist in that form anymore. Bob wore denim throughout his life and to this day. It was clear from early research he wore predominantly Levi’s. Luckily, I have worked with Levi’s previously and know the wonderful people that work there . That was the first call I made a couple years ago when I started researching for the film. I reached out to them asking if they could help me identify what Bob was wearing, denim-wise. So together with the help of the team in the archive and design dept. at Levi’s I was able to create Bob’s denim story. First you see him early on in “worker” style “carpenter” jeans like Woody Guthrie wore, and then in 1962/63 he starts wearing the more recognizable Levi’s. His girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo, who’s on the cover of the album The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan, make a denim insert for his jeans so that they would fit around his boots because he always wore boots. So, in 1963, Bob Dylan wore the first flares. And then he ended up wearing very skinny jeans in 1965, which Levi’s recreated for us. Bob’s denim jeans and boots visually inform and express his style evolution in ‘becoming’ the Bob Dylan we know today.

Walk the Line, Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead
Walk the Line, 2005. 20th Century Fox/Alamy

JL: When you’re in the process, do you know that you’ve truly caught the character in the hair, make-up, and costume? 

AP: Well, I can’t speak for Timmy [Chalamet, playing Dylan]. But I can say two moments when we first thought it was there. I did many fittings with Timmy – he has almost 70 changes in the film – but I would say the first day he brought a guitar to the fitting was really helpful to see how he would stand with the instrument. And when I put sunglasses on him in a fitting, that was very exciting. And then when we got closer to shooting and Jamie Leigh McIntosh, who’s the hair designer, was working on the wig – he wasn’t always wearing a wig; he also used his own hair – but that was a moment.

Timmy is remarkable. I mean he had to learn the lyrics for 40 or 50 songs for our film. So when he would come to the fittings he was very comfortable. You know, he would sing and play the guitar. And that really helped me a lot. And we played the music and we kind of went into this sacred space. Fittings are when the character comes alive.

JL: You created the costumes for Joker: Folie à Deux, which reunites you with Joaquin Phoenix who you worked with on Walk the Line. How do you bring alive such visually compelling characters as Joker and Harley Quinn?

AP: I was the new kid on the block with that movie. The first Todd Phillips’ Joker was designed by the brilliant Mark Bridges, a friend of mine. So I had the great good fortune to build on what he had created. On the first day when I was working with Joaquin he came in and said, ‘Well, I guess we only work on movies with music in them.’ It’s not a musical, but there are a lot of songs. Music is intrinsic to the way this story moves. It was lovely to be reunited with him in such a different role. I admire him so much and I love him as a person. Just being around Joaquin, it’s like you want some of that to rub off on you. He’s brilliant. He’s very generous and kind. He would hate that I’m saying this. He’s just very respectful, and he’s committed. 

JL: And, of course, you also worked with Lady Gaga. Is it easier or harder working with someone who has a strong sense of style, clothes and costume drama herself? 

AP: I have to say that working with Stefani – it’s hard for me to call her Lady Gaga because it sounds weird – will be one of my career highlights. She’s so generous, so committed, so willing… and so much fun. And she was a new kid on the block, too, for this movie and so we bonded over that. We did multiple fittings and the journey to finding her character in the costumes was just so rewarding. It helped that she is so used to developing characters on stage, that she’s so smart, and she has such a great level of references that we were able to riff on a higher level than with most people. She was 100 per cent committed. I mean, Lady Gaga was left at the door. This was all about Stefani, the actress. She was everything that I could hope for when I walk into a fitting room with an actor. She was willing to try, and open to, everything. And also had great ideas of her own.

JL: Your final question is a tough one. If you were stranded on a desert island with only one of the films you’ve worked on, which would it be?

AP: Wow. That’s impossible. It depends on what my mood is at the time. But W.E. [the 2011 film about Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor directed by Madonna, for which Arianne was nominated for an Academy Award]. I’m very proud of that movie. Working with Madonna as a director is my favourite way to work with her because she’s just such a great partner and just so engaging. Otherwise probably A Complete Unknown and A Single Man are the follow-ups – A Single Man is a beautiful, beautiful film that I think is also an important one. And also, I hope, a film I’ve yet to make.

W.E., Arianne Phillips, Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic, Jeremy Langmead
W.E., 2011. StudioCanal UK/Alamy

Words by JEREMY LANGMEAD
A Single Man / Once Upon A Time in…Hollywood / Joker: Folie à Deux / A Complete Unknown

COSTUME DRAMA

May 11, 2024

pulp fiction, jack rabbit slims, twist contest, john travolta, uma thurman, hollywood authentic

Words by ARIANNE PHILLIPS
As told to JEREMY LANGMEAD

When Pulp Fiction was released 30 years ago, it wasn’t long before the wardrobe worn by Uma Thurman’s gangster wife Mia Wallace influenced a generation of designers: 1995’s catwalks from Miu Miu to Alexander McQueen boasted a multitude of over-sized white shirts fit for a twist-dancing, milkshake-sipping bad girl. The movie even prompted sell-outs of Chanel’s iconic nail colour, Rouge Noir (Vamp in the US). Here, Arianne Phillips sits down with Betsy Heimann to explore the road to creating such an iconic moment on celluloid.

‘On the eve of Pulp Fiction’s 30th anniversary, I had the good fortune to discuss the film’s iconic and culture-shifting costume design with one of our most respected and revered costume designers, Betsy Heimann. Her stellar body of work underscores generational filmmaking at its finest, with her designs featured in Reservoir Dogs, Get Shorty, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, Lady in the Water, Green Book and many other memorable films. Betsy’s costume design for Pulp Fiction  remains as relevant today as when the film premiered in 1994.

pulp fiction, john travolta, samuel l jackson, hollywood authentic

Betsy is an artist; a truly remarkable and talented costume designer whose brilliant work with Quentin Tarantino significantly contributed to the enduring success of his first two films. It also benefitted me 26 years later when I was invited to design Quentin’s Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood. I was so excited to speak to Betsy about the early days with Quentin, their process creating the visual language that we have come to know unmistakably as a “Tarantino film”, and designing and imagining the world of Pulp Fiction.’

AP: Watching Pulp Fiction again this week I thought about you so much, and what we have in common. I worked with Quentin on his last film, Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood, and I really have to hand it to you that you really are a part of the visual language that Quentin is so known for – whether it’s the Hawaiian shirt on Tim Roth in Pulp Fiction (a look that re-surfaces on Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood) or Quentin’s love of a leather jacket and a T-shirt, or a black-and-white motif… this is the Tarantino language that you both created together. I’m curious to learn from you what your process was like with the young Quentin when you worked together on Reservoir Dogs. How did that happen?

BH: I met [producer] Lawrence Bender at a New Year’s Eve party and we just got chatting and he invited me to a screening of a small indie film that he had worked on, and then it evolved into him sending me scripts and asking what did I think it would cost to do the costumes for them. And I would help out with the budgets. And then, one day, he sent me this script for Reservoir Dogs. It was fascinating. I had a costume career before Reservoir Dogs – I worked my way up from seamstress – but I had never read anything like this. I said to myself, you know, they’re gonna get good actors for this because there are pages of dialogue. So when Lawrence called me up and asked, ‘So what do you think?’ I said, ‘Err, who’s doing the costumes for this movie?’ He said, ‘I don’t know yet.’ And I said, ‘I’ll do it. I wanna do it.’ He told me they didn’t have any money. And I told him I didn’t care. That’s how it happened. 

AP: And what was your impression of Quentin when you first met him?

BH: Oh, his enthusiasm was so contagious. And he was very organised. I remember being very impressed that he was so prepared. He was very grateful. And I just thought, I like this kid and I like being with him, and I love his enthusiasm. And then I went over to his apartment and we started watching movies together. Quentin was always visual. We’d go through the whole script visually. And our language was the language of film. I remember one conversation most vividly about Pulp Fiction. It was about Butch, about Bruce Willis’ costume. I said I think he should wear a leather jacket. He said, yes, I want a leather jacket like Nick Nolte’s in Who’ll Stop the Rain; so I sourced a similar old brown pigskin suede one, put it in the car, and Quentin and I drove out to Malibu where we had a meeting with Bruce. Demi [Moore] was there and Bruce brought all of these 1980s and 1990s leather jackets he liked – he must have had 10, but they were all oversized – and mine looked quite skimpy in comparison. But Quentin liked it, so Bruce tried it on. He put it on and said to me, ‘Well, are you gonna drag it behind a truck?’ And I said, ‘Oh, you mean age it? Yes, and with you in it.’

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AP: I love it. Another of the things that I was really noticing when rewatching it was the day players and all the ancillary characters are wonderful characters whether it’s Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Amanda Plummer, Eric Stoltz or Kathy Griffin. You did such a beautiful job of letting us know who these characters were in such a quick, short time period, the costumes really allowed us to just get there immediately. You infused so much storytelling into your costumes, it’s so impressive. 

BH: Well, thank you very much. Yes, it was a big cast. As with Reservoir Dogs. We had a very big warehouse that we prepped and shot in. When I would get the things together for the fitting, I would call Quentin and he’d come in and he’d peek his head in and he would say ‘great’. But we had discussed it all before. One of the things that he and I did is watch anime cartoons. And one of them was Speed Racer. And I remembered that when we were prepping Pulp Fiction. 

AP: And you put Eric Stoltz in that T-shirt, right? 

BH: Yes. I said to Quentin, I think Speed Racer is the way to go. For me, I always tell a story about the character to get inspiration. And he said that he had one in his closet and so he went and got the T-shirt. There was a lot of spontaneous back and forth.

wardrobe, pulp fiction, john travolta, eric stoltz, hollywood authentic
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AP: These graphic T-shirts are a part of Quentin’s language. In my experience with him, he had a lot of graphic T-shirt ideas for Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood. 

BH: He has the same respect for the graphic T-shirt that I do. It’s not just, let’s put this guy in a graphic T-shirt, it has to mean something. It’s the same on all the films I’ve worked on. On Jerry Maguire, for example, when he is writing his mission statement, I figured he went to Notre Dame College. And so I called the Student Union and asked where do you guys all hang out? And I found the Little Bar, and I got hold of a T-shirt from them, and that’s the one Maguire is wearing when he writes his mission statement – his college t-shirt, the one he wore when he was full of ideals and full of how he was going to change the world… So every T-shirt for me has meaning. 

AP: That’s so great because it gives us little Easter eggs of reality. For me, watching Pulp Fiction, and seeing the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs college T-shirt that Vincent [John Travolta] wears was, like, nobody knows about that T-shirt unless they’ve been there. But Quentin wanted to get across that Jimmy had some connection with Santa Cruz. And so you see how costume can give a character an instant backstory – it really adds another layer and a texture. It’s the same with other clues you used in Reservoir Dogs. Tell us how the black suits came about in that film?

BH: Well, for Reservoir Dogs, my budget was $10,000. So I said, ‘Guys, I can give you four suits with this budget for the film. And I need to keep one clean’. 

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AP: Four suits for all? 

BH: Right. But, you know, we were shooting multiple action scenes with them. So the fact of the matter is that only Harvey Keitel and, briefly, Quentin, wore actual suits. We couldn’t afford them. So I found this stash of 10 black Beatle jackets at American Rag – which is now very hip, but it was a thrift store at the time – and I thought these would work on the younger guys, like Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi. They were great jackets. And then I teamed them with Beatle boots and black jeans. And Quentin was, like, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘Trust me, nobody’s gonna know the difference. It’s gonna be fabulous’. 

AP: That was amazing foresight to know that it would work so well on screen and not show. 

BH: Well, that’s what we do. That’s what we know as costume designers. The other thing I will tell you is that not all of the jackets people were wearing were black. Some of them were navy, some of them were dark grey. I spent a little bit of time with our cinematographer, Andrzej Sekula, and I would say, ‘Okay, look at this grey suit jacket and look at this black suit jacket. How are you lighting this picture? Are they gonna photograph the same?’ And he would say, yes, and I would trust him. 

AP: I think that was ingenious. And it actually gave it a modernity that a regular suit might not have. And a black jean was probably great for all those action scenes because they could put pads under them and you wouldn’t see anything. And back to Pulp Fiction, and they’re also wearing black suits, what was your budget like then?

BH: $36,000. I remember sitting with Quentin at Barney’s Beanery, and I said to him, ‘I really think that Vincent and Jules are Reservoir Dogs.’ And he thought about it. He goes, ‘You know, I like that. I like that’. This time I could do actual suits because now these guys have a little more money. I could do a linen suit with Vincent so that he always looked kind of a mess; and with Jules [Samuel L Jackson] I wanted a very slim-fitting narrow lapel, which was not that popular back then. So I went downtown and I found this Perry Ellis suit that I could get at a discount. And the collars of the shirts were very important to me, too. With Reservoir Dogs, each one of those guys had a different shirt with a different collar and a different width of tie in proportion to the width of their chest. This is all very technical, but it gives them a difference. So in Pulp Fiction, I did that again. 

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AP: And so Jules had a very narrow collared shirt because he’s the preacher?

BH: Right. And then there’s a bit of a cowboy theme in Pulp Fiction, too. Amanda Plummer has the cowboy boot dialogue, and Jules calls Tim Roth ‘Ringo’ – Gregory Peck played Jimmy Ringo in The Gunfighter. They’re all gunfighters. And so for me there was this kind of a Western influence in the costume. And we all used to shop at King’s Western Wear in the Valley and that’s where I got the idea for the bolo tie. I thought, well, here’s Vincent thinking he’s cool. He’s got his bolo tie on. And Mia [Wallace, played by Uma Thurman] says to him, ‘How are you doing, cowboy?’ And he refers back to her as a cowgirl. So these are all messages to me. So I came up with that idea and Quentin liked it. 

AP: A lot of those choices influenced the way people dress then and now. Let’s talk a little bit about Mia. I really was taken by her proportions and how you used them. How did it come to be that her trousers were short, like pedal pushers?  The proportions of her outfit work so beautifully, especially in the twist-dancing scene… the way that you tailored that shirt, and it had the French cuff with the cufflink, and the black-and-white motif. I really love the beautiful symmetry of design in that scene. They’re dancing and they look like cake toppers. That scene is burned in our minds forever. It really kicked off a trend. 

BH: Well I thought that Mia was really a Reservoir Dog, but she couldn’t express that because she was married to the boss and she had to be chic and glamorous; the eye candy. But on her date with Vincent she wanted to show him that she was one of the guys. And so I said, I wanted her to wear the black and white. But Uma is very tall, and we didn’t have any money, and all the pants weren’t long enough for her, and so I said, ‘What the heck, let’s just cut ‘em off’. I called Chanel and I said the magic words, Uma Thurman – they are magic words, things fall from the heavens – and I told them I needed these gold ballet slippers I had seen in a magazine and they lent us them. And then the shirt had to give her some shape and I wanted it to be oversized because I wanted it to say ‘I’ve got money but I’m also one of you; I’m a bad girl’. And then we added the bandana underneath. So it was another cowboy reference. 

AP: And then Mia’s bob. It all works in tandem: the short pants and the oversized shirt, and then that black bob, it’s just so successful. 

BH: The bob is all Quentin. It’s based on the old film star Louise Brooks and that’s what he wanted. And so knowing that, you start with that, instead of hoping that it’ll work with what you’re doing, you start with that. That’s the reality. And the reality is the inspiration. 

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AP: Something else I love, which you do beautifully, is using a costume piece more than once to tell the story; when it starts on one character, then another character wears it. So, for example, we have Vincent wearing his black suit and that wonderful trench coat. And then we have Mia coming back from dinner with him and she has the trench coat on. That’s just beautiful. It says so much. It still looks so great today. 

BH: I love that you noticed the raincoat, because that was something I was really, really adamant about. And Quentin liked the idea. I knew that I wanted her dancing around in that big coat and then she could find the drugs in the pocket. I wanted to make it more of a natural thing and so I had to get that coat on him in order to later get it on her. And so I searched everywhere for one of those old gabardine raincoats from the 1950s and found it at Palace Costume.

AP: It worked so well. And I love the colour… it would be easy for it to be a black raincoat but then we would really not see the detail. Also when she puts it on, it’s clearly not her coat. And what’s amazing, again, is the way these characters dressed in Pulp Fiction still inspires the way people dress today. It’s the marriage of your trueness to the characters, but also the fact that you and Quentin really tapped into a fantasy of larger-than-life characters that a part of us would like to be. And elements of the way they looked are attainable: you both turned regular items into iconic ones by the way you used them on the characters.

BH: Yes, I suppose it is the connection that the public makes with the characters. There’s a poignancy to Mia Wallace. I mean, she has to wear the trench coat as she has to find the drugs in the pocket. So therefore she could just ruffle through his coat that’s left on the couch, or she can have it on and reach in the pocket. And these are motions and actions that the audience can relate to. 

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AP: That’s because these are the choices you made in respect to how you saw these characters. The reason for its influence on fashion is that this film is such a great reflection of what was happening in our culture, and it just resonated with people. These characters are unattainable, but people can create their own versions and make it accessible because the design is so uncluttered, it’s so specific. 

This film also is indelibly a part of ‘the film language’ with other costume designers and directors. I’m sure you’ve seen that your work is often referenced or recreated. In the 1990s I was doing a lot of music videos, and I know that this was cited as the pinnacle of cool for so many directors; we’ve seen iterations of it in music videos and fashion magazines. Just this last Halloween, I was in New York and I was invited to a party where everyone was supposed to come dressed as a character from Pulp Fiction. There were 500 people dressed as these characters you helped create…

BH: Who knew that 30 years later we would all still want to dress like the baddies in Pulp Fiction [laughs]. But I’m only as good as my director. I’m inspired by my director. I get all my ideas from the energy that’s coming out of my director. And Quentin was on fire. He was on fire with these two movies, and they were original, and they were different from anything I ever read.

Words by ARIANNE PHILLIPS
As told to JEREMY LANGMEAD
All images © 2000 Block 2 Pictures Inc. © 2019 Jet Tone Contents Inc.
Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction / Once Upon A Time in…Hollywood

SAG AWARDS 2024

February 26, 2024

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The cast of Succession

The 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards mark another step towards Oscars in awards season – and Hollywood Authentic was there on the dove grey carpet and inside the ballroom for all the drama… As the actors gathered at LA’s Shrine Auditorium on Saturday afternoon, the mood was more celebratory than usual given the tumultuous year the voting body, SAG-AFTRA, have had since the last awards ceremony. After months of crippling strikes, this event felt like a moment to not only congratulate specific talent in awards categories but the acting community as a whole for being able to return to film and TV sets after fraught negotiations through the end of 2023.

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Brendan Fraser and Cillian Murphy

It was something a luxuriantly-bearded Kenneth Branagh touched on when he and his castmates got on stage to accept the award for outstanding performance by a film cast for Oppenheimer, recalling how the London premiere for the film in July coincided with the strike beginning. “We all walked off the carpet and stood in solidarity with the union. We didn’t get to see the film.”

Oppenheimer’s awards sweep continued with Best Actor and Supporting Actor gongs going to Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. While Murphy thanked the names on his call sheet (“you made me brave, guys”), Downey Jr joked that he would “never grow tired of the sound of my own voice”. Though both men were expected winners in their categories (adding to their awards collection that will surely mean triumph at the incoming Oscars), there was history made with Best Actress winner, Killers Of The Flower Moon star, Lily Gladstone. As the first indigenous winner to take home the accolade, Gladstone arrived at the podium in a red, fringed Armani Prive gown and spoke in her Blackfoot language before tearfully expressing her unity with her fellow actors. “This has been a hard year for all of us. Those in this room, those not in this room, I’m so proud that we have gotten here in solidarity with all of our other unions.”

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Lily Gladstone

The Last Of Us star Pedro Pascal was so unprepared for a win as Best Actor in a drama series that he admitted to having got drunk on the table booze (including Taittinger champagne) when he got on stage. He was seated next to black-lace clad Jessica Chastain (in Armani) during a dinner of salmon, with a pie station available for dessert. Most actors abandoned their plates to mingle before the ceremony began: Anne Hathaway in cobalt Versace chatting to Glen Powell wearing a brown Brioni tux, Margot Robbie maneuvering her statement pink bow dress by Schiaparelli around the gold chairs, Pedro Pascal catching up with Billie Eilish (who autographed Melissa McCarthy’s forehead in an on-stage skit), Brie Larson talking with Jodie Foster and Oprah Winfrey regal in on-theme violet on The Color Purple table. Hannah Waddington showed other guests her cardboard clutch bag, created by her daughter and featuring crayoned ‘Epic’ designs.

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Pedro Pascal

All awards show need a presenter talking point – Michael J Fox’s arrival at last week’s BAFTAs being one – and the SAGs reunited the cast of The Devil Wears Prada 18 years after the film’s release as Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep handed out the Best Actor in a comedy series gong. As Streep opened the winners envelope, Blunt quoted one of her killer lines from the film to the delight of the audience; “by all means, move at a glacial pace – you know how that thrills me.” Social media noted that Hathaway’s dress tone was a nod to Streep’s waspish line about ‘cerulean blue’ from the movie… Also reuniting, 21 years after the release of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, were hobbits Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, as they presented The Holdovers star Da’Vine Joy Randolph, wearing champagne silk, with best supporting actress.

Succession had dominated other awards events this season and they took home the cast top honours in drama, but it was Elizabeth Debicki who won Best Actress in a drama series for her depiction of Princess Diana in The Crown. The Bear nabbed Best Actor and Best Actress in a comedy series for Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, while Beef co-stars Ali Wong and Steven Yuen cleaned up as Best Actor and Actress in a limited series.

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Meryl Streep, Jeremy Allen White , Emily Blunt, Anne Hathaway
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Da’vine Joy Randolph
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Glen Powell and Ali Wong
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Ayo Edebiri

The event was closed out by the lifetime achievement award going to Barbra Streisand, dressed in black and gold complete with beret, and greeted with a standing ovation and laughter as she told the ballroom that she was thrilled to have known about the award in advance so she didn’t have to put on a happy face when someone else won. She went to talk about her first crush, Marlon Brando, and thanked the assembled actors for giving her so much joy on-screen.

As the after-party continued before guest headed to other soirees across town, everyone no doubt had their eye on the next awards show in the calendar. Only two weeks to go before Hollywood does it all over again at the 96th Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre…

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Ryan Gosling
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Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston

WINNERS:

FILM

Outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture – Oppenheimer

Outstanding performances by a female actor in a leading role – Lily Gladstone

Outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role – Cillian Murphy

Outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role – Da’Vine Joy Randolph

Outstanding performances by a male actor in a supporting role – Robert Downey Jr 

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1

TV

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series – Succession

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series – The Bear

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series – Elizabeth Debecki

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series – Pedro Pascal

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series – Ayo Edebiri

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series – Jeremy Allen White

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series – Ali Wong

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series – Steven Yuen

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series – The Last Of Us

Words by Jane Crowther
Photographs by Greg Williams

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