Animal Kingdom, Disclaimer, Leila George, Runner, The Beast in Me

Photograph by GREG WILLIAMS


The Disclaimer actor tells Hollywood Authentic about her appreciation for specific Skittles, magicians, puppies and pina coladas.

How important is a little bit of nonsense now and then to you?
It’s vital for survival. Oxygen… water… food… NONSENSE.

What, if anything, makes you believe in magic?
Science. The computer chip. Evolution. Warm summer nights. Love. Really good magicians.

What was your last act of true cowardice?
Probably a situation where I was caring too much about what other people think… but I’m quite brave.

What single thing do you miss most when you’re away from home?
My shepherd dog Sky. She’s a little weirdo, too. 

Do you have any odd habits or rituals?
I have to sleep on the side of the bed furthest from the door. I only eat red and purple skittles. The volume on the TV must be a multiple of 5 or 10. I like to race against my car navigation app. Always singing and dancing around the house.

What is your party trick?
I can set my hand on fire with a lighter… briefly.

What is your mantra?
Don’t overshare, retain mystery. But 99.9% of the time I do the opposite.  

What is your favourite smell?
My mum.

What do you always carry with you?
An uncontrollable need for approval.  

What is your guilty pleasure?
Reality TV. Especially the shows that unstable people go on to find someone to marry! In front of the world! It’s nuts, and I’m totally here for it. I don’t like drama in my life but I’m addicted to watching other people’s.

Who is the silliest person you know?
My best friend Tarik. The most uniquely entertaining human, he will make any time or topic hilarious. He told me a story about someone stealing his lunch the other day, and, well, I guess you kind of had to be there…

What would be your least favourite way to die?
Medieval stretch rack.

What’s your idea of heaven?
Sun, sand, sea, pina coladas and puppies.

Australian actor Leila George has appeared onstage in Chekhov’s The Seagull at The Perth Theatre with her mother, Greta Scacchi, and made her feature debut in Mortal Engines. She impressed in The Kid, Gonzo Girl, He Ain’t Heavy and playing Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody in limited TV show Animal Kingdom. Last year, she dazzled at Venice Film Festival with her key role in Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer. She’s just completed Netflix’s upcoming series The Beast in Me with Matthew Rhys and Claire Danes, and is currently shooting opposite Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson in Scott Waugh’s film Runner


Photograph by GREG WILLIAMS
The Beast in Me is out on Netflix later this year

*Arguably one of the most memorable (and quotable) scenes in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is when Mr Salt mumbles, ‘It’s a lot of nonsense,’ to which Wonka replies, in a sing-song voice, ‘A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.’

Years ago – before Banshees or Saltburn – Barry Keoghan came to my studio and we started talking about photography and us working together. I asked Barry about his start and he told me the story of his difficult beginning in Dublin. It was heartbreaking and vital. I told him, ‘That’s the story I want to explore with you.’ It’s taken several years of back and forth to get to the point of us both flying into his home town and taking a trip around memory lane with him for the unflinching cover story you’re about to read. 

Not all the memories are good. But Barry was generous in opening up to me about his family life, the loss of his mother to heroin, his addiction and his sobriety as we returned to the homes he’d lived in and the streets he’d played in. This was raw, unfiltered recollection and for me, is a truly authentic tale that connects my photo-journalism roots with my work in entertainment more than any other I’ve done. This is a story of rising: how does someone start with every excuse in the world not to succeed and then excel? 

Barry’s vulnerability and honesty about pain, and his ability to channel that and bring it to the screen, is what makes him such an incredible actor – and it’s what costs him every time he performs. The bravery to feel is something that links all the subjects of our photo stories this issue. 

Douglas Booth talks about dyslexia and the cost of acting for him in contrast to his wife, Bel Powley. Kaia Gerber allows the darkness she sometimes feels in, so that she can access a character on stage. David Oyelowo discusses what the actors he admires give to roles and the sacrifice required as a Black actor from a small country like the UK. It’s this humanity that makes them all connect to audiences, and makes them fascinating individuals to shoot. 

Elsewhere in the issue, Havoc director Gareth Evans talks about the detail Tom Hardy puts into characterisation. Costume designer Ruth E. Carter discusses the dedication and vision needed to rise to the position she has reached as a history-making Oscar winner (and the doors she has opened for others). And photographer Mark Read captures one man’s temple to his own success in an LA building that holds numerous movie memories in its walls. All are testament to the power of graft and taking chances. As Oyelowo says, ‘The difference between good and great is hard work…’

barry keoghan, american animals, dunkirk, hurry up tomorrow, saltburn, the bashees of inisherin, the beatles
Barry Keoghan and Greg Williams

BUY ISSUE 9 HERE

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GREG WILLIAMS
Founder, Hollywood Authentic

hollywood authentic, greg williams, hollywood authentic magazine

September 8, 2024

alfonso cuarón, kodi smit-mcphee, disclaimer
hollywood authentic, venice dispatch, venice film festival, greg williams
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.’

alfonso cuarón, kodi smit-mcphee, disclaimer

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.’

leila george, disclaimer
leila george, disclaimer

‘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
alfonso cuarón, louis partridge, disclaimer
alfonso cuarón, louis partridge, disclaimer

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

August 30, 2024

cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón

Words by JANE CROWTHER


Alfonso Cuarón’s dark seven-part thriller exploring victim blaming, the madonna/whore complex and the toxicity of trauma gives audiences a warning straight off the bat that they should question what they see. As feted documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) receives another award to add to her collection, the host of the ceremony touches on narrative and form and warns that they can be used for manipulation. Narrative and form are certainly used to skewed and smart effect in this elegant adap of Renée Knight’s 2015 bestseller as three stories are interwoven across decades. 

cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón

In one strand we follow Catherine Ravenscroft as she receives a parcel from an unknown source containing a book that seems to unravel carefully held secrets from her past. The story at the heart of the novel sends her spiralling, impacting her marriage to stuffy lawyer Robert (Sasha Baron Cohen) and estranging her even more from her 25-year-old wastrel son, Nick (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Meanwhile Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline pulling off a perfect befuddled Englishman in the vein of Jim Broadbent) is mourning the loss of his son two decades previously, as well as his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) more recently. Bereft, Stephen has nothing to live for but embittered revenge. And in a third story, horny inter-railing teen Jonathan (Louis Partridge) can’t keep his eyes off a beautiful young mother (Leila George) on an Italian beach. Grief, betrayal and brutality are bound for all the characters – but the how and why is disquietingly spun across the episodes to a gut-punch denouement that will make audiences question their own assumptions, gender bias and acceptance of narrative. The truth at the heart of this bleak tale is something that is lost repeatedly in the retelling of it, depending on who is crafting the story and what information (or lack of it) they are working with.

cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón
cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón

It would be churlish to provide any more narrative detail – the pleasure really is in the unpackaging of it – but this onion-layered story of perspective is delivered beautifully by Cuarón as writer/director, and his cast. Blanchett is a known powerhouse but she is immense here; by turns frantic, self-absorbed, rageful and ultimately incandescent as a woman being judged. George as a younger version of Catherine is a revelation in a star-making turn as both a vamp and a victim. She and Partridge generate serious heat in explicit scenes that cleverly make viewers complicit in judgement, while Kline and Manville create a blindsiding and heartbreaking portrait of grief that is hard to see past. Each of their narratives twist and turn to a barnstorming final episode that will likely prompt audience introspection about personal and public perception, society and social media’s hurry to punish without due diligence and the way we castigate women for being sexual beings. Knowing what we know at the end might also inform repeat viewing to understand the clues that were there for us to see – if only we weren’t so blinkered. A masterful binge watch that asks pertinent and uncomfortable questions.


Words by JANE CROWTHER
Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October