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AWARDS SPECIAL
CRITICS CHOICE PREVIEW / FILM
NOVEMBER 29, 2021

B E S T A N I M AT E D F E AT U R E
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION IN ALL CATEGORIES INCLUDING | BEST PICTURE

“THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR.”

“ +++++
NOTHING SHORT OF EXTRAORDINARY.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Jane Campion have united to deliver an indecently powerful Western.”

“A TRIUMPH IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD.

Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee set a new gold standard for ensemble acting.”
PETER TRAVERS ,

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

WINNER BEST DIRECTOR JANE CAMPION

A FILM BY ACADEMY AWARD WINNER ®

JANE CAMPION

FILM.NETFLIXAWARDS.COM
 Awards Special
FEATURES. SHIVA: COURTESY OF TIFF. ZOLA: ANNA KOORIS/A24 FILMS.
Clockwise from top
ROCKET: COURTESY OF A24. LAST: PARISA TAGHIZADEH/FOCUS
left: Suzanna Son
and Simon Rex in Red
Rocket; Anya Taylor-
Joy in Last Night in
Soho; Riley Keough
(left) and Taylour Paige
in Zola; and Rachel
Sennott in Shiva Baby
took on the business
of sex in 2021.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Critics Choice Preview — Film
6 The Charm Offensive Dyas says Neon’s Spencer, 10 ‘It Shouldn’t Be Up to
Is a Menacing Force in which follows Princess
Cinema’s Latest Diana on the verge of leav-
Depictions of Sex Work ing her marriage, offered
This year, five films spotlighted the opportunities to examine
so-called “world’s oldest profession” feelings of “isolation, anguish
in its many forms — but it was the and sadness.”
lighter, more comic features of this
lot that showed the darkest sides of 9 Feinberg Forecast: 14
an unregulated industry. November Brings
Momentum — and Turkeys!
8 The ‘Elegant Prison’ Some Oscar hopefuls have more
of a Royal Estate reason than others to give thanks
Production designer Guy Hendrix before the holiday season.
1 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
Hollywood Who Starts and
Stops Acting When’
Dakota Johnson reflects on an
impressive career as a young
actress as she earns Oscar buzz
for Netflix’s The Lost Daughter.
Finding Permission
to ‘Obey Your Crazy’
Multihyphenate Jeymes Samuel
reveals five items that inspired
the look, tone and sound of Netflix’s
The Harder They Fall.
 November 2021 Awards 3
16 Portraying the ‘Power
of Human Connection’
Writer-director Fran Kranz and star
Ann Dowd discuss their film Mass,
which sees two couples affected by
a horrific tragedy seek reconciliation
and forgiveness.
18 An Intimate, Black-and-White
Film That’s About ‘Everything’
C’mon C’mon writer-director
Mike Mills and star Gaby Hoffmann
From left: Timothée Chalamet, dish on what they learned from
cinematographer Greig Fraser young actor Woody Norman and how
and (seated) director Denis
Villeneuve in Jordan’s Wadi Mills courted Joaquin Phoenix.
Rum desert while shooting
Dune. “It sounds dramatic, but 20 ‘What We Need Are Poets
I don’t know if we would be
here today talking if Timothée and Inspiration’
had said no,” Villeneuve says. Elaine Bogan, Enrico Casarosa,
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Quiara Alegría Hudes, Carlos López
Estrada, Phil Lord, Jonas Poher
Rasmussen,and Clark Spencer delve
into how filmmakers are diversifying
their talent and stories during THR’s
Animation Roundtable.
26 ‘The Worst Thing It Could Do
Is Stop Us From Doing More’
For director Jon M. Chu, the legacy
of Warner Bros.’ In the Heights is
greater than box office numbers:
“We can’t control who shows up, but
we can control the art that we make.”
28 The Making of Dune
How Denis Villeneuve mined his
boyhood obsession with Frank
Herbert’s classic novel to create
2 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
the big-screen adaptation fans have
always wanted.
36 The Wild West Reimagined
Through Clothes and Attitude
For costume designers Antoinette
Messam and Kirsty Cameron, the
Western genre is a canvas splashed
with fresh paint and timeless character.
38 ‘Our Sisterhood Was
Shown Onscreen’
King Richard stars Saniyya Sidney
and Demi Singleton talk about play-
ing two great athletes.
CHIA BELLA JAMES
40 91 Years of THR
In 2003, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited
Away broke records and won acclaim.
 “A TIMELY — AND TIMELESS —
EXPLORATION OF RACIAL IDENTITY.
It’s human and relevant, particularly in what it has to say about the rigidity and futility of labels like
‘Black’ and ‘white.’ Stellar performances by TESSA THOMPSON and RUTH NEGGA.”
ESQUIRE

“THOUGHTFUL, PROVOCATIVE
AND EMOTIONALLY RESONANT.
TESSA THOMPSON’s and RUTH NEGGA’s exquisite performances provide the pulsing,
emotionally heightened center to REBECCA HALL’s assured move behind the camera.”
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R A T I O N

BEST PICTURE
BEST ACTRESS Tessa Thompson BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Ruth Negga

FILM.NETFLIXAWARDS.COM
 F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R AT I O N I N A L L C AT E G O R I E S I N C L U D I N G

BEST PICTURE
OF THE YEAR
Produced By Laura Berwick Kenneth Branagh Becca Kovacik Tamar Thomas

BEST DIRECTING B E S T S U P P O RT I N G
Kenneth Branagh ACTRESS
B E S T O R I G I N A L S C R E E N P L AY Caitríona Balfe Judi Dench
Kenneth Branagh B E S T S U P P O RT I N G
BEST ACTOR ACTOR
Jude Hill Jamie Dornan Ciarán Hinds

“A DEEPLY AFFECTING
STORY WITH FIVE SUPERB
PERFORMANCES.”

“Gloriously human.
Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan
are pitch-perfect. Judi Dench and
Ciarán Hinds act with a quiet
virtuosity that summons up a lifetime
of shared history in the smallest
gesture or the simplest line.”
“THE BEST
PICTURE OF
THE YEAR.”

WINNER
Toronto Film Festival • People’s Choice Award
WINNER
Dallas Film Festival
WINNER
Middleburg Film Festival
WINNER
Mill Valley Film Festival
WINNER
San Diego Film Festival
Audience Award Audience Award Overall Audience Favorite Audience Award

WINNER
Heartland Film Society
WINNER
Montclair Film Festival
WINNER
Twin Cities Film Festival
WINNER
Scottsdale Film Festival
Truly Moving Picture Award Audience Award Best Feature Film Award Audience Award

A KENNETH BRANAGH FILM

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For more on this film, go to FocusFeaturesGuilds2021.com. © 2021 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
 Behind the Headlines of the Awards Race

2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — The Race

The Charm Offensive Is a Menacing Force in

Cinema’s Latest Depictions of Sex Work
This year, five films spotlight the so-called ‘world’s oldest profession’ in its many forms — but it was the lighter,
more comic features of this lot that showed the darkest sides of an unregulated industry BY ROBYN BAHR

S
ince the #MeToo and
#TimesUp movements
gained traction in 2017,
the entertainment industry has
gradually worked not only to
tackle its sexualized internal
culture and historical exclusion of
women, but also to reframe how
sex and sexual power are depicted
throughout film and television.
The post-Harvey Weinstein land-
scape has thus seen revolutions
in how women’s bodies and bodily
functions are portrayed onscreen
and the means by which we
evaluate and elevate female tal-
ent. Four years later, these shifts
have led to a boom in nuanced
representations of the so-called
“world’s oldest profession.”
Hollywood has always been
obsessed with the business of sex
— one reason why “the hooker
with a heart of gold” remains
an awards-magnet archetype to
this day — but in 2021, it appears
that the progressive cultural
transformations of the past few
years have begun chipping away
at some of these long-held pop
cultural tropes about sex work.
Recent films such as A24’s Red
Rocket and Zola, Focus Features’
Last Night in Soho, Utopia’s Shiva
Baby and Neon’s Titane have a
hyperfocus on sex-worker char-
acters across the spectrum of
victimhood and villainy.
Although each film peddles
in heart-pounding tension, it
is ironically the lightest and
funniest of the bunch — bon-
kers Texas porn dramedy Red
Rocket and dreamy black comedy
thriller Zola — that actually
showcase the insidious terrors
of sex trafficking. Conversely,
the more intentionally scary or
anxiety-producing movies —
ghostly psychological horror flick
Last Night in Soho, French body
horror film Titane and panic-
attack-inducing cringe comedy
Shiva Baby — rather seem to
make a joke of sex work with
their grandiloquent visual and
aural filmic styles. The latter
point isn’t necessarily meant as a
critique of those movies’ story-
telling choices, but to underscore

Illustration by Maria Corte

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 6 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

 that gregarious and captivating countless sexual encounters with
people, like the ones seen in Red random men throughout the
The Oldest Profession
Rocket and Zola, can oftentimes night. Zola’s refusal to prostitute in Oscar History
be more threatening than the herself enrages her compan-
Movies have long told stories of sex workers — and
more obviously telegraphed ions, including Stefani’s “friend”
these performers earned noms, and wins, from the
baddies highlighted in the other (aka pimp), played by Colman
Academy for their portrayals BY TYLER COATES
three films. Domingo with frightening autoc-
Charm disarms. In Sean racy. Throughout the film, you
Winner
Baker’s superlative Red Rocket, never quite know if Stefani, who Janet Greta
the third film in his trilogy on the talks of a young daughter, is a cal- Gaynor Garbo
lives of marginalized sex work- lous human trafficker herself or a Street Anna
Angel Christie
ers, following 2017’s The Florida mere victim of systematic abuse 1928 1930
Project and 2015’s Tangerine, a and degradation.
middle-aged motormouth adult Like Red Rocket’s Mikey, Winner
film star returns to his Texas Stefani’s desperation makes her Helen Anne
hometown broke as a joke after dangerous. These characters’ Hayes Baxter
some shady dealings go awry mutual manipulativeness may The Sin of The Razor’s
Madelon Edge
in California. With his cheeky be born from survival instincts, Claudet 1931 1946
boyishness and vulnerable whee- but the impact of their actions
dling, Mikey Saber (a masterful — transporting women across Winner Winner
Simon Rex, who himself appeared state lines to get them to sell their Elizabeth (supporting)
in solo porn videos in his early bodies — matters more than their Taylor Shirley
BUtterfield Jones
acting career) worms his way self-delusions. 8 Elmer Gantry
back into the household of his These treacherous flirts stand 1960 1960
resistant ex-wife (Bree Elrod) and in contrast to the fuming antiher-
mother-in-law (Brenda Deiss). oines of Edgar Wright’s Last Night
In the midst of long-conning in Soho, Julia Ducournau’s Titane Melina Shirley
his ex into returning to porn, and Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby, Mercouri MacLaine
Never on Irma la
he meets redheaded teenage who all flout the conventions Sunday Douce
cashier Strawberry (Suzanna of sex work onscreen. Each is a 1960 1963
Son) and dollar signs immedi- villain in her own right: Soho’s
ately bloom in his eyes. Mikey blond songstress Sandy (Anya Winner
(supporting)
works slowly with smiles, jokes Taylor-Joy) and Titane’s preg-
GAYNOR, GARBO, HAYES, TAYLOR, JONES, MERCOURI, MACLAINE, WINTERS, VOIGHT, FONDA, CHRISTIE, MASON, FOSTER, SORVINO, BASINGER: EVERETT COLLECTION. BAXTER: JOHN SPRINGER COLLECTION/CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY

Shelley Jon Voight

and goofy romanticism until she nant objectophile Alexia (Agathe Winters Midnight
thinks she’s the one seducing Rousselle) are both driven to
IMAGES. ROBERTS: BUENA VISTA PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION. SHUE: UNITED ARTISTS/EVERETT COLLECTION. STONE: UNIVERSAL/EVERETT COLLECTION. THERON: NEWMARKET RELEASING/EVERETT COLLECTION.

A Patch of Cowboy
him. Before long, his methodi- bloodthirstiness due to unwanted Blue 1965 1969
cal grooming has convinced sexual contact. (Sandy is lured
Strawberry of her undying love into hustling by a conniving
Winner Julie
for him, and she agrees to go back manager; Alexia is an auto show
Jane Christie
to L.A. with him to jump-start her erotic dancer who would rather Fonda McCabe &
own adult film career. have sex with cars than people.) In Klute Mrs. Miller
1971 1971
Mikey’s sweetsy aw-shucks Shiva Baby, Rachel Sennott stars
narcissism has a kinship with as Danielle, a meandering arts
the beguiling insta-BFF cha- student and secret “sugar baby”
Marsha
risma exuded by Stefani (Riley who freezes at a family funer- Mason Jodie
Keough), the subordinate but ary gathering when her married Cinderella Foster
ruthless femme fatale of Janicza benefactor (Danny Deferrari) Liberty Taxi Driver
1973 1976
Bravo’s darkly funny Zola. Based shows up with his wife and child.
on A’Ziah “Zola” King’s real-life Burbling with guilt and fear of
Twitter account of a road trip being found out, Danielle uses her Julia Elisabeth
that descended into mayhem, sex appeal to cruelly lash out at Roberts Shue
the film tells the story of Zola, a those around her. Pretty Leaving Las
Woman Vegas
young part-time stripper (Taylour Last Night in Soho, Shiva Baby 1990 1995
Paige) who becomes fast friends and Titane were all written or
with smooth-talking Stefani co-written by female screenwrit- Winner
after a night dancing together. ers, and it’s easy to appreciate the (supporting)
White Stefani, who imitates the transgressiveness of these women Sharon Mira Sorvino
vernaculars of Black English to portraying their leads as venge- Stone Mighty
Casino Aphrodite
ingratiate herself with others, ful hellions rather than wilting 1995 1995
soon persuades Zola to join her pushovers. But nothing scared
on an excursion to make some me more this year than watch- Winner
cash dancing at a Florida club. ing Simon Rex and Riley Keough (supporting) Winner
The outing, though, is a ruse: The beam lovingly at their respective Kim Basinger Charlize
L.A. Theron
real money is made using inter- marks, each buying a little bit into Confidential Monster
net personal ads to coordinate their own lies. 1997 2003

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 7 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

 The Report
thin surface, we wanted a feeling of anguish
Behind the Headlines and isolation and sadness.”
Dyas adds that the castle featured the
desired red brick, “which is quite unusual for
Germany. It really hit that balance between
2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Behind the Screen enough Englishness, without the build-
ing necessarily being a blueprint for the
Sandringham that we know. And it gave us
all these other wonderful advantages — [for
instance] this building has a huge driveway.”
Interiors were shot at locations includ-
ing Nordkirchen and Schlosshotel Kronberg
near Frankfurt, which was used for the main
interior and Prince Charles’ library. And the
library was critical for Dyas, as it’s the setting
for “a high-tension scene” between Diana
and Charles. “Pablo and I were scratching our
heads about how to create a room in which you
could have these two people having this con-
From left: Kristen versation,” says Dyas. “We talked about them
Stewart as Princess walking around the room or leaning over a
Diana in Neon’s
Spencer and desk, and none of it worked. It suddenly struck
production designer
Guy Hendrix Dyas’ us that it would be nice to have a big feature in
concept art for that room, like a snooker table.”
Sandringham House.
Nordkirchen Castle A deep red snooker table became central
in Germany was to the scene. “You never have a snooker table
used as the location
for the Norfolk, that’s red — a snooker table is always green,”
England, estate where
the British Royal explains Dyas. “It’s just absolute sacrilege to
family spends the do this. … I pleaded and begged these experts
Christmas holiday.
from England to refurbish this incredibly

The ‘Elegant Prison’ beautiful snooker table into red.”

During the scene, Diana and Charles stand

of a Royal Estate at opposing ends of the table. “It really helps

create that visual barrier between them,” Dyas
continues. “They could stake their position
Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas says Neon’s Spencer, which follows
and have this confrontation with something
Princess Diana as she is on the verge of leaving her husband, offered
that was completely believable within a royal
opportunities to examine feelings of ‘anguish, isolation and sadness’
library but just a little off-kilter. And that
BY CAROLYN GIARDINA
rich red really is supposed to be as attention-

D
irector Pablo Larraín and production
designer Guy Hendrix Dyas coined
the term “elegant prison” to describe
Sandringham House, the setting for much
of Neon’s Spencer. Kristen Stewart stars as
Princess Diana in the intimate drama that
takes place during the period toward the
“It became clear that we weren’t going to
actually find anywhere or want to find any-
where that really looked like Sandringham,”
Dyas says of the Norfolk, England, estate
where the royal family spends
several days during the
Christmas holidays. Ultimately,
grabbing as it is because it’s telling you that
there’s something between these people. And
we played a lot with those kinds of subtleties
in the film.”
The production designer also focused on
the importance of food within the produc-
tion. “Diana was dealing with bulimia, as we

NETFLIX. CODA: COURTESY OF APPLE TV+. HERO: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS. C’MON: COURTESY OF A24. LOOK: NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX.
end of her marriage to Prince Charles. “This for the exterior, he selected all know, at this time, a very serious disease.

was going to be an exploration into some-
body’s psyche and the way they feel,” says
Dyas. “For me, how to enhance the feeling
of that character [was] through the sets and
the environment, the things she was eating,
that synergy and connection with costumes
and makeup.”
Dyas — a two-time Oscar nominee for
Inception and Passengers who worked with
Larraín on the helmer’s Apple TV+ series
Lisey’s Story — says they created a “com-
plicated jigsaw puzzle” of sets and filming
locations in Germany. “The most frighten-
ing thing for me, partly because I’m from
England, is how do I re-create that sort of
Jacobean style architecture, that very dis-
tinctive British red brick, in Germany, where
everything’s sort of neoclassical and Gothic.
Dyas Nordkirchen Castle in the North
Rhine-Westphalia state of
Germany. “We wanted this opulent and aus-
tere space that on perhaps the first look gave
you sort of the ‘wow factor’ of how royalty
live. … But at the same time, underneath that
Stewart’s Princess Diana stands at an
unconventional red snooker table in Spencer.
SPENCER, ART: COURTESY OF NEON (4). DYAS: GEORGE PIMENTEL/FILMMAGIC. KING: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS (2). TICK: MACALL POLAY/
And we struggled a lot, Pablo and I, with how
to present the food. We knew it had to look
great. But just how great?” The production
worked with two food stylists, says Dyas. “We
had a permanent department within my props
department that was set aside purely for the
sort of chemical experiments on how to make
food look even more enticing, more beautiful,
with heightened levels of glazes on the food.”
On the set of Sandingham’s pantry, “Pablo
wanted the spontaneity of Diana coming into
a pantry that [Stewart] was not allowed to see
before the take so that she could walk in and
pick anything and just eat it.” This required
multiple replacements for subsequent takes.
Says Dyas, “A lot of these things are so strange
to talk about because you’re straddling the idea
of beauty with repelling feelings of disgust.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 8 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3


November Brings Momentum — and Turkeys!
Some Oscar hopefuls have more reason than others to give thanks before the holiday season BY SCOTT FEINBERG
BEST PICTURE
King Richard
Despite grades of 92 percent
on Rotten Tomatoes and an A
Cinemascore, this Venus and Serena
Williams origin story (executive
produced by the sisters) brought in
just $5.7 million during its opening
weekend. The potential gross of the
Warner Bros. release undoubtedly was
undercut by its simultaneous debut
on HBO Max, but regardless, there’s
now a perception that the Will Smith
starrer underperformed.
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
A Hero
On Nov. 16, tensions between
the country of Iran and filmmaker
Asghar Farhadi — whose latest film
boasts a 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes
score — boiled into public sight after
Farhadi posted an Instagram screed
slamming Iran’s “retrograde thinking”
and warned, “If Iran’s submission of my
film at the Oscars led people to think
that I’m under your flag, I state explic-
itly that it is no problem for me to scrap
this decision.”
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
The Report
Behind the Headlines
2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Feinberg Forecast
BEST ACTOR
Andrew Garfield
Tick, Tick … Boom!
Since his film launched Nov. 19 on
Netflix, the Hacksaw Ridge Oscar
nominee has been the talk of the
town for his portrayal of Rent
composer Jonathan Larson during
his days as a struggling artist. He
did a Q&A moderated by Laura Dern
at the American Cinematheque on
Nov. 20. And a fan-made video of the
actor and Larson singing the film’s
“30/90” went viral.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
C’mon, C’mon
Robbie Ryan’s black-and-white lensing
of Mike Mills’ semiautobiographi-
cal dramedy was recognized Nov. 20
with the Golden Frog — the highest
honor — and the audience award at
the Camerimage Film Festival in Toruń,
Poland, which celebrates the art of
cinematography. The prize’s recipi-
ent almost always goes on to receive
an Academy Award nomination. Ryan
previously was Oscar-nominated for
2019’s The Favourite.
9 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
BEST ACTRESS
Emilia Jones
CODA
Despite never having a singing les-
son before CODA, this 19-year-old
breakout Brit won two prizes at the
Hollywood Music in Media Awards on
Nov. 17: best song (onscreen perfor-
mance) for Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides
Now” — besting the likes of Respect’s
Jennifer Hudson and Don’t Look Up’s
Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi — and best
song (independent film) along with
several songwriters.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Don’t Look Up
On Nov. 21, as part of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic series
“Reel Change: The New Era of Film
Music,” film and television scores by
Nicholas Britell — the go-to composer
for filmmakers Barry Jenkins and Adam
McKay — were performed by a full
orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall,
culminating with his score for McKay’s
climate change dramedy, followed
by his Emmy-winning theme from
HBO’s Succession.
Kristen Stewart
Spencer
The 31-year-old frontrunner in the
actress category, who has wowed critics
and audiences alike with her portrayal of
Princess Diana in director Pablo Larraín’s
poetic and stylish biopic, received a
boost on Nov. 15 from a New Yorker
profile that was headlined, “How Kristen
Stewart Became Her Generation’s Most
Interesting Movie Star” — proving
that she has come a long way from her
Twilight days.
King Richard
One day before Britell was
feted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic,
32-year-old phenom Kris Bowers —
an Oscar nominee for last year’s doc
short A Concerto Is a Conversation
— was celebrated as part of the “Reel
Change” series, with the orchestra
performing his scores for Green Book,
When They See Us and Bridgerton
as well as his most recent work, the
score for Reinaldo Marcus Green’s
tennis-set vehicle.
 Dakota Johnson
will next be
seen in Maggie
Gyllenhaal’s The
Lost Daughter
opposite
Olivia Colman.

2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Awards Chatter

‘It Shouldn’t Be Up to
Hollywood Who Starts
and Stops Acting When’
Dakota Johnson, a third-generation Hollywood star,
reflects on an impressive career as a young actress as
she earns Oscar buzz for Netflix’s The Lost Daughter
BY SCOTT FEINBERG
 The Report

Behind the Headlines

D
akota Johnson is a third-
generation Hollywood
star, but since popping
up in a brief but memorable turn
in The Social Network 11 years
ago, she has very much made
her own name in the biz. Now
32, she is garnering career-best
reviews for her performance in
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial
debut, The Lost Daughter, as an
overwhelmed young mother who
establishes a connection with
a woman who was in the same
situation decades earlier (Oscar
winner Olivia Colman). The
Netflix film is coming to select
theaters Dec. 17 and then to the
streaming platform Dec. 31. In
November, she recorded an epi-
sode of Awards Chatter in front of
students at Chapman University.
Many people are familiar with
your father, Don Johnson; your
mother, Melanie Griffith; your
stepfather, Antonio Banderas; and
your grandmother, Tippi Hedren.
Your grandma is best known for
the movies she made with Alfred
Hitchcock, The Birds and Marnie
— but long before #MeToo, she
spoke out about abusive treat-
ment she experienced at his hands.
When you expressed an interest
in following her into this business,
what did she say?
She was encouraging. She’s
always been really honest and
firm about standing up for
yourself, and that’s what she
did. Hitchcock ruined her career
because she didn’t want to sleep
with him. He terrorized her and
was never held accountable. It’s
completely unacceptable for
people in a position of power to
wield that power over someone in
a weaker position, no matter the
industry. It’s hard to talk about
because she’s my grandmother.
You don’t want to imagine
somebody taking advantage of
your grandmother.
Your father once said, “We have a
rule in the family that if you stay
in school, you get to stay on the
LOST: YANNIS DRAKOULIDIS/NETFLIX.
the end of high school, I went to
[Dakota] and I said, ‘So do you
want to go visit some colleges?’
And she was like, ‘Oh, no. I’m not
going to college.’ I went, ‘OK. You
know what that means. You won’t
be on the payroll anymore. How
are you going to manage?’ She
says, ‘Don’t you worry about it.’
Three weeks later, she had nailed
down that part in David Fincher’s
The Social Network.”
I grew up out in the world, and I
wanted that and I wanted to just
work. For The Social Network, I
auditioned and then I read with
Aaron Sorkin, which was really
interesting. Ever since then, I
have never read with a writer.
And he said to me in the audition
before we did it, “Just say exactly
what I wrote and use that punctu-
ation and don’t do anything else.”
And I was like, “Fuck.”
You auditioned for a part on Girls?
I did, yes. I believe it was for
Jemima Kirke’s role. Oh my God,
that was a scary audition.
That didn’t work out, but Judd
Apatow was impressed enough to
suggest you for other stuff …
Yeah, The Five-Year Engagement
and 21 Jump Street, which I did
pretty much back-to-back.
You also landed a starring role
in Ben and Kate, playing the
single mom whose brother
moves in. It lasted only a season,
but it seems like it was a good
learning opportunity …
For sure. Working on a television
show like that, you live there. It
was a real marathon. It was sad
that it got canceled, but it’s cool
that it happened for a second.
In 2013, after that show ended,
you appeared in the series finale
Awards Chatter Podcast
The weekly show, hosted by Scott Feinberg, features
career-encompassing conversations with actors,
directors, writers and other artists behind the top
Oscar, Emmy and Tony contenders. Recent guests
of The Office. At one point, there
was discussion that there was
going to be a spinoff around
your character …
They were thinking about doing
an Office spinoff — a Spin-Office!
You’re welcome.
Which brings us to Fifty Shades,
these three films within four years
in which you played Ana Steele, a
virginal college student. This came
about because two of the produc-
ers of The Social Network, Michael
De Luca and Dana Brunetti, were
also producing this, and remem-
bered you from that?
I sent an email to my then-man-
ager saying, “Let me know if they
start casting Fifty Shades, because
Johnson (left) and Olivia Colman in Netflix’s The Lost Daughter, written and directed by
Maggie Gyllenhaal and based on the novel by Elena Ferrante.
I think maybe I could do that.” It’s
chock-full of typos — I was driv-
ing and writing — and he has it
framed in his office because then
he bought a Porsche.
What appealed to you about it?
When I found out that Sam
Taylor-Johnson was directing, I
thought, “Oh, maybe it’ll be really
special. Maybe it’ll be a different
kind of trilogy.” So that’s when I
asked if when they were going to
start, maybe I could try. Dana and
Mike were into it. Patrick Marber,
who is one of my most favorite
screenwriters of all time, and an
incredible playwright — he wrote
Closer, which I love, the play and
the movie — wrote the original
draft of the first Fifty Shades, and
it was a heightened 9¹⁄₂ Weeks.
It was stripped down and this
study of these two people, which
wasn’t really what the book was.
Some of the things he wrote, the
scenes were just beautiful and
complicated and complex. I was
like, “This is like striking gold for
a young female actress! It’s bold,
scary, hard-core, empathetic,
intelligent and just compli-
cated.” And that was not what
was happening at that time for
me when I was reading scripts.
It was like, “Young, hot, blond.”
It was ridiculous. Or like, “Wears
glasses. So sexy, but she doesn’t
know it.” And then there were a
lot of other things that happened.
And more writers were brought
on. And then it became what it
was, which is what it is.
Charlie Hunnam was originally
cast as Christian Grey but dropped
out. When Jamie Dornan came in,
would you have guessed that he
would be the guy they’d hire?
I think all of us in the room knew
that it was going to be Jamie.
When you signed on, did you actu-

include David Chase, Oscar Isaac and Rita Moreno.

payroll. You go to college, you Listen and subscribe via your favorite podcast app. ally grasp what it would be like?
get to stay on the payroll. Toward No. Those movies are nuts. It was

Photographed by Mary Rozzi

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 11 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

 The Report
Behind the Headlines
Five Essential
Films
Dakota Johnson’s talents are on full display
in these features, which range from
really, at times, extremely vulner-
envelope-pushing blockbusters to art house fare
able. Luckily, with Sam I felt really
safe, and she really looked after FIFTY SHADES OF GREY
me and us. At the time, intimacy Johnson’s breakthrough
leading role came with
coordinators didn’t exist. Jamie
this big-screen adaptation
and I really had to figure it out of EL James’ erotic novel,
for ourselves and really protect the first in a trilogy. The
each other. actress plays the naive
Anastasia Steele, who
falls for a mysterious busi-
How did the release of the first
nessman named Christian
Fifty Shades movie change Grey (Jamie Dornan),
your life? who introduces her to the
I didn’t have to deal with paparazzi world of BDSM.
before that. That’s a pretty fucked-
up job. My life changed in all the A BIGGER SPLASH
This drama from director
ways that you imagine it changed. Luca Guadagnino sees
I was just like, “Oh, now I can meet Tilda Swinton and Ralph
with directors and writers that Fiennes as former lovers
didn’t know who I was before or unexpectedly reunited
didn’t have the time.” And that on the Italian island of
Pantelleria. Johnson
was so special. plays Fiennes’ daughter,
whose true nature is more
Reportedly, Sam Taylor-Johnson than it seems as the film
and EL James did not see eye to veers into psychological
eye, so she was replaced for the thriller territory.
next two movies by a male direc-
SUSPIRIA
tor, James Foley. Did that make Johnson collaborated
a difference? with Guadagnino (and
Yeah, it made a difference. It was co-star Swinton) a second
annoying because Jamie and I had time on his remake of
the 1977 Italian horror
become really close with Sam.
classic from auteur Dario
We had a rhythm with her. We Argento. She plays an
trusted her. And then she didn’t aspiring American dancer
see eye-to-eye with EL, and that who joins a prestigious
was also hard because, especially Berlin dance academy that
serves as a cover for a
around this kind of a film, you
coven of witches.
want everyone be on the same
page. I think James made a great THE PEANUT BUTTER
movie [parts two and three were FALCON
shot back-to-back]. It was just In Tyler Nilson and Michael
hard to go into that with Sam and Schwartz’s comic drama,
Johnson plays a social
then switch gears completely and
worker tasked with track-
have a new person at the helm. ing down a young man with
Down syndrome (breakout
In between the Fifty Shades films, Zack Gottsagen) who has
you made a lot of smaller art escaped from his care
facility and goes on the run
house projects including Scott
to achieve his dream of
Cooper’s Black Mass; two films becoming a wrestler.
for Luca Guadagnino, A Bigger
Splash and Suspiria; and Tyler OUR FRIEND
Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s The This drama, inspired
Peanut Butter Falcon. Then along by a true story (and an
award-winning Esquire
comes Maggie Gyllenhaal and The article), stars Jason Segel
Lost Daughter. as an aimless man whose
Maggie and I had met in pass- relationship with his col-
ing a few times but never had lege friend (Casey Affleck)
any real conversation. I read the and his cancer-stricken
wife (Johnson) gives his
script and then wanted to meet life newfound meaning as
with her. We had lunch and just he aids the couple through
went real deep, real fast, which their family crisis.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 12 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
is what I love so much, and it’s so
rare in this industry. I want to
talk about all of the things that
Maggie talks about in this film
— what it’s like to be a woman
in this world and what it’s like to
be a mother. Human beings are
so much more complicated than
we allow each other to be. So our
initial conversation was pretty
intense. Then it was that awk-
ward, “OK, well, I guess we’ll talk
soon.” Later, she asked if I would
come to New York and read with
her, so I did that.
Next thing you know, in the middle
of a global pandemic, you are
shooting scenes on a Greek island
opposite Olivia Colman. A lot
goes on between your characters
without dialogue. Did you enjoy
working that way?
I loved it. Usually, when there’s
stage direction in a script like,
“Leda glances at Nina across the
beach,” I’ll just glaze over it. But
in this, it means so much. Women
especially can have a million
conversations with each other
without ever saying anything.
And I think that’s something that
is so amazing to see on a screen
because you’re like, “What are
they going to do? Are they going to
fight? Are they going to have sex?”
GREY: CHUCK ZLOTNICK/©FOCUS FEATURES/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION. SPLASH: JACK ENGLISH/FOX SEARCHLIGHT/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION. SUSPIRIA:
Is there anything about your
grandmother’s and your mother’s
ALESSIO BOLZONI/AMAZON STUDIOS. FALCON: SETH JOHNSON/ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS. FRIEND: GRAVITAS VENTURES/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION.
experiences in this business that
you hope will be different for
future generations of actresses?
I’d like to see actors acting for as
long as they want to, no matter
what age they are. It shouldn’t be
up to Hollywood who starts and
stops acting when. I’d love to see
my mother in a movie now, and
I’d love to see my grandmother in
a movie. I also would love to see
people not abuse their positions
of power. I’d love to see equality
across all areas of filmmaking. I’d
love to see more diversity in film-
making. I think that things are
moving in that direction slowly
but surely.
Interview edited for length
and clarity.
 Jennifer Aniston
Sherry Lansing Leadership Award
Presented by
Steve Carell

Jennifer Garner
Tessa Thompson
Mentorship Program and Scholarship Presentation

Selma Blair
Equity in Entertainment Award

Nikole Hannah-Jones
Keynote

W E D N E S D AY , D E C E M B E R 8

8 - 9 AM
Red carpet and reception

9 - 10:30 AM
Seated breakfast and stage presentation

Fairmont Century Plaza

TO P U RC H A S E TA B L ES
O R S EATS P L EA S E V I S I T

thr-womeninentertainment.splashthat.com
 The Report

Behind the Headlines

2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — The Vision

Finding Permission
to ‘Obey Your Crazy’
Multi-hyphenate Jeymes Samuel reveals five
items that inspired the tone, look and sound of
his revisionist Western The Harder They Fall
BY TYLER COATES

W
ith Netflix’s The Harder They Fall, writer-director-composer
Jeymes Samuel brings swagger and style to the American
West with a bloody revisionist take on the Western genre.
The British filmmaker assembled an incredible cast
— including Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, LaKeith
Stanfield, Regina King, Delroy Lindo and Idris Elba
— all playing characters based on real (yet nearly for-
gotten) figures from American history. The revenge tale
sees Majors’ Nat Love and Elba’s Rufus Buck violently Samuel
clashing (with the help of their respective gangs) in epic
fashion on the dusty frontier. Here, Samuel shares with THR five items
— from a space cowboy to the wild and bizarre world of Roald Dahl’s
imagination — that inspired his feature film debut.

1. Boba Fett snorting,” Samuel says with a laugh. “He’s literally 3. The Wonderful Story of
Samuel was immediately intrigued by the one of the boldest filmmakers who ever lived.” Henry Sugar
bounty hunter, who became a fan favorite despite This book, a celebration of the auteur’s filmog- Samuel considers this 1977 collection of short

COURTESY OF JONATHAN CAPE. ALBUM: COURTESY OF GRP RECORDS. GUITAR, FIGURE:

SAMUEL: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE. HARDER: DAVID LEE/NETFLIX. DAHL BOOK:
his limited screen time in the original Star Wars raphy, was a reference point for Samuel when he stories by Roald Dahl to be his favorite book of all

COURTESY OF JEYMES SAMUEL. HITCHCOCK BOOK: COURTESY OF TASCHEN.

trilogy. Samuel points to a brief interaction
between Fett and Darth Vader (“the ultimate cin-
ema baddie”) in The Empire Strikes Back. “Vader
lines up the bounty hunters and doubles back on
Fett, saying, ‘No disintegrations.’ And Fett replies,
‘As you wish,’ ” the director recalls. “I’m not say-
ing Rufus Buck is modeled on Boba Fett, but his
swag, his employment of words. ... He’s one of my
favorite characters in the history of cinema.”
Samuel bought his vintage Boba Fett toy as
a kid at a secondhand store in London. “I would
walk in every day to play with it,” he remembers,
“and the owner told me I had to stop coming
in to play with the toy. So I started giving him
10 pence every day until I paid for it.” The item is a
reminder, Samuel says, of why he chose a creative
path for himself. “Filmmaking and storytelling are
all about fun. I’ve always said that the movie we
make is for the public, but the actual making of a
movie is for us, and we have to have fun.”
was location scouting in New Mexico in 2019, and
he credits Hitchcock’s films for teaching him how
to become a filmmaker himself.
“The storyteller in every single film is the
camera,” says Samuel. “I don’t think The
Harder They Fall is super-stylized; I just think
the camera gives you the tale in the best pos-
sible way. Alfred Hitchcock taught me that,
and I find myself being confident in where I put
the camera because of my love for Hitchcock
[and] the way he broke rules and employed dif-
ferent visual techniques.”
time. “We all know his stories, from Fantastic Mr.
Fox to The Witches to Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, but this is the first Roald Dahl book I
ever read,” he says. “This book literally taught
me how to write, and the title story taught me all
about twists and turns and going where you least
expect.” The biggest lesson Samuel took away
from Dahl was to embrace chaos in storytelling.
“My golden motto for everything that I do is: ‘Obey
your crazy.’ No one obeyed their crazy like Roald
Dahl — and no Roald Dahl story obeys its crazy
like ‘The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.’ ” The
2

2. Alfred Hitchcock:
The Complete Films
“Alfred Hitchcock is the only filmmaker
whose films you don’t watch — you snort 1 4
them, like a line of something you shouldn’t be

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 14 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3


collection’s full title — The Wonderful Story of
Henry Sugar and Six More — also inspired the title
of the companion album to Samuel’s 2013 short
film, They Die by Dawn. “The album was called
They Die by Dawn and Other Stories because this
book is literally in my DNA as a storyteller.”
4. What Color Is Love
“They say you can’t judge a book by its cover,
but I think the opposite is true for albums,” says
Samuel of singer-songwriter Terry Callier’s 1972
recording What Color Is Love. Samuel remembers
the moment he first spotted the record as a kid. “I
was walking in Tower Records and saw a reissue
5 spoiled and muffled, which is totally my fault. But
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
of the vinyl. I took it home, and from track one, it
literally changed my life.” Although What Color Is
Love was a critical success, it was a commercial
failure — but Callier had a career resurgence
when his music became popular among British
DJs during the 1980s.
While Samuel was working on the script for
The Harder They Fall more than a decade ago,
he was putting together another film that will be
its follow-up. “I contacted Terry Callier to write
the main song for my second movie, which he
called ‘Virinia,’ ” says Samuel. Callier completed
the track before his death in 2012. “His cadence,
his voice, his stylings, his chord progressions,
influence how I make music, and I think my song
‘No Turning Around’ on the Harder They Fall
soundtrack is a very Terry Callier song.”
5. Denim Guitar
Before Samuel cut his teeth as a director, he was an
accomplished singer-songwriter who went by the
moniker The Bullitts. “This was the guitar I started
writing songs on as a child,” Samuel says. He
embellished it himself. “I got bored of looking at it.
I took fabric glue and an old denim jacket, took out
the seams and wrapped it around the guitar.” He
says the instrument is the first tool when it comes
to composing any of his music. “The sound of it is
all of my songs start with this denim guitar.”
15 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
From left:
Regina King,
Idris Elba
and LaKeith
Stanfield,
flanked by
soldiers, in
Netflix’s
The Harder
They Fall.
3
Samuel admits his prized possession once
came close to being lost forever. “I worked on
the music for [Baz Lurhmann’s 2013 version
of] The Great Gatsby with Jay-Z, and I was
staying in an apartment in New York on Wall
Street.” When he returned to London, he real-
ized he had absentmindedly left the guitar back
in New York — and quickly learned that the
apartment’s owner had sold the place. “I called
the building, and they still had the guitar [in
storage]. I wanted to cry because, for whatever
reason, I had disrespected it.” He hopped on
a flight back to New York just to retrieve the
instrument and now barely lets the guitar out
of his sight. “What was once a cheap guitar
birthed every single song that [I wrote for] The
Harder They Fall.”
 THE

DIALOGUE

Portraying
the ‘Power
of Human
Connection’ Ann
Dowd
Writer-director Fran Kranz and star Ann Dowd
discuss their film Mass, which sees two
couples affected by a horrific tragedy seek
reconciliation and forgiveness
By Tyler Coates

I
n Bleecker Street’s Mass, the
impact of a school shooting
on two sets of parents —
those of a victim (played by Jason
Isaacs and Martha Plimpton) and
those of the perpetrator (Reed
Birney and Ann Dowd) — meet for
a raw and emotional conversation
years after the shooting took place.
Throughout the course of the film,
which unfolds in real time, the
group attempts to find healing
— even if that process dredges up
plenty of grief and pain.
The intimate drama is an
acting masterclass featuring
four veterans delivering some
of the best performances of
their careers. Anchoring it is a
thoughtful and compassionate
script from writer-director Fran
Kranz. Dowd and Kranz spoke to
THR about the powerful drama,
how actor-turned-helmer Kranz
allowed his cast space to deliver
their best performances and the
healing power of finding empathy
for others.
Fran, did a specific moment in
shooting [on Feb. 14, 2018]. I went
online that night and started
reading everything I could about
gun violence and mass shootings
in America.
I’ve always been really fasci-
nated and inspired by the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission
in South Africa, but I didn’t
feel like I had any kind of entry
point into a film about the TRC.
As an American, I didn’t know
what I could really to do with
the passion for this thing that
happened in another country
when I was growing up. My
research into mass shootings
[helped me make] that connec-
tion. I thought of this meeting
between [the parents] like an
amnesty hearing in South Africa.
It is an effort to heal and poten-
tially find reconciliation through
unimaginable pain.
RÉSUMÉS
Ann Dowd
Ann, what was your reaction to the
script when you first read it?
ANN DOWD It was so beautifully
written — so powerful, inten-
tional, clear — that there was no
question. The one real [scary]
thought was, “Can I settle into
this level of grief and stay there?”
Thank God I’ve been doing this
job for a minute or two, so I knew
that I wasn’t going to let the
fear of it influence whether I said
yes or no.
Fran, you and I were both in high
school when the 1999 Columbine
shooting happened. Did that feel
like a turning point when this
became a never-ending crisis?
KRANZ Absolutely. I think
Columbine has been underneath
that peers of mine essentially
went there — that was horrifying.
When my daughter was a tod-
dler, I realized I’m going to make
mistakes constantly. I love this
girl more than anything, and yet
sometimes I go to sleep at night
thinking, “Man, I screwed up
today.” Parenting is hard work,
and I don’t think I could have
made this film if I wasn’t so
struck by or disarmed with com-
passion for the parent of a school
shooter. We understand and sym-
pathize with victims’ pain, but it’s
harder for us to find ourselves in
the parents of the shooters who
have some compassion for [their
children, too]. The film is about
finding a way to cultivate a new
kind of empathy.
DOWD, KRANZ: AMY SUSSMAN/GETTY IMAGES. MASS: COURTESY OF BLEECKER STREET.

recent history inspire you to start
writing this film?
FRAN KRANZ The movie initially
came out of a desire to know
more about the subject. I was this
new, terrified, angry, frustrated,
confused parent thinking about
the frequency of these events
in this country. The real cata-
lyst was the Parkland [Florida]
The Handmaid’s Tale
(2017-present)
Hereditary (2018)
The Leftovers (2014-17)
Fran Kranz
Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Dollhouse (2009-10)
my skin for 20 years. I know
exactly where I was when I found
out it happened, and I remember
taking in my school with a whole
new set of eyes. High school is
hard for everyone, and I think
everyone experiences some sort of
bullying. You certainly wish harm
on people who have hurt you,
especially at that age. To think
Fran, what did your acting experi-
ence offer you when you stepped
into the director role?
KRANZ I never imagined [hiring]
actors with this kind of talent,
so I recognized what I had and
how lucky I was. I tried to put a
premium on their instincts —
great actors have great insight

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 16 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3


into human behavior and human
nature. We had a two-and-a-half-
day rehearsal where it was critical
that I had no ego about the script.
I had to listen to them and hear
where they were confused, or
where they thought something
didn’t quite work, or something
was missing, whatever the case
may be. They’re as good as it gets;
you truly don’t get better than
these four actors.
DOWD Did I have anything to
change? About who [my charac-
ter] Linda was?
KRANZ There were little things.
At one point, I had Linda volun-
teering at a suicide prevention
hotline. You pointed out that
it was a bit confusing for this
woman’s journey, where she
was — was that appropriate to
share with these people? I liked
[that detail] because I thought it
was endearing that this woman
was trying, and I thought it felt
truthful. But it took an actor to
come in and say, “Yes, but … ” I
needed those actors to be 100 per-
cent engaged with the material.
[I didn’t want] a moment where
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Fran
Kranz
Ann was just politely and respect-
fully doing the lines because I had
written them. I really tried to stay
out of their way because, again, I
recognized their talent and tried
to give them a long leash, to stay
out of the room, be very careful
and economical with my words.
Ann, does having an actor as a
director make a difference?
DOWD Yes, it certainly mattered.
That was a wonderful bonus, [on
top of] his kindness and intel-
ligence and natural compassion
that was ever present from sen-
tence one in rehearsal. He knows
exactly what it means when you
go to that place of vulnerability.
It was a beautiful reminder to the
actors, I think, to let us settle into
where we [were]. I loved the close-
ness and, it seemed to me, tons of
privacy. Fran wasn’t in the room.
… I forget where the cameras
were; were they there? They must
have been because we have a film,
but I don’t remember them.
KRANZ Jason [Isaacs] mentioned
that as well — that he didn’t
remember the cameras. It was
17
designed that way to not be
invasive or intrusive of what they
were doing. I did not want to be
in the room, so we designed a
system that was literally clock-
work — we moved with the sun.
I knew we only had two or three
takes for certain scenes because
we were doing almost 20-minute
takes. I know as an actor it’s really
unhelpful and unwanted, really,
when anyone on set is concerned
about how we have no time. That
kind of energy is never helpful for
performance. Every day was a Hail
Mary of sorts; if anything went
wrong, it could have been a disas-
ter. We did the work so that we
could revolve around these actors
and let them act. There was a lot
of faith there. The fact that the
actors can’t remember the cam-
eras is probably the greatest thing
I could have done as an director.
There is a lot of meaning in the
film’s title. There’s a religious
connotation — it takes place in a
church. And, of course, there’s the
mass shooting that brought these
four together. But I’m curious what
you thought about the title as you
were making the film.
KRANZ To me, it is about the
gathering of people, the assem-
bling of people, the bringing of
bodies together — the secular
definition. And that also speaks
Dowd and Reed Birney play the parents of a school shooter in Bleecker Street’s Mass.
N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
to the power and value of human
connection, physical human
connection. I really believe the
most transcendent things in life
happen when we’re close, when
we’re together, when we can see
one another in person. These
conversations aren’t possible,
this kind of healing and for-
giveness. Reconciliation is not
possible without sitting down and
being in the physical presence of
one another. I worry about how
divided the country is, and I am
very much attached to this mean-
ing of bringing people together.
That’s why the movie is shot the
way it is. I didn’t want to com-
promise that with flashbacks or
inserts or even music because I
wanted to celebrate the action of
people sitting down and listening
to one another.
DOWD I support that. We try to
convince ourselves that we’re
different from one another. And
surely we are. We share a human
heart and a wish and desire to lay
down the burdens of our lives,
even though we try our very best
to hold on to them. As human
beings, we are a collection of
people together. And the thought
of separateness is an illusion that
we cling to.
Interview edited for length
and clarity.

Mike
Mills
An Intimate, Black-and-White
Film That’s About ‘Everything’
C’mon C’mon writer-director Mike Mills and star Gaby Hoffmann discuss what they learned
from young actor Woody Norman and how Mills courted Joaquin Phoenix to play the main character
M
ike Mills’ black-and-white film
C’mon C’mon is a gorgeous explora-
tion of a relationship between a boy
named Jesse (played by Woody Norman) and
his uncle Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) while the
kid grapples with growing up and his compli-
cated family dynamic.
Mills’ screenplay was inspired by his
relationship with his own child, says the film-
maker, while star Gaby Hoffmann was drawn
to the script due to her experience as a mother
— and because she thought it is a rare story
that leans in on “the things that I think about
all the time.”
Mills and Hoffmann spoke to THR about
how the A24 movie came into fruition, the
young Norman’s incredible talent and why
Phoenix — at first — thought he couldn’t
deliver what the script was asking of him.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
THE
DIALOGUE
By Beatrice Verhoeven
Where did you get the idea for the film?
MIKE MILLS The seed or the soil of it is totally me
and my kid — that’s where it started. The con-
cerns in the film come from my experiences
of being a parent to my very specific kid. And
then the plant that comes from that seed is its
own different shape and different thing, but
it can’t exist without that beginning. But it’s
even interesting to me how it’s from us and not
— what all the different actors brought, what
just the writing process brought, what the dif-
ferent cities brought, kind of manifested this
initial intention in all these ways that I can
predict, but also is interestingly surprising.
Gaby, how did you get involved?
GABY HOFFMANN I got a nice email from Andrea
Longacre-White, our producer, whom I’ve
known for years, vaguely, saying that Mike
18 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
Gaby
Hoffmann
wanted to have dinner with me. I said, “I’m not
too busy. Sure!” It was very flattering and very
exciting. And we had a lovely long dinner in
Brooklyn on a balmy summer night that I now
see was the beginning of what hopefully will
be a lifelong conversation about everything.
Because the movie is about everything.
MILLS When we had that dinner, what do you
remember about where I was at with the whole
Joaquin Phoenix of it all?
HOFFMANN You were still in the process of
courting him. You told me that hopefully
it would be working. It wasn’t definite yet.
Anyway, by the end of that dinner, I was all in,
because I just wanted to keep talking with this
person. I felt confident that the collaboration
would be fulfilling. And then the screenplay
was — maybe this is hyperbolic — but I think
it was my most favorite screenplay I’d ever
 read. Not just because it’s so beautiful and
well-written, but because it’s talking about
the things that I think about all the time. I’m a
mom, and this is what my life is, and that’s not
what I usually come across in screenplays.

Mike, what was the process of

courting Joaquin?
MILLS He was really sweet, and we had another
nice meal together. He came to the meal, I
think, to tell me, “This is interesting, but I
don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how
to do it justice. I wouldn’t know how to say
yes to this, to really deliver for you.” I’m like,
“Everything about you is super interesting
and feels right on the money to me.” And the
soul that I’m seeing and this love of humor
and this ableness to talk about anything,
that’s all he needs to send that guy forth. It
seemed like it was probably over, but then
he texted me the next day with just a ques-
tion about the issues in the film — not even
the script, just a conversation about children
and adults and parenting and families and
all the layers of that. … The whole time, I still
didn’t know what’s going on. Then he came to
my office, we read the script a lot and we just
started talking again, or cracking each other
up or just kind of fucking with each other in
a really fun, creative way. And that was going
on for months. I had no idea what was going to
happen, but I’m like, “This is so interesting.
And I’m learning so much about my script and
it’s so fun to have a pal.” I was very happy and
lovesick at the same time.
How did you find Woody?
MILLS Clearly, I did something really fucking
good in a past life because he came in the very
first round of casting, like kid two or three.
And he’s British, so he’s doing an accent the
whole time. And he can cry on any line. He’s
just a very deep person. And I’m on a little bit
of a rampage of trying to get people not to
describe him as a child actor,
because I feel like that con-
MILLS: CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES. HOFFMANN: VIVIEN KILLILEA/GETTY IMAGES. C’MON: JULIETA CERVANTES/A24.
Woody Norman (left) and Joaquin Phoenix as his uncle in the A24 feature C’mon C’mon.
work with any talented, smart actor. He had
ideas, like any other devoted, hardworking
actor. He brought something fresh and new.
He’s made my job so easy. Somebody said to
me in an interview — I kid you not — some-
thing like, “This kid was so good. I almost
thought for a second he was a regular human
being.” And unfortunately, that is a general
sense that people have: like the kids are some-
how not people. Of course, they aren’t working
in necessarily the same way — emotional,
sophisticated, learned management, whatever
— but they’re people. And they’re so often not
treated that way.
How did you and Woody develop a rapport?
HOFFMANN Mike sent Woody and I out on a
couple of dates — we had a chaperone, of
course, and we hung out. We went to lunch
one day. We took a walk. The next day we hung
out a lot at Mike’s office. Mostly talking about
the weird YouTube videos he watches. Making
jokes, talking about food, music he likes —
he’s fascinating. He’s got a lot to say about
everything, so it was really me just listen-
ing. I feel like we had an easy rapport with a
little distance, almost like a son and mother
might have. I didn’t mind if our bond didn’t
feel extreme and intense right away — that
didn’t worry me. It felt familiar, like kids and
their moms, especially at that age, like they’re
going through something,
but it was very easy from the
choreography. It’s a different kind of beast.
Same thing in New Orleans, when they’re in
that parade, that’s about 300 people all in
costume. Shooting in New York City, all the
people walking up and down are just pedes-
trians, and Joaquin’s really good at using the
Force, and no one knows it’s him and we’re far
off on a long lens, and no one knows that we’re
making a movie.
The kids that Johnny interviews throughout
the film — are those real interviews, or were the
kids child actors?
MILLS I did a project years ago with SFMOMA,
where we interviewed kids whose parents
worked in tech companies about the future.
And I’ve done this kind of work in the past. …
so at the beginning of writing this, I wanted
all this intimacy [for the characters], but then
I wanted to throw them out in a big world of
kids. I was like, “Those interviews, what if I
could incorporate them?” The kids you see
in the film, they’re all nonactors. Those are
all real interviews. There’s nothing scripted.
I had the questions, but then Joaquin and
Molly Webster, who is really [a producer from]
Radiolab, would really be there with the kids.
It is weird to have Joaquin Phoenix all
of a sudden walking into your bedroom.
Sometimes people would be like, “You’re the
Joker!” And he’d be like, “Yeah, but if you want
to talk about that, let’s do that in a minute.
Can you tell me about your room?” or, “What

stantly diminutizes his work.
HOFFMANN I’ve been saying
that same thing for months
in these interviews, when
people say, “What’s it like to
work with this child actor?
Did you give him any tips
because you were a child
actor?” And I’m like, first of
all, we’re all lining up to get
advice from him. He’s the
most prepared professional,
and it was just a privilege
to work with him, as it is to
get-go with him.
RÉSUMÉS
Mike, what was the most
Mike Mills challenging scene for you?
20th Century Women (2016) MILLS The film is often just
Beginners (2010)
Thumbsuckerr (2005) so tiny, intimate — like, two
people in a bed or two people
Gaby Hoffmann in a bath. But then that
Transparent (2014-19) scene where [Johnny] loses
Girls (2014-17) [Jesse] on a New York City
Wild (2014)
Obvious Childd (2014) street and the bus comes,
that was like 300 extras, two
cameras, a bus, all the cars
are ours — so that’s a lot of
do people always get wrong about your neigh-
borhood?” The kid has no choice but to be
there and do the interview, and they’re both
pretty magical at it.
What does the title of the film mean to you?
We don’t learn about its significance until
the end.
MILLS I wrote that title, but I really don’t know
what it means. I just like it. And I like that it’s
open-ended, and it feels right to me. Always
did. I don’t have a good explanation.
Interview edited for length and clarity.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 19 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

 ANIMATION

‘WHAT WE NEED ARE

Elaine Bogan (Spirit Untamed), Enrico Casarosa (Luca), Quiara Alegría Hudes (Vivo),
Carlos López Estrada (Raya and the Last Dragon), Phil Lord (The Mitchells vs the Machines),

Clark Spencer, producer, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Carlos López Estrada, director, Phil Lord, producer,
Encanto writer, Vivo Raya and the Last Dragon The Mitchells vs the Machines
POETS AND INSPIRATION’
Jonas Poher Rasmussen (Flee) and Clark Spencer (Encanto) delve into how
filmmakers are diversifying their talent and stories during THR’s Animation Roundtable

BY C A R OLY N GI A R DIN A
IL L U S T R AT IONS BY Z OH A R L A Z A R

THR’s annual Animation

Roundtable started
with a discussion about
what the phrase “animation is
film” (inspired by the recent
Animation Is Film Festival)
means to each of these storytell-
ers. “We often talk in our world
about the idea that animation is
a medium, not a genre, and the
medium is film and cinema,”
says Phil Lord, a producer on The
Mitchells vs the Machines, which
was produced by Sony Pictures
Animation and released on
Netflix. “And it really goes to the
very beginning of our art form.
To me, it’s no different, it’s sort of
synonymous.”
For Flee writer-director Jonas
Poher Rasmussen — whose docu-
mentary tells the harrowing story
of a man who left Afghanistan
as a child refugee — animation
was “liberating” as it allowed the
subject, Amin (a pseudonym), to
tell his story while maintaining
his anonymity. “Because Flee is
really a story about memory and
trauma, animation enabled us to
be more expressive,” he says.
Lord and Rasmussen par-
ticipated in the roundtable along
with Elaine Bogan, director of
DreamWorks Animation’s Spirit
Untamed; Enrico Casarosa, writer-
director of Disney/Pixar’s Luca;
Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote
the screenplay for Vivo (Sony
Pictures Animation and Netflix)
with director Kirk DeMicco;
Carlos López Estrada, who helmed
Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon
with Byron Howard; and Clark
Spencer, one of the producers of
Encanto as well as president of
Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Elaine Bogan, director, Enrico Casarosa, Jonas Poher Rasmussen,

Spirit Untamed director, Luca director, Flee

21
Which character in your movie
did you most relate to and why?
Enrico, Luca is set on the Italian
Riviera, where you grew up. Would
you like to start?
ENRICO CASAROSA I’m certainly very
close to Luca [Jacob Tremblay].
When I was a shy 11-year-old, I
met my best friend, and we left
his name the same, Alberto,
[for Luca’s friend] in the film.
[But how do you] make the very
personal universal? Luca was
a kid who struggled a little bit
to get out there and chase what
he wanted, and I loved how that
opened up these discussions with
our collaborators about these
friendships that we have when
they’re with someone very differ-
ent from us.
CLARK SPENCER For me, I think it’s
Mirabel [Stephanie Beatriz]. She’s
the main character [in Encanto]
and she’s a character surrounded
by a family where everyone has
an extraordinary gift and she, for
some reason, doesn’t. And she
on the exterior tries to always
have this sense of confidence
and say that it’s OK, but on the
interior she’s very insecure and
wonders why. My career started
on Wall Street and somehow
ended up at Disney Animation.
Every day, surrounded by the
most talented people, I’m always
pinching myself.
ELAINE BOGAN I think as soon as
I became involved with Spirit
Untamed, I had no choice but to
relate myself to the main charac-
ter, Lucky [Isabela Merced]. I’ve
been a horse rider since I was 8 or
9 years old, and a lot of our story
is about a human trying to form
some sort of communication with
a 1,200-pound animal and form
a partnership with it in order to
get where they need to go. A lot
of that story was very much from
life experience.
PHIL LORD Our protagonist [in
The Mitchells vs the Machines] is
Katie Mitchell [Abbi Jacobson], a
17-year-old film student. What I
love about Katie is she’s trying all
the film techniques for the first
time. She’s using cardboard boxes
and duct tape and drawing on
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
EL A INE BOG A N
Director, Spirit Untamed
top of the screen and just relish-
ing in what it feels like to express
yourself and show people who you
are for the first time. We had to
innovate a lot in order to express
that visually. It was really liberat-
ing watching [the crew] take that
on and bring a lot of freedom and
innovation to the screen.
QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES I love hearing
who everyone’s identifying with.
This is like a writing watercooler.
There’s a little bit of my heart
in every character, and maybe a
lot of myself in every character.
[In Vivo,] Gabi [Ynairaly Simo]
befriends our lead character, Vivo
[Lin-Manuel Miranda], much to
his chagrin. He does not really
want to be friends with this
chaotic wild child of a tween. But
the thing I really love about Gabi
is she has something that none of
the more sophisticated and adult
characters in the movie has, which
is she is more in tune and in touch
with her inner voice … I love that
it’s all there for her, the volume 11
and the volume one and the search
for the self inside of that.
JONAS POHER RASMUSSEN I’m in my
own film [Flee]. (Laughs.) But I
relate mostly to Amin, because
it’s really his journey. His jour-
ney is going from Afghanistan
to Denmark, but it’s really about
finding a place in the world. So,
it’s both his past, his sexuality
and everything. And I think in
every person’s life, there’s a point
22
where you’re kind of looking for
that place where you feel like you
can be who you are.
CARLOS LÓPEZ ESTRADA [In Raya
and the Last Dragon,] I relate to
Raya [Kelly Marie Tran]. The time
where we were telling this story
and where we are at in this coun-
try and beyond has been really
challenging. I think last year was
very difficult. [Raya] really sees
how broken people are, someone
who is just really jaded by our
ways and who has to learn to trust
again, who has to figure out how
to see eye to eye with people with
completely different ideologies
and eventually is able to coexist
with all these people who are just
seemingly impossibly different
from her. For me, I related so
much to the struggles she goes
through. Her journey back to
trust is one that I just felt was so
necessary, not just for me, but for
all of the people around me.
Let’s talk about the voice casting
decisions you made.
CASAROSA Both Jacob Tremblay
and Jack Dylan Grazer [who plays
Alberto] are some of the most
professional kids out there, but
they were very playful. We were
after a certain naturalism, and
anything that felt too polished
never feels right to me. I wanted
mistakes. I wanted low repetition.
Both Jacob and Jack were so game
to take the page away.
N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
LORD I once had to take gaff tape
out and put an X on the ground
where a young actor was only
allowed to stand. I was like,
“There’s a microphone. You could
move however you want, as long
as you stand on this X.” Often
[producer Chris Miller] and I will
audition a bunch of professional
actors — and Jacob is great —
but we’d rather put somebody
who’s not professional on the
microphone. I don’t know if I’d be
willing to do it for a whole movie,
but a lot of times it winds up
being somebody’s nephew with
like an interesting voice. And
thus you need the gaff tape and
the X. (Laughs.)
SPENCER Going off of what
you said, Phil, in animation,
we’re looking for the voice. [In
Encanto] Stephanie Beatriz, who
plays Mirabel, came in to read for
a different role, because we all
BOGAN, SPIRIT: COURTESY OF DREAMWORKS ANIMATION LLC. CASAROSA: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES FOR
know Stephanie from Brooklyn
DISNEY. HUDES: ROY ROCHLIN/WIREIMAGE. LUCA: COURTESY OF DISNEY/PIXAR. VIVO: COURTESY OF NETFLIX.
Nine-Nine, where she plays a very
tough character and has a very
deep voice. But when we met her
and she came in and she just
started to talk … we immediately
knew in that conversation that
she actually was our Mirabel.
Mirabel’s a character who has to
be both quirky and flawed. She’s
got to be funny. She’s also got to
be able to sing throughout this
entire film.
LORD Steph is amazing because
she plays to win every time.
 you see creatively where we’re I was something like one of five

ENR IC O C A S A R O S A headed and the projects we’re

Director, Luca
HUDES I have to hop in as a Steph
fan, myself. She was actually in
my first professionally produced
play in 2004 in Portland, Maine.
And then to work with her on In
the Heights was really wild. In
terms of Vivo, one of my favorite
experiences working with an
actor was with Juan de Marcos
[González], who plays Andrés, one
of the elder characters. They’re
both musicians. We thought,
first of all, we have to get real
musicians to voice these parts.
And Juan de Marcos had never
acted before, but he is the carrier
of the Buena Vista Social Club
legacy. He is the carrier of the
Afro Cuban All-Stars legacy. And
so he brings this treasure trove
of life experience. You can hear
that legacy.
QUI A R A A L EGRÍ A HUDES
Writer, Vivo
In the areas of diversity, where
are you seeing progress, and what
needs the most attention?
SPENCER There’s been incred-
ible progress, and there’s still
an immense amount of work to
do. There is more inclusive and
diverse storytelling that’s hap-
pening. [At Disney, we’re] really
looking to tell stories that are rep-
resentative of people who love our
movies and want to see themselves
on the screen. And I think that
means you have a responsibility to
figure out how do you always bring
that to the table. But the area that I
think is in most in need is behind
the camera. … When Jennifer
Lee stepped into her position [as
chief creative officer] three and a
half years ago, she set it as her top
initiative. And I think that’s where
doing. You also see what’s changed
internally in terms of who is tell-
ing those stories.
LORD I agree with everything you’re
saying. As a business, we’re a work
in progress. One of the things
that’s really exciting is that the
schools are much more diverse
and there are a lot more women,
and beyond the schools, people
are learning this craft online on
YouTube. The access is a lot greater
than it’s ever been. One of the chal-
lenges is leadership and making
sure that we’re inviting people
into those positions and helping
them. Our production designer
on Mitchells is Lindsey Olivares,
and she was somebody we noticed
on Instagram, who just had an
incredible body of personal work.
I remember being in a meeting,
going, “We need to find a produc-
tion designer who can draw like
this woman.” We were like, “Well,
why don’t we hire this woman?”
We’ve got a million people who can
teach you how to manage a team,
we have a lot of support here at the
studio. What we need are poets
and inspiration. And it was a really
great success story.
Elaine, you just made your fea-
ture directorial debut with Spirit
Untamed. But we still don’t see a
lot of female directors. What are
you seeing?
BOGAN I went to Sheridan College,
and I remember in my first year
girls in our class, out of 30 people.
I’ve talked to some people who are
now graduating from Sheridan,
who said there’s probably 60 per-
cent girls in their class. I really
am starting to see that reflected
in the people around me at the
studio. [For Spirit,] we were tell-
ing a story about three young
women who come from diverse
backgrounds, and [producer
Karen Foster and I] made it [our]
mission to make sure that we
reflected that behind the cam-
era as well. We did end up with
a lot of female leadership on the
crew — our VFX supervisor, our
production managers, our story
artists. I think we had something
like 60/40 percent women on the
story team.
CASAROSA Great points you’re all
making. We had an interesting
journey on our movie because
we were producing a story set
in 1950s Italy, and you can start
asking yourself, “How do you
bring some representation here?”
We realized that would have been
hard to do with authenticity,
and so we found other different
ways that we could represent
some diversity. We thought, for
example, more about disability
and bringing people that are
not always seeing themselves in
movies in there. Our Massimo
character was a wonderful col-
laboration with the filmmakers
from Crip Camp. And those are
things that we talk a lot about
in each movie. I don’t think that
every movie has to check all the
boxes, because I think it can feel
like tokenism, but it’s so impor-
tant that we’re all having these
conversations and really trying to
think about ways kids need to see
themselves on the screen, wher-
ever they’re from or whatever
their situations.
LÓPEZ ESTRADA Elaine, you were
talking about your relationship
with your producer, and I feel like
this a good opportunity for me
to give a shout-out to ours, who
was so integral in building the
relationship that we have with
our cultural consultants. [Raya’s

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 23 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

Southeast story thrust] was made that is multilingual, that have
up of cultural anthropologists,
architects, dancers, musicians.
different first languages, even
within families — the two
It just became integral to every- languages, Spanish and English,
thing we did. might have been acquired at dif-
LORD It’s really important to make ferent ages, therefore leading to
sure that our crews are not just, different accents.
like you say, checking a box, but The other one being body type.
really creating a community. On I just really wanted to push on the
Mitchells, our protagonist Katie is body types and in particular for
LGBTQ+, and having those rooms more plus-size and round-figured
with our crewmembers who iden- females, to not still have a kind
tify that way, sitting around and of hourglass shape that just feels
talking about how best to repre- enlarged, but to push against that
sent her, was really powerful. silhouette and have females —
HUDES In my writing for Vivo, two more than one, so again, it’s not
things were really present in my tokenism, but it’s the relationship
mind. With the accent casting, of many characters and visuals
[we] really wanted to steer clear — and one where the waist is not
of putting accents onto people smaller than the hips. This is a
that don’t naturally have them. female silhouette that I still feel
I can hear when it’s not some- imprinted on these wonderful
one’s natural speaking pattern. animation heroes growing up, but
Honoring the diversity of accents they all had that body type, and
that exist within a community none of the girls in my life did.
C A R L O S L ÓP E Z ES T R A D A
Director, Raya and
the Last Dragon
P HIL L OR D
Producer, The Mitchells
vs the Machines
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 24
Encanto has some really interest-
ing silhouettes, which got me
excited. We’re far from alone in
doing that, but it was nice to add
another stone to that path.
RASMUSSEN We don’t have a
big bunch of Afghan actors in
Denmark. For Flee, it was really
about getting into the Afghan
communities and finding people
who could represent Amin and his
family. Most of them had refugee
backgrounds and had identical
stories to Amin’s or [knew] family
members [who] had gone through
the same thing, so they could
really relate to what happens in
the film. You could tell that when
they did the voice acting.
SPENCER Building on what Jonas
and Quiara said, if you only
cast from within, it will never
expand. When we were thinking
about a three-generation family
in Encanto, we wanted to think
about how, to your point, Quiara,
how would the accents be within
three generations? We worked
very hard to figure out who we
were going to cast for the Abuela
role. We had to go into Colombia,
and we found this incredible
actress, María Cecilia Botero,
who, by the way, is very big in
Colombia. To your point, Jonas,
it’s about doing that hard work.
LORD One of the interesting things
about this moment is a lot of
the names that are on the top of
everybody’s list are working and
are not available. And I think the
critical thing is not to find diverse
casting when it’s convenient, but
when it’s inconvenient.
LÓPEZ ESTRADA Yeah. And it just
feels like [there’s a need for]
specificity and authenticity —
you can’t get away with faking it
anymore. I think that people see
through lazy decision-making
and see through irresponsible
decision-making. In a great way,
it allows us all to look in places
that probably you would not look
at normally.
BOGAN A lot of the reason why I’m
probably here in a director’s chair
as a woman is because of all the
people around me and the people
who have been around me for the
N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
JON A S P OHER R A SMU S
Director, Flee
past 10 years, pushing me to take
opportunities I didn’t neces-
sarily feel ready for. Coming up
through the industry, it wasn’t
the norm for a woman to be
pushed into this role. The people
around me [were] continuously
supporting me and providing me
the skills that I needed to fully
learn what that role was as I was
doing it — [which] was a terrify-
ing process. But the environment
in animation particularly is so
collaborative and so supportive.
It’s not just filling those roles, but
taking them and running with
RASMUSSEN: CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES FOR SCAD. SPENCER: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES FOR DISNEY. ESTRADA: ANDREW TOTH/GETTY IMAGES FOR GOOD DEED
them so that we can start seeing
bigger changes in the near future.
LÓPEZ ESTRADA Same here. I was, I
ENTERTAINMENT. LORD: PARAS GRIFFIN/GETTY IMAGES. FLEE: COURTESY OF NEON. ENCANTO, RAYA: COURTESY OF DISNEY. MITCHELLS: COURTESY OF NETFLIX.
think, the first director they hired
after Jen came on [as CCO], and
I found out that in the [Disney
Animation] studio’s nearly
97-year history I was the first
director of color to have been in
there. I think that in the next five
years, we’re going to see stories
and people that we have never
seen before onscreen. I hope that
it’s the beginning of a new era and
that we never go back.
LORD You have to break the pattern
before you can see how pernicious
the pattern is, right? One of the
things I think is really impor-
tant is to make sure to make the
affirmative case for this move-
ment, which is that the movies
get better, the audience is better
served and you can make more
S SEN
money, as I feel like so often we
make the punitive case that like,
we’re doing this so that we don’t
get called out, but we’re doing this
because it’s better for the medium
and better for the audience.
HUDES [On Halloween,] it was
really cool to see a bunch of young
Latinas of all hues, just out there
with their different body types,
dressed up as Gabi.
SPENCER Same for us. Qui
[Nguyen], one of our screenwrit-
ers on Raya, tells this beautiful
story about Halloween. He was
walking around with his kids, and
they started seeing all of these
women dressed up as Raya. And
one of his kids just looks up at
him and says, “Dad, you did this.”
And I think [about] what it meant
for him to hear those words and
what it meant for his kids.
CASAROSA Going back to the idea of
casting from afar, there’s a silver
lining about this pandemic. We
actually ended up casting way
more from Italy than we would’ve
have thought normally, because
normally it’d be like, “You have to
come into the studio.” Now it’s a
little difficult when you’re record-
ing from people’s closets, but it
actually is opening opportunities
to really work all over the world
with talent.
LÓPEZ ESTRADA It’s voice talent, but
it’s also behind the scenes. All of a
sudden the geographical boundar-
ies really don’t mean anything.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
We’re able to bring in story artists,
voice talents. It’s unfortunate
that it took this for us to realize
that it was so easy to break these
borders, but here we are.
LORD We’ve always been a world-
wide art form. It really is exciting
to know that you can hire a board
artist from anywhere and they
can work and be part of your crew.
They might lose a little sleep, but
it’s remarkable how fluid the work
process [can be].
BOGAN I actually found when we
were recording younger actors —
our Snips character was played by
Lucian Perez, who I think was less
than 10 years old when we were
recording him — I’m pretty sure
we had a big silver lining because
he was sitting in his bedroom sur-
rounded by his own things [while
we were recording]. He wasn’t
sent into this weird sound booth
with lights pointing at him and all
the microphones. And because of
that, I feel like he was really able
to be a kid and sound like a kid.
That was one of the lucky parts of
recording from home.
In recent years, we’ve also seen
an explosion of animated work,
particularly from the streaming
services. Where do you see anima-
tion heading?
LORD It’s such an exciting time.
The work always blows me
away. The work in television
is so experimental. This is an
25
CL A R K SP ENCER
Producer, Encanto
experimental medium … The stu-
dent work is so scary because it’s
so good. We’re all doomed. I just
hope they hire me, because I need
my insurance. (Laughs.)
CASAROSA I love that it’s pushing
the medium in several different
ways. Jonas, I was very excited by
what you were doing with Flee
and that’s pushing documentary
in a new direction. Elizabeth Ito
comes to mind with City of Ghosts.
LORD The best!
CASAROSA That is such a unique,
beautiful, new way to take an
animated TV show. You see these
wonderful sparks that are com-
pletely new, and it wouldn’t have
happened without this request
from streaming. [At Pixar,] it
gives an opportunity to diverse
creators and gives creators an
opportunity to play with longer
form. For a studio like Pixar that
has been focused on only shorts
and features, now we have a TV
series. It’s really exciting.
LÓPEZ ESTRADA I think the inde-
pendent world is so exciting.
And Phil, to hear that you found
your production designer on
Instagram, it’s just such an
incredible story. And I feel like
those are going to become more
and more popular. The accessibil-
ity and the ease that you have to
upload something and to find an
audience and to all of a sudden
become a known entity just from
the work that you’re doing in your
N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
bedroom or your garage — I hope
those filmmakers get more and
bigger opportunities in the next
few years. When the Instagram
artists and the Instagram anima-
tors and illustrators start to get
feature film and studio support,
the industry as a whole is going to
grow in such a beautiful, unex-
pected way.
SPENCER As Enrico was saying,
because of Disney+, we literally
expanded into series that we’ve
never done before at Disney
Animation, and we have five in
development and production. …
And I think we’ve been limited
in a way by the number of shows
either television needed in the day
and or theaters wanted in the day
or the amount of money a studio
might have to invest into either
of those two things. But now it’s
not that way. It’s unlimited in a
way — even though there’s only so
much money in the world, there
is so much more money being
invested into creative talent and
what’s going out there because
these services exist. Whether it’s
theaters or whether it’s streaming
or whether it’s television as we
knew it before streaming, it needs
creative product, and they’re will-
ing to experiment and take risks
they would never have been able
to do before.
Interview edited for length
and clarity.

‘The Worst Thing
It Could Do Is Stop Us
From Doing More’
For director Jon M. Chu, the legacy of Warner Bros.’ In the Heights
is greater than box office numbers: ‘We can’t control who shows up,
but we can control the art that we make’ By Beatrice Verhoeven
I
n the Heights had all the elements to be
a smash hit: an adaptation of a Tony-
winning musical from Lin-Manuel
Miranda, an incredible cast of Latinx
performers with backing from Warner Bros.
and a final product that earned critical
acclaim. And yet, its theatrical release, which
grossed $44 million worldwide, was under-
whelming, likely because it premiered during
the pandemic and also on HBO Max. But
director Jon M. Chu notes that the lackluster
box office performance is not something to
harp on, because the film achieved something
much greater.
“This is the new face of leading men
and women in Hollywood, and they’re all
people of color,” Chu tells THR. “The biggest
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 26
accomplishment [is] putting joy out into the
world with a movie that has not existed before,
that shows the precedent of a studio that can
do this and throw down for a story like this,
with heroes that don’t look like the heroes that
Hollywood usually delivers.”
The film, wrapped before COVID-19 struck,
was written by Quiara Alegría Hudes and
based on the Broadway musical of the same
name by Hudes and Miranda. Its cast included
Anthony Ramos, Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace
and Melissa Barrera.
Chu spoke to THR about why he wanted
to adapt In the Heights for the big screen, the
challenges in doing so, the criticism of the lack
of Afro Latino actors in the film — and why
it’s important to have these conversations.
N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
What drew you to make a movie adaptation of
the musical?
I saw it when I was making my first movie,
Step Up 2: The Streets, and it immediately
spoke to my family and my community
story, even though I’m not Latino and I’m not
from New York City. Lin has an amazing way
of translating human-to-human experiences.
And I felt it. I have my abuela — my boo boo
— and I have my pressures that my parents
give me. As Asian Americans, we had all
different approaches to what it means to be
Asian American. But I never thought I would
actually be able to make the movie. When I
was approached about it by [producer] Scott
Sanders — I didn’t know Lin at the time
— what I liked about it was that it wasn’t a
simple translation to a movie. It wasn’t a
direct one-to-one. That gave us a lot of free-
dom to be able to craft a story and find the
nuggets and piece it together. And credit to
Quiara, she was the key to all of this. Lin and
Quiara really understood both worlds and
could merge the two. And we became very
close during that time as we developed it,
and we got to speak freely of our experiences.
That’s an amazing way to make a movie.
You said yourself you are not Latino and didn’t
grow up in Washington Heights. What steps did
you take to learn about the culture?
I had Lin and Quiara, who still live in
Washington Heights, to be my guide for the
specifics, because I know how important all
that is — the food, the traditions, how you sit
at a table, who sits where at a table. That’s why
I knew it could be a story that would tran-
scend its specificity because I already related
to it, and I think it’s a movie that celebrates
working people and people who take care of
each other. Our eight-minute opening num-
ber is about the bodega owner that you pass by
every day. It’s about the piragua guy that you
don’t pay attention to. And these people have
hopes and dreams … and let’s put that on the
pedestal. We got to do that on the big screen
with a big studio, like Warner Bros., to back
that. I feel like we didn’t fully get to celebrate
how amazing the accomplishment of making
a movie with an all-Latinx cast in a musical
backed by a giant studio was, whereas Latinx
characters usually only get 4.6 percent of the
dialogue in a movie — that’s crazy to me.
And it was about joy. No guns, no fighting, no
drugs, no enemies.

What went through your mind about its box
office performance?
We can’t control who shows up, but we can
control the art that we make and what we’re
trying to put on that screen, especially in a
time when we’re resetting what stories should
look like. I wish more people saw it because
I thought it could have been such a break-
through moment for Latinx actors in the way
Crazy Rich Asians broke open that cast. But
then again, our cast did break open. Anthony
Ramos is the lead of Transformers. I know that
would have not happened without this movie.
Leslie Grace is Batgirl. Corey Hawkins is in
The Color Purple. You have Melissa Barrera
in Scream 5. Stephanie Beatriz in Encanto. So
much has come from this movie — people
may have not been connecting the dots, but
that is incredible.
The movie received backlash for its lack of
Afro Latino actors. What was your reaction to
that discussion?
I’m really proud of the conversation that is
able to be had. You can’t have a conversation
about colors without a movie with people of
color in it. Nothing’s intentional, so you’re
like, “All right, someone’s telling you they
aren’t being seen.” We’ve been those people
before. So how do you want to react when
you say that to them? And we tried to act in
that way — not to be defensive, not to cut the
person who’s trying to express this to you,
but instead to give room for that conversa-
tion … I think what it mostly shows is that
there need to be more storytellers and more
stories from studios so that more movies can
reveal more things that we need to be doing.
Of course, it was hard to hear, but at the same
CHU: MICHAEL BUCKNER. HEIGHTS: MACALL POLAY/WARNER BROS (2). SPENCER: FREDERIC BATIER/NEON.
time, that’s what happens when you’re at the
cutting edge of what we’re supposed to be
doing. The worst thing that it could do is stop
us from doing more. The best thing it could
do is illuminate that there’s more stuff for
everyone to do in this … We put an African
American man and an Afro Latino woman on
the side of a building that spun around and
they danced like Fred [Astaire] and Ginger
[Rogers] in the most elegant, iconic way and
showed that they could have been starring in
these movies 50 years ago. And now they’re
movie stars that are leading other franchises.
That’s the legacy of this movie. And as well
as the conversation that proceeded [from] it.
That’s all progress.
From left: Jon M.
Chu directs Corey
Hawkins and
Leslie Grace on
the set of In the
Heights; Dascha
Polanco, Daphne
Rubin-Vega
and Stephanie
Beatriz in the epic
swimming pool
musical number.
Who was the most difficult character to cast?
The hardest person for me to cast was Usnavi
because if it was being told through his point
of view, that person had to come in and out
of song, dialogue, movements and real-life
moments so fluidly and so naturally and so
honestly. That person was going to lead the
tone of this movie, and they were going to be
very vulnerable. We looked at a lot of people.
[Ramos] was brought up early [in casting
discussions], but I was also starting to avoid
anyone that had done the show in some way. I
sat down with him at coffee and he told me his
story, who he was and what the story meant to
him, and we both were bawling. I knew that we
could not just cast him in this movie, but the
whole movie could be built around him.
How many extras would you say were part of
the movie?
The pool scene alone had 700 people in that
number. In that opening number, we have
so many people — not just extras, but people
from the actual community. The guy who’s
sweeping the floor is the guy who actually
sweeps that floor. The people who work in that
dessert shop are the people who actually work
in the dessert shop. It was a whole community
helping us, plus dancers — we understood
that diversity also meant in the language of
dance and movement and music. Every day,
extras, crew or actors could speak up about the
authenticity of something there, and it was
always a part of our process.
What was the most challenging scene to shoot?
It was “Paciencia Y Fe.” That scene was shot in
a real, abandoned subway station, and we had
to light it up like a stage with evolving colored
lights, with 50 dancers down there and all the
choreography was around Olga [Merediz]. I
think we’re like three stories down, and it’s
icky and smells nasty down there, and you have
Olga performing and it was a huge feat to pull
off. We wanted to tell [her immigrant] story in
the most epic, elegant way, because that’s the
way she remembers this trip. And then she has
to decide, has she done her duty here on earth?
It has this very emotional pivot to it that I loved.
That’s a scene that I’m very proud of, but there’s
a lot of great scenes. Obviously, turning around
on a building is insane. That took everybody
— both Corey and Leslie were very vulnerable
because they’re not “dancer dancers,” and I
can’t cut away from them. They have to be able
to do it … In “Champagne,” between Usnavi and
Vanessa, they’re singing live in a real apart-
ment, there’s a piano in the streets playing.
We’re in a very small space, you can’t have a
camera shadow and you can’t see the lights or
the cords. This thing has to be in complete sync
and live. That’s probably our biggest moment
when we all thought, “Wow, we’re truly a team.”
Interview edited for length and clarity.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 27
‘Once the
Doors Are Closed,
All You Have
Is True Fiction’
Kristen Stewart on the set of Spencer with
director Pablo Larraín.
I
n Neon’s Spencer, Kristen Stewart gives a
beguiling performance as Princess Diana
of Wales. Taking place over three days dur-
ing the Christmas holiday as the royal family
gathers to enjoy extravagant meals and throw
shooting parties in the country, the film sees
Diana falling apart at the seams. With rumors of
Prince Charles’ infidelity looming over her — as
well as the crushing weight of royal tradition
that leaves the princess losing any semblance
of control over her life and body — Spencer
resembles a psychological thriller about the
dissolution of a marriage and a woman on the
verge of a breakdown.
For director Pablo Larraín, who explored
a similar interiority with his 2016 film, Jackie
(which starred Natalie Portman as Jacqueline
Kennedy immediately following her husband’s
assassination), the concept of a biopic is pure
fantasy. “The fact that we can re-create certain
things and portray who a person really was —
that can be a suffocating idea,” says Larraín.
To free himself from the prison of historical
accuracy meant capturing the essence of
Diana. “My personal process is choosing a few
days of someone’s life to show how they would
behave in the most transparent and unsettling
ways [amid a crisis],” he says. “That crisis can
define the rest of that person’s life.”
The disastrous union between the prince
and princess is an oft-told tale, first in the
tabloids and made-for-TV movies and most
recently on Netflix’s The Crown. Spencer’s
perspective, however, is entirely from Diana’s
point of view — and with that subjectivity
came a creative license to tell an emotionally
accurate tale about a moment in her life. “It’s a
cocktail of respect and freedom,” says Larraín.
“I believe that once the doors closed, all you
have is true fiction.”
“True fiction” might be an oxymoron, but
it’s an accurate way to describe the direc-
tor’s approach to his subject — who, after all,
transcended even the royal family (to their frus-
tration) to become an internationally beloved
figure of both frailty and strength. “Diana was
a regular, ordinary person in a very unusual
context,” the director adds. “We’re dealing with
real people and with real institutions, and it
was important to find a balance where I could
personally go to sleep [at night without] feeling
that I’m hurting anyone.” — TYLER COATES
N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
2 3
 2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Anatomy of a Contender

— The Making of —

DUNE
How Denis Villeneuve mined his boyhood obsession with Frank Herbert’s
classic novel to create the big-screen adaptation fans have always wanted
BY PAT R ICK BR ZESK I

I
n June 2018, Denis Villeneuve
and his production designer
Patrice Vermette were soar-
ing through the sky in a
rented helicopter, high above
Jordan’s majestic Wadi Rum des-
ert, when they spotted a caravan
of black SUVs snaking through the
vast, rocky landscape below them.
“Is that another scout?”
Vermette remembers shout-
ing as politely as possible over
the helicopter’s roar. “No, no,”
their guide, a representative
from Jordan’s film commission,
assured them. “No one else is
shooting here now.”
Known in Arabic as “The Valley
of the Moon,” Wadi Rum is one of
the world’s great deserts, famous
to film history as the principal
shooting location for Lawrence
of Arabia. Villeneuve had visited
the desert a decade earlier, while
scouting his breakthrough French
Canadian feature Incendies (2010),
which earned a foreign-language
Oscar nomination and his unof-
ficial entrée into Hollywood.
“It wasn’t right for Incendies,
1
but I told myself at the time, if I
ever get to do Dune, I am coming
back here,” he recalls. At the time,
4
adapting Frank Herbert’s sprawl-
ing, seminal 1965 sci-fi classic
was nothing more than an old
dream that he occasionally (and
privately) revisited in his imagi-
nation — but the trip to the desert
had stirred deep memories. “The
rock formations are so strange
and beautiful,” he says, “exactly
as I imagined them when I read
Dune as a teenager. And the qual-
ity of the light and the enormous
scale of everything — you have an
encounter with nature there that
fills you with humility.”
Growing up in a rural Quebec
village during the 1970s,
Villeneuve was a cerebral, anx-
ious child who found escape in
reading, studying science and
imagining his own worlds. He
says he became fixated with the
possibility of becoming a movie
director, if not a scientist, at an
improbably early age. But unlike
many of the grown-up wunder-
kinder who have found their way
to the forefront of Hollywood’s
directorial ranks, Villeneuve
had no access to a home movie
camera. Instead, he and a child-
hood friend spent their summer
afternoons drawing storyboards
together of imagined films, actu-
ally parsing out sequences and
picturing how they would frame
each shot. Their most involved
project was a visually ambi-
tious adaptation of Dune, which
they imagined as their would-be
magnum opus. The book had hit
Villeneuve, then just 13, with all
of the gestalt-shifting weight
of one’s first big adolescent art
experience — the discovery of a
serious work of adult complexity
that nonetheless feels as if it were
created expressly for you. “I was
so obsessed, genuinely obsessed,”
he says. Sometimes when he had
trouble sleeping, which was often,
he would play imagined scenes
of his adaptation in his mind’s
eye — the peregrinations of
Dune’s forlorn hero, Paul Atreides,
seeking solace among the mysti-
cal desert and the culture of its
native Fremen people.
From a distance, it can appear
as if lightning eventually struck
Villeneuve twice. Not only did he
grow into one of the world’s most
esteemed directors — among the
exceedingly few in Hollywood
today making unabashedly
auteurist cinema on the biggest
tentpole canvas possible — he
later found his way back to the
Wadi Rum, with a $165 mil-
lion production budget from
Legendary Entertainment and
Warner Bros., to shoot the one
movie he had dreamed of making
since boyhood.
As they swooped from rock
formation to rock formation, the
mysterious cavalcade of SUVs,
some 16 vehicles in array, had
continued to concern Vermette.
“That really looked like a big
tech scout,” he remembers tell-
ing Villeneuve, who often can
look like he’s wincing know-
ingly when he smiles. When the
chopper was back on the ground,
Vermette followed his instincts
and texted a friend, Paul Inglis,
who had worked on Villeneuve’s
Blade Runner 2049 and since had
been hired as the supervising

1 Director of photography Greig Fraser (left) and Timothée Chalamet in Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert. Fraser had just wrapped Jon Favreau’s The
Mandalorian for the small screen when he began work on Dune. “You really have to put your mind back in a movie theater when you make that
transition,” Fraser says. “When you’re shooting handheld for Imax, the audience will feel every breath you take because it’s such a massive experience.
I tried to get as fit as possible — I didn’t want to ruin a great moment by going unsteady.”
2 From left: A crewmember, Denis Villeneuve, Fraser, Chalamet and Josh Brolin. Dune shot in two desert locations, Jordan’s Wadi Rum and Abu Dhabi’s
vast Liwa Desert. Notes producer Mary Parent, “Denis wanted Saudi Arabia for its mystical rocks and Abu Dhabi for the enormous sand dunes.”
3 A rendering of the Bene Gesserit, a secretive sisterhood with supernatural powers that wields immense power in the world of Dune. Costume designer
Jacqueline West says the ancient Marseilles tarot cards, the Golden Tarot, were among her main references for how she dressed the Bene Gesserit.
4 Villeneuve (left) and Javier Bardem, who plays the leader of the Fremen tribe. Villeneuve was “nearly brought to tears” when he discovered the desert
location where he would shoot Paul Atreides’ first encounter with the Fremen because of how perfectly it matched the way he had envisioned the scene
when reading Dune as a child.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 29 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Anatomy of a Contender

art director on J.J. Abrams’ Star

Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, then 1
in production. “Hey, man, random
question. Do you happen to be in
Wadi Rum right now?” Vermette
recalls writing. Inglis texted back,
“Yup, was that you who just flew
over us?”
The Dune crew’s concerns were
confirmed: Star Wars already was
there, shooting in Villeneuve’s
dream desert location. Similar
worries already were lurking in
the thoughts of Dune’s key cre-
1 Villeneuve (left) says he and Chalamet benefited from being able to
ative team. communicate in French on set: “It was so great to go back to French with
Timothée for several reasons. I could be more intellectually precise with him,
Over the decades after its and it also gave us a bubble on this huge American movie.”
publication, Dune arguably 2 For the multifaceted Lady Jessica, played by Rebecca Ferguson, West
looked to the paintings of Goya and Caravaggio to capture the character’s
became the world’s best-selling romantic side. For the “nun-like Bene Gesserit” dimension, she leaned on
science fiction novel of all time, Late-Middle Ages Italian painter Giotto. “I had to embody all of those somewhat
contradictory things in her costumes,” West says.
but it also accrued a mystique of 3 Stellan Skarsgard (far right) as the villainous Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
“Denis was concerned that he needed to look strong and menacing; he couldn’t
being potentially unadaptable. look silly,” says costume designer West. “I suggested that maybe Marlon Brando
The story’s world was simply too in Apocalypse Now would be a good place to start.” Inset: an artist’s rendering
of the Baron’s overall look.
big, its language too baroque, its
thematic concerns too complex
to boil down into a commercial
movie. As Villeneuve excit- 2
edly describes it, “There are so
many layers: a coming-of-age
story, critiques of colonialism
and capitalism, a philosophy of
nature as a religion, a love story,
a Shakespearean court drama,
planetary ecology, and a warning
about the savior complex.”
Cult Chilean-French direc-
tor Alejandro Jodorowsky
famously — or infamously —
attempted the first big-screen
3
adaptation of Dune during the
mid-1970s, with a cast that was
set to include Salvador Dalí, “These two filmmakers are always resolved that he would Wars, of course, has the Jedi and
Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, David true masters, and I have noth- “not think at all about what had the Force. The list goes on.
Carradine and the director’s ing but the biggest respect for been done before.” Despite his hard-core Dune
own son in the lead, along with a them,” Villeneuve says. “I think Star Wars, however, would pres- allegiances, Villeneuve also is
psychedelic soundtrack by Pink Jodorowsky’s Dune would have ent subtler problems. “George unequivocal in his love of Star
Floyd. When Jodorowsky esti- been an insanely great movie, Lucas never hid the fact that he Wars. “I’m probably a filmmaker
mated that the runtime would but sadly he never got the money took a lot from Dune, and you can because of Star Wars, and one of
have to be more than 12 hours to to make it. All of his pieces are see Star Wars as another adapta- my favorite movies of all time is

encapsulate his take on Dune’s
story, financiers predictably
fled. Later in the decade, Dino De
Laurentiis acquired the rights,
and Ridley Scott briefly worked
on a script before bailing, at
which point David Lynch fate-
fully signed on to direct. Lynch’s
experience on the project — and
his ensuing battles with De
Laurentiis and Universal Pictures
over the edit — were so painful
to him that he disavowed the film
and refuses to speak about it to
this day.
so powerful. But would it have
been a good adaptation of the
actual book? That I don’t know.”
Villeneuve remembers being
thrilled when he learned in the
early ’80s that Lynch was adapt-
ing the book he adored. “I was one
of the first ones in the theater
on opening weekend, and there
are elements in his version that I
really love, but I felt that he devi-
ates too much from the book, and
I was not satisfied.”
During the years he dreamt of
his Dune adaptation, Villeneuve
tion if you want to,” Villeneuve
notes. The list of similarities
runs long. Dune’s desert planet
Arrakis is orbited by two moons;
Luke Skywalker’s home planet,
the desert orb Tatooine, has two
suns. Both worlds are inhabited
by giant mythical sandworms.
Dune’s universe is overseen by
the evil imperium; Star Wars has
the Empire. Dune has the Bene
Gesserit, a secretive sisterhood
whose members train their bodies
and minds to wield a superhuman
power they call “the voice”; Star
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The Empire Strikes Back,” the film-
maker says. “Frankly, one of the
biggest achievements of Star Wars
was the design. What those guys
did at the time was pure genius.”
(Frank Herbert was somewhat
less charitable: “I’m going to try
very hard not to sue,” he said in an
interview shortly after Star Wars
came out in 1977.)
The complicating irony that
Villeneuve foresaw was that
Lucas had borrowed from Dune’s
world so liberally, and Star Wars
had become such a fixture of

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 30 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3


global pop culture, that if he were
to stay true to Herbert’s novel,
viewers throughout the world
might think that he, in fact, was
the one ripping off Star Wars.
“If you think about trying to do
your own space opera today, I’m
sorry, you are fucked by the huge
elephant in the room that is Star
Wars,” he says, laughing.
Nonetheless, Villeneuve long
had believed that it would be
essential, as much as possible, not
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
“Denis wears his passions on his sleeve
and is unafraid to do so, and that vulnerability
was super inspiring to me.” T IM O T HÉ E C H A L A ME T
to approach his Dune adaptation
in ways that were overly reac-
tive, or implicitly deferential, to
Star Wars. “I tried to focus on the
emotions I had when I read the
book, how images could create
those feelings and how it would
influence the world’s design,”
Villeneuve explains. “There was
so much rigor in how Frank
Herbert approached his descrip-
tion of cultural history and the
planetary ecosystems. I wanted
to approach the design and the
whole world of the movie in the
same way. The book has fantasy
elements, but I knew it would be
helpful for the creatures, vehicles
and technology to feel as real and
grounded aspossible.”
Back in Jordan, after confirm-
ing that J.J. Abrams had beaten
them to the Wadi Rum with Rise
31
of Skywalker, Villeneuve and
Vermette arranged to meet with
Inglis and others from the Star
Wars team at a hotel bar. “We told
them, ‘We don’t want to know
anything about your story, but
let’s protect both of us and make
sure we don’t end up shooting the
exact same areas of the desert,’ ”
Vermette remembers. “It was
all cool.”
F
or all of the accursed
talk the past adaptation
attempts had generated,
Villeneuve’s project, when it
finally came together, was
the result of pure serendipity.
“So it started here,” Villeneuve
says when I meet him in
September at the Venice Film
Festival on the morning after
Dune’s world premiere. “I came
N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
here for Arrival in 2016, and I
remember a journalist asking me
what would be my dream proj-
ect: ‘If I had all the money in the
world, what I would love to do?’ I
said, spontaneously, ‘Dune.’ It was
one of my oldest dreams, but say-
ing it created synchronicity.”
Mary Parent, vice chair
of worldwide production at
Legendary Pictures, and her
producer partner Cale Boyter
acquired adaptation rights to
Dune in 2011 after keeping an eye
on their availability for years.
Following several twists and
turns — including job changes,
new legal representation and
more mundane developments
typical of high-profile adaptation
deals — Parent finally cleared
all rights for Dune in fall 2016.
“That’s when it first felt like the
movie gods shined on us,” she
says. While drinking her coffee
and perusing trade news one
morning, Parent came across the
article about Villeneuve’s Venice
proclamation. “Denis was at the
top of the very shortlist of direc-
tors I thought it could be right to
go on this adventure with, and
there he was in print, just declar-
ing that it was his dream project.
That had never happened to me
and will probably never happen
again, but I was just like, ‘Great,
get Denis on the phone!’ ”
Villeneuve describes the call as
the shortest business conversa-
tion of his career, while Parent
says it was the easiest director
hire she’s ever made. “Sometimes
in early conversations, direc-
tors will come in and say, ‘I want
to make a movie about this and
here’s sort of what I see, but I need
to think about it more,’ ” Parent
says. “But Denis came in and sat
on my sofa and was like, ‘Here’s
what it would look like; here’s
what it would feel like; here’s how
I would handle the book; here’s
what I think is most important’
— he had the full picture, from
literally decades of thinking
about it,” she says. “On top of that,
he’s a really special, sensitive
human being. I kind of felt like I
had won the lottery.”
Villeneuve decided early on
that he would take more time to
develop Dune than he had on his
2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Anatomy of a Contender

recent blistering run of ambitious
projects — Sicario (2015), Arrival
(2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
— because he wanted to co-write
Dune himself.
The first structural decision,
which Villeneuve was adamant
about, was to break the book
into two films. The story and its
world were too huge to fit into one
movie while remaining faithful
to Herbert’s vision. He briefly dis-
cussed with Legendary the idea
of developing and shooting both
films simultaneously, but the
studio balked at the expense. “I’m
so grateful they didn’t let me,”
Villeneuve says. “I would not have
had the stamina for two movies
of this size back-to-back. It would
have killed me.”
The first challenge in writ-
ing the script was to determine
how to adequately condense an
extremely dense novel. Dune,
after all, is set in the distant
future amid a complex inter-
stellar society ruled over by an
emperor, with various feudal
minds of the characters as they
react and strategize in the midst
of shifting circumstances.
Lynch’s adaptation famously — or
infamously, depending on your
appreciation for camp — tried
to capture this dimension with
character voiceovers. “With no
disrespect to the master, I didn’t
want to go that way,” Villeneuve
says. “The idea was to use
cinematic elements instead of
having voiceovers, that by being
“We all wanted to make more than just a
movie — we wanted to give you an experience.”
H A N S Z IM M E R
close to their intimate moments,
we will feel or have a glimpse
into their emotional state.” He
devised a sign language that Paul
and his mother occasionally use
to communicate to add another
layer that showed how the char-
acters are thinking strategically
in tense situations. “I also had a
conversation very early on with
although there would be many
hard-core Dune fans among the
production, the Oscar-winning
German composer was prob-
ably the one who could come
closest to rivaling the director’s
mega-fandom.
“We were walking somewhere
together, and Denis sort of whis-
pered to me, ‘Hey, have you ever
heard of a book called Dune?’ I
think my reaction actually scared
him,” Zimmer says. “The answer
was very much a yes,” he says
with a laugh.
A few years earlier, Zimmer
was heading off on vacation with
his son when he spotted Dune in
an airport bookstore. “I picked up
a copy, thinking, ‘Oh, he’s a teen-
ager now, time for him to read
Dune,’ ” Zimmer recalls. “And I
opened the page just before I gave
Villeneuve began Dune’s visual
development process with a delib-
erately tight team. First just him
alone with his storyboard artist
and later with concept artist Deak
Ferrand. “It was a small-unit pro-
cess to try and define the visual
language of the film, to make
sure that the humans would feel
crushed by the size of nature and
the architecture and to bring a
strong feeling of isolation and
melancholy into the world,”
Villeneuve explains. Once the key
alphabet was in place, Vermette
came on board to extrapolate
the world.
The images that populated the
team’s early mood boards were a
mixture of ziggurat architecture
from Mesopotamia, Egyptian
references, bunkers from World
War II, brutalist architecture
from Brazil and the Soviet Union,
and even some of the human-
made megastructures dreamt up
by the 1960s Italian design office
Superstudio (dams and minimal-
ist megastructures projecting

BTS: CHIA BELLA JAMES/WARNER BROS. SKETCH: NICOLAS KADIMA.

houses vying for control of plan-
etary territory.
“The movie could have easily
collapsed under a tremendous
amount of exposition,” Villeneuve
says, “and there were some major
decisions right at the beginning
to deal with that.” Although Paul
is the focal point, the book’s nar-
rative jumps among several richly
developed characters’ perspec-
Hans [Zimmer] that the music it to him, started reading the first into landscapes at impossible
should be a window into the sentence and never gave him the scale). “In the book, they say
mindscape of the character.” book,” he says, laughing again. the residency on Arrakis is the
Zimmer, who recently had “I just sat on the plane reading; biggest structure ever built by
scored Villeneuve’s Blade Runner and then never left the hotel pool mankind, and it’s also an impe-
2049, was among the first to once — it was a miserable holiday rial presence,” says Vermette. “So
join the key creative team, and for him.” I felt it had to be very imposing,
“We looked at a lot of dragonflies and helicopters, obviously, but we wanted something very angular,” says Patrice Vermette, Dune’s production
designer, of the film’s striking “Ornithopters.” One influence was the canon of a Russian stealth tank and another was a Soviet-era Bulgarian war
monument, “which has a very interesting, angular shape when you see it from the back.”

tives. Villeneuve decided early on

that the script would hew close to
Paul’s point of view, which he also
would achieve visually by keeping
the camera close to the character
— the basis for the film’s distinc-
tive use of extreme close-ups and
extreme wide shots, which gener-
ate both an intimate, grounded
storytelling perspective and an
almost overwhelming sense of
the vastness of Dune’s world. The
story’s key female characters —
Paul’s mother, Lady Jessica; and
Chani, a young Freman woman
who illuminates the world’s
politics and falls in love with him
— would be elevated in the story,
adding another layer of intimacy
to Paul’s arc.
Herbert’s narrative also
contains great volumes of inner
monologue, peering into the

32
the way colonial buildings and
fortresses were — as if the incom-
ing powers are telling the local
people: ‘Here we are. We impose.
Don’t mess with us.’ ”
The much older history and cul-
ture of the native Fremen people
would be indicated in details,
such as the gold sandworm mural
within the Arrakine residence.
“Like in a church, the way you see
a history in the stained glass, I
thought maybe they had created
murals telling the story of the
colonizing of the planet — but
those would probably have been
created by Fremen artists, so the
representation of the worm would
be intriguing and mythological,”
Vermette explains. “They’re not
only scared of it; there’s a rela-
tionship — so we’re planting the
seed for that.”
As production approached,
Dune took over Origo Studios in
Budapest, Hungary, one of the
largest film studios in Europe.
Villeneuve and Vermette were
determined to build as much
as possible, using very little set
extension and no greenscreen
at all. “The sets were of quite
large scale, and we wanted them
to be as immersive as possible,
like we did on Arrival and Denis
did on Blade Runner,” Vermette
continues. “It’s realism for the
actors and for the light, and it’s
also for the ambiance, like the
whole crew feeling, ‘We’re in this
world together.’ ”
The movie gods continued to
shine on Parent and Villeneuve as
they began the casting process:
The director essentially assem-
bled his entire wish list without
a single “no” or insurmountable
scheduling conflict, creating one
of the most talent-deep ensem-
bles in recent movie memory.
Crucially for the film’s commer-
cial prospects, the world’s two
most in-demand young stars and
red carpet fashion icons of the
moment, Timothée Chalamet and
Zendaya, would be at the center,
playing Paul Atreides and Chani,
the young Fremen woman who
anchors the film and becomes his
enigmatic love interest.
“The cast itself kind of felt like
an event,” says Parent. “There’s
really something for everyone.”
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson
star as Paul’s parents, Duke Leto STORYBOARDING A CHILDHOOD DREAM
and Lady Jessica; Josh Brolin as As a teenager, Villeneuve and a close friend meticulously mapped out
the gruff weapons master Gurney the Dune adaptation they imagined making some day
Halleck; a swashbuckling Jason
Momoa as swordmaster Duncan
Idaho (the character many
believe inspired Han Solo); Javier
Bardem as Stilgar, the mercu-
rial Fremen tribal leader; the
great Charlotte Rampling as the
powerful Bene Gesserit Reverend
Mother; Taiwanese actor Chang
Chen, a favorite of many of Asia’s
great auteurs, playing the mul-
tilayered Dr. Wellington Yueh;
and, of course, Stellan Skarsgard
as the villainous Baron Vladimir
Harkonnen, with Dave Bautista as
his brutal nephew, Glossu Rabban.
“It sounds dramatic, but I
don’t know if we would be here
today talking if Timothée had
said no,” Villeneuve says. “I
mean, there was no plan B. But
it’s nice to make radical choices
like that and say, ‘It’s either him
or nothing.’ ”
The young actor embodied all
of the qualities Villeneuve was
looking for: “That combination of
high intelligence, innocence and
youth and that old-soul quality
mixed with his insane charisma.
Timothée has something aris-
tocratic about him also, which
is just perfect for Paul. And he
grew up between the United
States and France, so he has a
worldly quality.”
He continues: “I needed an
actor that had the skills to go deep
and to express inner conflict and
psychedelic experience and who
would be able to carry the whole
movie on his shoulders.”
D
enis Villeneuve is famous for meticulously storyboarding nearly every
But for all his indie film shot of his movies during preproduction. On Dune, he spent months
acclaim and skyrocketing star- dreaming up the story’s visual progression with storyboard artist
dom, Chalamet never had carried Sam Hudecki, a fellow French Canadian he has worked with on six films, begin-
a movie anywhere close to Dune’s ning with Prisoners in 2013. Says Dune’s production designer, Patrice Vermette,
“Denis has different storyboard options for every scene, and he lives with those
scale. “I think I got pretty lucky up on his wall during preproduction — experimenting with the mood, economy
working on a movie of this size for of shots and the tempo — until he knows he’s got it exactly right.” Villeneuve’s
the first time with Denis because storyboarding method stretches to the very origins of his identity as an art-
he’s still very close to his indie ist. Growing up in a small village in rural Quebec, captivated by the cinema of
sensibilities,” Chalamet says. Spielberg and others, he knew he wanted to tell visual stories but didn’t have
access to a camera. At around age 13, he and a friend, Nicolas Kadima, began
“He’s in that rarefied Christopher experimenting, carefully storyboarding movies they imagined making. “Nicolas
Nolan space, where he gets to was a very good artist, so he did the drawing, and I would tell the stories, and
work on what he wants and we just created worlds together like that as two kids,” Villeneuve says. The boys
execute it exactly how he wants had both recently discovered Frank Herbert’s Dune and were obsessed with the
on the highest level. So I felt very story and its world. Thus, Dune became one of their most passionate story-
boarding projects — depicting the desert adventures of Paul Atreides among
much like I was stepping into the Fremen and sandworms of Arrakis. During the lead-up to Dune’s release,
familiar territory, and I think that Villeneuve’s brother found the old storyboards in a drawer in their father’s desk.
was a major plus because there The director later scanned and shared this panel with The Hollywood Reporter.
33 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Anatomy of a Contender

M
are certain challenges of working
on a movie of this size.”
Whereas the independent mov-
ies Chalamet had starred in often
entailed 25 consecutive days of
emotional intensity, Dune’s pro-
duction would last months. “We
had conversations right away that
this would be a marathon, not a
sprint,” says Villeneuve.
Adds Chalamet: “I felt us get
closer throughout the whole
project. Denis wears his passions
on his sleeve and is unafraid to
do so, and that vulnerability was
super inspiring to me. I would say
it’s actually a marker of confi-
dence because he always knows
once he’s gotten it right. I was
super humbled by his commit-
ment to the material.”
One surprise asset that emerged
between the director and his star
was their shared comfort in the
French language. Villeneuve is
fluent in English, but he’ll often
pause to search for a word. “It was
so great to go back to French with
Timothée for several reasons,”
he says. “I could be more intel-
lectually precise with him, and it
also gave us a bubble on this huge
American movie.” When Dune
began shooting, Chalamet was
just 23 years old, “and suddenly
he has this huge blockbuster
machine around him,” Villeneuve
continues. “We developed a very
close friendship, but Timothée is
the age of my kids, so I had a very
paternal relationship with him as
well, which I thought was totally
appropriate for this movie. The
French bubble was very useful and
precious to us — to build intimacy
among the madness.”
Isaac already was among the
Dune converted when he arrived
on the project and had personally
pursued Villeneuve for his role.
“We had met a few times and just
become friendly, so when I heard
he was doing Dune years ago, I
wrote to him and said, ‘Hey, I am
a huge fan of the book and just
wanted to let you know.’ And then
Denis wrote back, very enigmati-
cally, ‘Ah, so you’re a fan of Dune,
uch of the grandeur
of Villeneuve’s film-
making stems from
the uniquely sensu-
ous visual language
he employs, even in the creation
of cataclysmic action. Unlike
the mechanistic CGI action
that characterizes so much of
contemporary tentpole filmmak-
ing — picture superheroes and
machines viscerally colliding
in space, in the video game-like
demonstrations of cause and
effect that one has seen countless
times onscreen — Villeneuve’s
approach is impressionistic and
immersive, often about withhold-
ing as much as showing.
A key formal strategy that
Villeneuve and Dune director of
photography Greig Fraser devised
was to play with space and time
so that objects often appear at the
edge of the frame and quickly dis-
appear. Sometimes they used the
technique to create tension, “like
that feeling of a nightmare, where
your eyes see part of something
coming into the edge of your field
of vision, and you feel its pres-
ence, but you never completely see
it,” Villeneuve says. Many times, it
was simply about awe.
Some of the most spectacular
sets and ships Vermette designed
are seen only briefly, or in part;
and nearly every glimpse you get
at a sandworm — Dune’s mighty
demigod, the Shai-Hulud —
leaves you wanting more. “We
really worked on this idea that the
world was bigger than our lenses,
like the camera is struggling to
capture what’s there — either it’s
too big and we cannot embrace
it all or the camera doesn’t have
time to capture it all,” Villeneuve
says. “Why? It’s just to, again,
bring back this idea of humility —
the humility of human beings in
the face of nature.”
Although Dune’s world is
complex and the film runs two
hours and 35 minutes, Villeneuve
wanted the viewer to emerge
from the film feeling awestruck
rather than that the whole
1
of pace. “There’s surface pace
to scenes, and then there’s deep
tectonic pace,” says Joe Walker,
Dune’s twice Oscar-nominated
editor, who also cut Villeneuve’s
Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.
“We worked very hard to get that
tectonic flow so that the story is
moving quite slowly at the begin-
ning, actually, as you get to know
the characters and the world is set
up on very firm ground; and then
everything kicks into higher gears
as the action sequences begin.”
Dune also benefited from a
longtime creative shorthand
that Walker and Zimmer share.
The two have known each other
since 1988, when they found
themselves working together in
London on the improbable BBC
television hit First Born, “a crazy
series about a half man, half
gorilla,” says Walker, who calls
3
Zimmer his “oldest friend in the
business.” They’ve since collabo-
rated on Blade Runner 2049 and there’s a sort of secret, or inau-
Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave dible score,” Walker says. “We
and Widows. keep talking about this tread of
Walker says he and Zimmer a piece that always seems to be
often have discussed an addi- called for in a Denis film. It’s got
tional, more intangible pace this steady, ominous pace — like
that is called for in a Denis a step toward fate. I don’t know
Villeneuve movie, which exists that we’ve quite grasped it yet, but
somewhere between the editing we’re getting very close. People
BRO. ZENDAYA: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES.
CHALAMET, VILLANEUVE: CHIA BELLA JAMES/WARNER

good to know …’ ”
Two years later, Isaac received
Villeneuve’s script, with a note
that he wanted him in it. “I was
thrilled,” Isaac says.
thing could have wrapped up a
bit sooner. Overall, the editing
process entailed a very rhythmic
take on the story, with a steady
but imperceptible acceleration
and the music. It’s an element
that’s somehow integral to the
sublime and immersive quali-
ties of his filmmaking, he says.
“It’s very hard to describe, but
talk about the hypnotic quality
of his films; this tread is more
inexorable than that.”
Dune originally was sched-
uled to be released Nov. 20, 2020,

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 34 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3


and as the date approached, the
postproduction team was feeling
the heat. Walker and Villeneuve
were working through enormous
amounts of material and waiting
on music from Zimmer — and the
clock was ticking. Then the pan-
demic arrived, and the film, along
with all of Hollywood’s release
schedule, went though a succes-
sion of lengthy postponements.
Walker himself studied classi-
cal music and began his creative
career as a composer, and because
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
2
1 As Dune moves into its
latter half, it becomes a
mother-son adventure
story as Paul and Lady
Jessica are expelled into
the desert and forced to
fight side by side. “I feel like
Jessica goes through some
form of a Benjamin Button
experience in the second
half,” Ferguson observes.
“She starts quite poised,
otherworldly and older,
and then she kind of gets
younger and younger.”
2 Villeneuve with his
costume designer West.
3 “What we did was create
a bodysuit out of five
or six layers of what we
called a ‘micro sandwich’
of fabric,” says West of
creating Dune’s unique
“still-suit,” which Fremen
like Zendaya’s Chani wear
to endure the harsh desert.
“We selected a beautiful
Japanese fabric that would
wick water from the body;
then it would cool the body
when the moisture hit the
air of Jordan through a
mesh system of cotton,
nylon and acrylic. When
there was a breeze, there
was a cooling effect on the
wearer — and the actors
said it really worked.”
of the pandemic delays, he
occasionally had time to chat
with Zimmer about his methods.
“Sometimes I’d see him working
on a piano, going through the per-
mutations of a pattern. He would
be building a little brick that could
be used in any edifice of his music.
It could end up supporting Chani
or Paul or even an encounter with
a giant sandworm. And I asked
him once, ‘What are you looking
for right now?’ He said, ‘I’m look-
ing for a musical phrase with the
35
efficiency of the word fuck.’ I was
blown away by that because it’s so
true,” Walker says, his eyes widen-
ing. “You know, fuck is a powerful
word, but it can be used in any
context. I can say, ‘I fucking love
you,’ or I could say, “I fucking hate
you.” It’s totally transmutable.
And that’s the way Hans starts.”
The pandemic eventually
separated the collaborators as
they each were forced to retreat to
their home studios and continue
their work remotely. Villeneuve
has bemoaned the difficulty of
editing without being able to
share the energy of the room, and
Walker agrees that the transi-
tion was jarring. “Denis has been
right next to me editing films
for five years, and the right-hand
side of his face was like the dark
side of the moon to me — I’m not
even sure I knew what he looks
like,” he says, laughing. “Now,
suddenly, I’ve got somebody
staring straight at me into his
laptop camera. It was a bit weirdly
confrontational.”
The added time generated by
the pandemic undoubtedly proved
an asset, though. Altogether,
Villeneuve and Walker had
20 months to edit the film, far
longer than is usual. “The pan-
demic gave us an ability to dream
deeper and play with the film,”
Villeneuve says.
As they worked outside of the
usual studio office structure, the
N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
director and his editor devel-
oped something they called “the
whisky pass.”
“Sometimes if the day was end-
ing and we were feeling a scene
just wasn’t quite there, Denis
would say, ‘I think this needs a
whisky pass,’ ” Walker explains.
“That just meant me, sitting there
in my home cutting room until
the wee hours with a whisky, feel-
ing more and more uninhibited
about how to change things. Then
I’d show him the cut in the morn-
ing, and usually he’d go, ‘Great!’ ”
Says Zimmer, “I think all of us,
as we were working on the film
during those long months of the
pandemic, we were hoping that
it would be something that could
bring people back together at the
end of it. That if we just worked
long enough on this, COVID
will have stabilized to a degree
that people can see it on a big
screen and feel something. We all
wanted to make more than just
a movie — we wanted to give you
an experience.”
Adds Villeneuve: “When I made
this movie, the idea was, right
from the start, to make it for a
broad audience. I said to myself,
‘I would love if I could make a
movie for the teenager I was back
then.’ And it was such a relief to
do that, to let go and just embrace
cinema as spectacle. I deeply
loved it, and I will keep doing it as
long as they let me.”
2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Playbook

— Costume Design —

THE WILD WEST REIMAGINED

THROUGH CLOTHES AND ATTITUDE
For costume designers Antoinette Messam and Kirsty Cameron,
the Western genre is a canvas splashed with fresh paint and timeless character
BY S T E V E CH A G OL L A N

O
ver the years, Westerns
have provided moviego-
ers with some of the
big screen’s most indel-
ible fashion statements,
from the dusty poncho and
wide-brimmed Stetson of Clint
Eastwood’s Man With No Name in
the ’60s to the natty attire of Doc
Holliday — known as much for
his sartorial splendor as his sharp
shooting — as portrayed in such
films as My Darling Clementine
(1946), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
(1957) and Tombstone (1993).
Even if the genre has become
an endangered species in recent
decades, the mythical tropes
of frontier justice and rough-
and-tumble action
have often allowed
costume designers
to let their imagina-
Messam tions run wild. This
year, two Westerns of
decidedly different stripes, Jane
Campion’s The Power of the Dog
and Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder
They Fall, have provided their
costume designers with a rich
canvas of looks driven by character
1
and circumstance.
For Netflix’s The Harder They
Fall, the game-changing Western license that’s both invigorating levels of aging I did, knowing espe- consistent — Stagecoach Mary
set in the 1890s with a cast made and crowd-pleasing. cially that the Nat Love gang was (Zazie Beetz) in her stovepipe
up predominantly of Black actors, “Jeymes Samuel was very ada- going to be seen coming out of rid- hat, which Messam inherited
designer Antoinette Messam mant that these people not appear ing on the plains, and I wanted it from Erykah Badu’s limning
took her cue from Samuel, using as they’ve appeared in many mov- to be natural — not dirty, because of the role in Samuel’s 51-min-
historic figures such as Nat Love, ies prior,” says Messam, “which is they weren’t dirty people.” ute 2013 Western They Die by
Rufus Buck and Mary Fields downtrodden, slavery references, If the wardrobe changes are Dawn, and Trudy Smith, aka
(“Stagecoach Mary”) — many of tattered clothes. He wasn’t mak- striking, with bright, bold colors “Treacherous Trudy” (Regina
them former enslaved people — ing a dusty, dirty cowboy movie. I not normally associated with King), distinguished by her
as a jumping-off point for creative had to take into consideration the Westerns, the headgear remains ever-present bowler.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 36 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

 4 5

collars and, as a grand stroke
2 a plush, red velvet jacket.
“I got this swatch of this red,
and I knew that Jeymes wanted
to see red throughout the movie,”
says Messam. “[The jacket] does
what we needed it to do, which
is saying, ‘I’m back. I’m here.
I’m strong.’ ”
For Messam, tones of blues and
reds evoke energy and vibrancy.
And because Redwood City is a
mill town not dependent on mail-
3 order garments from Europe, she
could take liberties to dye colors
to the saturation she wanted. (The
final confrontation between Mary
and Trudy takes place in a factory
amid a flurry of pastel fabrics.)
The film’s most exotic scene
occurs as Stagecoach Mary
confronts Buck for the first time
in his saloon in Redwood City,
and she’s greeted by a writhing,
sprightly figure who looks like
she could have sprung from the
1 Zazie Beetz as Stagecoach Mary and
Jonathan Majors as Nat Love in The Harder Ballets Russes. “It was the most
They Fall. 2 Idris Elba as Rufus Buck and challenging scene,” informs
Regina King as Treacherous Trudy in
The Harder They Fall. 3 Elba 4 Benedict Messam. “[The dancer Aahkilah
Cumberbatch (left) and Jesse Plemons as
Phil and George Burbank in The Power of Cornelius] had the least clothes
the Dog. 5 Kirsten Dunst as Rose Gordon- of anyone in the movie, but she
Burbank in The Power of the Dog.
was the most difficult to dress,
because it had to hit multiple
Buck (Idris Elba), newly beats. For practical reasons,
sprung from prison, goes from she had to be clothed, with body
POWER: KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX (2). CAMERON: COURTESY OF NETFLIX.
MESSAM: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE. HARDER: DAVID LEE/NETFLIX (3).
scratch. There were no refer-
ences. I literally had to dream it
up in my head and figure out how
to execute it.”
For The Power of the Dog, also
from Netflix, we fast-forward
from the Victorian era to
Prohibition America — Montana
in 1925, to be exact. In this tale
of sibling rivalry and frustrated
longing, designer Kirsty Cameron
takes a more subdued, but no less
telling, approach to her costumes.
The story, based on a novel by
Thomas Savage, centers on the
Burbank brothers, Phil (Benedict
Cumberbatch)
and George (Jesse
Plemons), cattlemen
and horse trainers
Cameron whose routine is
disrupted by George’s
sudden marriage to Rose Gordon
(Kirsten Dunst). Phil views Rose
with disdain, branding her as a
gold digger, and expresses con-
tempt for her awkward teenage
son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee).
In terms of wardrobe, Phil
seems to work, sleep and eat in
his cowboy duds, replete with
chaps (leather for summer, woolly
for winter) and spurs. George,
who manages the books, is all
business in suits and bow ties.
pragmatic necessity, as well as its
timelessness and wear and tear.”
She views her subjects’ clothes
as uniforms that both define and
veil their true identities. “One of
the main prerequisites for the
film was to create something for
Phil that he could absolutely use
as an armor,” she explains, “as
protection, as this costume of
masculinity, which [masks] his
interior angst about who he really
is, and his self-hatred.”
The clothes also are nostalgic,
reminding Phil of his late men-
tor, Bronco Henry, who, though
we never see him, haunts Phil’s
memory throughout the film. In
this regard, Cameron didn’t refer-
ence other Westerns but looked to
Tennessee Williams’ hot-house
dramas and the latter-day Cain
and Abel story of John Steinbeck’s
East of Eden for inspiration.
Like Messam, Cameron wasn’t
wedded to historical accuracy as
much as her instinct. “I mean,
of course, you do that research,
but it can really hinder you,”
she says. “And one of the things
that Jane and [producer] Tanya
[Seghatchian] did [was] create
this amazing reservoir of imag-
ery. They had some researchers
in London do a deep, deep dive

jailhouse stripes to pinstripe
suits, determined to reclaim his
place as Redwood City’s mayor
and savior, even if he rules
with an iron fist. In one scene,
he sports luxurious match-
ing gray pants and vest, a crisp
white dress shirt with studded
paint and meshing. In Jeymes’
vision, she was naked but just
painted blue. Let’s think of her
almost like an early burlesque
dancer if she had a bit more
clothes on and stripped it away
to what she’s wearing. I think it’s
the one thing that I created from
“One of my great loves is work
wear,” says Cameron, Campion’s
fellow Kiwi colleague (the film
was shot on their native New
Zealand’s South Island). “It’s
something that I observe and col-
lect and have a great passion for,
both in its textural quality and
with photographic references
of the American West, from the
late 1800s to the 1970s. For me,
it was really more about feeling
and texture than anything else
and about an undercurrent —
an emotionality and a tension
that’s palpable.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 37 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

2 0 2 2 A W A R D S S E A S O N — Q&A
‘OUR
SISTERHOOD
WAS SHOWN
ONSCREEN’
King Richard stars Saniyya Sidney
and Demi Singleton talk
playing two of the greatest
athletes of all time
BY MI A G A L UP P O
N
avigating a busy Saturday night at
The Grove, the ultra-popular outdoor
shopping mall in the heart of Los
Angeles, can easily make or break any
relationship. Luckily for the young
stars of King Richard, Saniyya Sidney and
Demi Singleton, it was the former.
“We’d go to The Grove every weekend,”
remembers Sidney, 15, who plays tennis
superstar Venus Williams in the Warner Bros.
movie about the early lives of the Williams
sisters (Singleton plays Serena) and the
unrelenting drive and vision of their father,
Richard (Will Smith).
The duo would brave the crowds for weekly
dinners and trips to the movies before and
during the film’s early 2020 shoot. Says
Singleton, 14, “It was really important not
only to us but our director, Mr. Rei [Reinaldo
Marcus Green], that our chemistry was real
and that our sisterhood was shown onscreen.”
Even when the production had to shut down
From left: Singleton, Sidney and Will Smith in
Warner Bros.’ King Richard.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
in the middle of filming due to COVID-19, the
two remained in constant contact.
Sidney and Singleton talked to THR about
their sisterly bond, tennis training and get-
ting to meet Venus and Serena.
What did the audition process look like?
SANIYYA SIDNEY I started auditioning on self-
tapes, and it was originally for [characters
named] Sophia and Veronica. It wasn’t Venus
and Serena. After a while, I kind of caught on.
I think the dad’s name was Ron and they were
spelling bee champions.
What was involved in the tennis training?
DEMI SINGLETON I had never played tennis
before. Neither of us had played tennis before.
That was a very new sport for us. Learning
to play in the amount of time we had was not
easy, especially playing two of the greatest
athletes of all time. That made it a bit more
difficult. I feel like if we were just learning to
play like Saniyya and Demi, rather than Venus
and Serena, it would’ve been a bit easier.
SIDNEY We had to be very specific because
Venus and Serena have different styles of play.
We had to mimic a lot of their hits and their
serves, so that’s what we focused on most.
What was it like when you first met Will Smith?
SIDNEY I was just like, “That’s a Fresh Prince!”
What I love about Mr. Will is that he makes
you feel so comfortable. He’s 100 percent
himself, and he trusts his artistry. Even at
38 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3
the chemistry read, he was still getting used
to getting comfortable and trying to get into
Richard’s head. So, we were all creating our
characters together.
SINGLETON When I first walked in there for
the chemistry read, I don’t know what I was
expecting. When you think it would be these
big celebrities, you think of them as being
closed off, but that wasn’t the case with Mr.
Will, at all. He was so kind and so welcoming
and very humble.
SIDNEY Mr. Will stayed in character, but at the
same time it made us stay in character. “Let’s
step on set and be better than yesterday” — it
was like that. He would never call us Saniyya
and Demi. It was very much Venus and Serena,
or Junior and Mika, their nicknames. He
became our dad.
The film had to shut down in the middle of pro-
duction. What did you do with that downtime?
SINGLETON We were down for quite some time.
The shutdown happened in March and then
we didn’t come back until October 19. I hated
quarantine. I don’t like to be stuck in one
place. But I feel like it gave me more time to
grow with my character. It actually worked
out [well], in a way, because we had filmed
all the scenes where Serena and Venus were
younger. When we came back it was when
they were a bit older, and we had grown
in that time.
SIDNEY It definitely gave me time to dive
into who Venus was. There were nights when
 FIVE YOUNG PERFORMERS TO WATCH
These actors prove there’s no such thing as a small role

JUDE HILL
Belfast
One of the year’s biggest
breakouts is 11-year-old Hill, who
makes his movie debut leading
the ensemble of writer-director
Kenneth Branagh’s film as a
young boy in Northern Ireland
during the Troubles.

SYDNEY KOWALSKE
Blue Bayou
Kowalske plays a girl caught up in
a family crisis when her
stepfather (writer-director Justin
Chon), a Korean American
adoptee, is threatened with
deportation after an altercation
with her biological father.

Saniyya Sidney (left) and Demi Singleton play Venus and Serena
Williams, respectively. “We see them as these amazing athletes,
but outside of that, they’re just normal people,” says Singleton.
WOODY NORMAN
C’mon C’mon
Norman holds his own against
I was bored, and I literally would watch Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix,
matches from 1996 to 2001. who stars in this tender comic
drama from Mike Mills about a
Did you get to meet Venus and Serena documentarian who learns about
during filming? parenthood when he takes his
SINGLETON The first time that I technically met nephew into his care.
Serena was when I played [a younger version
of her in] a Super Bowl commercial in 2019.
SIDNEY: SAMIR HUSSEIN/WIREIMAGE. SINGLETON: KARWAI TANG/WIREIMAGE. KING: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. BELFAST: ROB YOUNGSON/FOCUS FEATURES. BLUE:
COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES. C’MON: TOBIN YELLAND/A24 FILMS. BAR: CLAIRE FOLGER/AMAZON STUDIOS. PLACE: JONNY COURNOYER/PARAMOUNT PICTURES.

But I didn’t really get a chance to speak with

her. When they surprised us on set, that was DANIEL RANIERI
the first time I had actually gotten to speak The Tender Bar
with them. We didn’t know what to do with Ranieri makes his film debut in
ourselves; we were all over the place. I was cry- director George Clooney’s
ing in the corner. It was a hot mess. But I feel adaptation of J.R. Moehringer’s
like [Saniyya and I] both realized that there memoir about growing up with a
was no need to worry. We see them as these single mother and finding a
amazing athletes [who] just don’t have time father figure in his bar-owning
to play around, but outside of that, they’re just uncle, played by Ben Affleck.
normal people.

What did you learn about yourselves from play-

ing Venus and Serena? MILLICENT SIMMONDS
SINGLETON They both have this confidence to A Quiet Place Part II
them, and you could feel that coming off them Simmonds reprises her role as
every time they walked in a room or stepped Regan, the deaf daughter of a
onto a court. I feel like playing somebody hearing couple, in the sequel to
who’s that confident helped me grow my confi- writer-director John Krasinski’s
dence within myself. sci-fi thriller about a race of aliens
with superpowered hearing who
Interview edited for length and clarity. invade Earth. — TYLER COATES

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 39 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

 91 Years of THR

Memorable moments from a storied history

1993 19
9 94
4 1 99
95 19
996 19
9 977 199 98 19999 200
00 2001 2002 2003 2004 20055 200
06 20
0 07 20
0 08 200
09 20
010 20 11 20122 20
0 133

Spirited Away Broke Records and Made Oscar History

At the 75th Academy Awards, Hayao
Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won best
animated feature in the second year
of the category’s existence — and, to
this day, it is the only hand-drawn
feature (mostly; computers were
used sparingly) to win the honor.
The eighth film from Miyazaki’s
Studio Ghibli — following such clas-
sics as 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro and
1997’s Princess Mononoke — is set
in a local bathhouse in Bunkyo, the
district of Tokyo where the writer-
director was born. Miyazaki, then
59, wrote a screenplay that follows
10-year-old Chihiro as she attempts
to save her parents, who have been
turned into pigs after eating cursed
food. She takes a job at a supernatu-
ral bathhouse run by a witch. There,
she meets a masked figure known as
No-Face, a Jabba the Hutt-like “stink
spirit” from a polluted river, and
Haku, a 12-year-old conjurer who
transforms into a dragon. Made on a
budget of $19 million ($30 million in
2021) — 10 percent of which was cov-
ered by Disney, which handled U.S.
distribution and English dubbing
— Spirited Away brought in $275 mil-
lion worldwide ($430 million today),
overtaking Titanic to become Japan’s
highest-grossing film for 19 years.
With subsequent rereleases, the
coming-of-age fantasy took in an
additional $85 million at the box
office. As Miyazaki said in 2002, “If
you stay true to joy and astonish-
ment and empathy, you don’t have to
have violence and you don’t have to
have action.” — SETH ABRAMOVITCH

BUENA VISTA/EVERETT COLLECTION

Chihiro, the 10-year-old hero of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, which won four Annie Awards (inset) on its way to claiming best animated feature at the 2003 Oscars.

The Hollywood Reporter, Vol. CDXXVII, No. 40A (ISSN 0018-3660; USPS 247-580) is published weekly; 40 issues — one issue in May and July; two issues in October; three issues in September and December; four issues in January, February, June,
August and November; and five issues in March and April; plus 22 special issues: 5 in January; 1 in February; 2 in March; 1 in April; 7 in June and 6 in August — by The Hollywood Reporter, LLC, at 11175 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025.
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T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 40 N OV E M B E R 2021 AWA R D S 3

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