Thandie’s Star Wars gown goes to town . . .
SOMETIMES, no mat-ter how glamorous the setting, only a cuppa will do.
Thandie Newton, star of television drama Westworld — and part of the Solo: A Star Wars Story ensemble that took over the Cannes Film Festival — boiled the kettle and popped a teabag in a cup.
‘Can’t do a thing without a brew,’ she declared when we met for a chat at the Carlton Hotel. She could have snapped her fingers and a battalion of minders, publicists, managers and hotel catering staff would have come scurrying to see to her tea.
But it was typical of the 45-year-old Londoner (a mother of three) that she just got on and did it herself.
I laughed when I got to the Palais for the Solo gala to see that not just the stars, but their aides — manag-ers, publicists and agents — had their names pinned to the plush seats.
As Thandie noted: ‘It’s not about the movie star any more. It’s about the spectacle of the brand.’
Luckily, she added, if you’re smart enough, you can still have a career like Woody Harrelson (they both play buccaneering outlaws in the new stand-alone Star Wars film). You can do an industrial movie, like Planet Of The Apes; and then a smart pick, like Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, in which Harrelson shone as the sheriff.
Thandie exemplifies that smart pat-tern, too. Her sassy, tart-tongued Maeve in Westworld is TV art. She was making the show in Los Angeles and commuting back to London to film scenes in Solo — which turned out to be a troubled shoot.
Seventy-four days in, co- directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (who made the cool Warner Bros Lego Movie) were fired and replaced by Ron Howard. It didn’t impact too much on Thandie, who shot her scenes with Alden Ehrenreich (the young Han Solo) and Harrelson. HER
role, as Val, marks a sig-nature moment in the Star Wars galaxy. She said there hadn’t been a ‘ woman of colour’ in a significant part in any of the Star Wars films.
And she clearly admired Val. ‘She’s competent, uncompromising, highly skilled at what she does — which is to make an idea become reality. You know, if you need a bridge to be blown up, then she’s your woman.’
Thandie wore a fabulous frock (left) on the red carpet. She collaborated with Vivienne Westwood to create it.
She gathered up Star Wars toys from home — dolls of John Boyega, Billy Dee Williams, Samuel L. Jackson and others — and had their images embla-zoned onto the gown. Everyone was touching the hem of her garment to study the black actors on it.
This is the prime of Ms Thandie Newton. I was on a judging panel last year that spent more time discussing her terrific part in Line Of Duty than anything else. Westworld is half-way through its second season and she’s already booked to make a third.
She also plays a ‘Kate Adie’-type TV correspondent in Xavier Dolan’s film The Death And Life Of John F. Donovan. And she’s working on a film project she hopes to direct — and play a supporting role in.
She leaned forward and told me: ‘It’s so weird that it has happened in my 40s. I’ve acted for 30 years now and I’m so grateful for the career I’ve had. There have been frustrating times, but the last five or six years I’ve stopped doing anything I don’t want to do — and it’s not that I can afford to do that. It’s just that I’ve seen too much and know too much of the influence the industry has on young minds — my daughters are 16 and 13 and my son is four — and I’m mindful of the harm that can do.’
She’s adamant she will not partici-pate in productions that portray women in a detrimental way, even if it’s not her role that’s offensive. ‘If I feel the production is being deroga-tory about other female characters, then I won’t do it. I know how impor-tant it is to stand your ground.’
She had a powerful epiphany when she was 37 — the life expectancy in Zimbabwe, her mother’s birthplace. ‘That was a powerful wake-up call,’ she said. ‘No one expects a woman of colour in her 40s to have a little surge in her career — especially in Holly-wood, which is such a chew-you-up, spit-you-out industry.’
She doesn’t hold a grudge but she remembers those who spat her out and now want to work with her. ‘I remember everything,’ she told me.
Her family has a hectic year ahead. Husband Ol Parker directed Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again with Lily James and Meryl Streep, which opens here in July. And daughter Nico, 13, is one of the leads in Tim Burton’s Disney live action Dumbo movie.
‘We thought it would be a couple of days on a Tim Burton film but it became nearly six months,’ Thandie said of Nico’s experience. ‘And now she wants to be an actress.’