Matchmaking, Margaret and M:I with the Pieces Of A Woman star.
SHE MAY HAVE PLAYED MARGARET IN THE CROWN, BUT VANESSA KIRBY IS NO PRINCESS WHEN IT COMES TO GRABBING A ROLE, CAMPAIGNING FOR BETTER FEMALE REPRESENTATION ON SCREEN OR SHINING A LIGHT ON SOCIAL TABOO SUBJECT MATTER WITH LABOUR OF LOVE, PIECES OF A WOMAN. SHE TELLS TOTAL FILM ABOUT THE GRAFT THAT GOES INTO AN AWARD-WINNING PERFORMANCE AND THE WORK ETHIC SHE LEARNED FROM TOM CRUISE.
When Vanessa Kirby calls Total Film, she probably doesn’t expect to begin by talking about the recent death of a beloved cat (TF’s, not hers). But Kirby – warm and calm as a therapist – is comfortable discussing grief in all its forms, having immersed herself in it for her latest role in Kornél Mundruczó’s study of the emotional fallout after a birth gone tragically wrong.
Debuting at Venice Film Festival in September, Pieces Of A Woman garnered rave reviews, and Kirby grabbed the fest’s Best Actress award. As Martha, a woman at a crossroads in her life whose assumed future with a child is snatched away for one of mourning, rage, bewilderment, shame and ultimately grace, it’s a performance that’s about to be instrumental in further elevating the 32-year-old’s career – showcasing that empathic range we saw during her stint as Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of The Crown.
But for Kirby, the film is an essential one, not only for where it may take her but in how it might impact audiences. “I knew I had to do it,” she recalls of having a gut response to the project, which was inspired by the real-life sorrow of Mundruczó and his wife, screenwriter Kata Wéber, after they had an ‘unborn baby experience’. “Even though it’s an unconventional journey through grief, and it’s extremely difficult, it felt important,” Kirby says. “Important for mothers and families that had lost in that way, at any stage of carrying or having a child. And also for people who have suffered grief in all the ways that it manifests in life.”
Kirby was so engaged with the material, and determined to play Martha, that she flew immediately from LA to Budapest after reading the script. There, she met with Mundruczó to convince him of her commitment. Impressed by her “very rich, subjective, and personal silence... and that ’60s look, like Catherine Deneuve or Claudia Cardinale”, he gave her the part, with Shia LaBeouf onboard as Martha’s partner.
“That was even daunting because it was like, ‘OK, I haven’t given birth. How am I going to do the labour? How am I going to do that level of grief and understand what it would be like to carry a child to give birth, and then for that to happen?’” Kirby remembers. “So understanding all of those different areas was just a huge challenge. I didn’t know if I could pull it off, but I knew I had to try.”
Part of her process was in doing “way more than watching documentaries”. She shadowed an obstetrician and spent time on labour wards, as well as connecting with women who had lost babies – one of whom, Kelly, she tearfully thanked during her Venice acceptance speech. “I realised I needed to really try to understand emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically how it would feel to have that happen to you. And the amazing thing was that I found that most women hadn’t spoken about it at all, because people find it too hard to hear, or it’s still a taboo in our society. I think we all hoped that the film, however it turned out, might try and start a conversation. That’s all you can hope for with stuff that you make, that in some way, it changes a perspective on something.”
She points to the recent criticism Chrissy Teigen received for sharing her experience and grief when she lost her baby mid-pregnancy. “I’m really glad that she shared what she felt she needed to. Everyone’s way of healing is completely different and shouldn’t be discriminated against. So I felt very impassioned by that, and very protective. I will try and reach out to her after the film comes out.”
That unflinching look at the realities of life is borne out in the film’s impressive opening 25 minutes – a single, unbroken take following Kirby and LaBeouf’s characters as they work their way through a home-birth labour, from waters breaking to a terrifying rush from the house.
The duo rehearsed the scene and then ran it four times in its entirety. Quite the feat? “I was just really excited by the idea of doing something that wasn’t broken up – you know, ‘action’ and ‘cut’ – and having to keep up the feeling in between scenes,” Kirby says. “It was really important to do it all in one go, to try and get it as real as possible, so that women watching it would be like, ‘Oh my God, that was like mine.’ You know, it’s messy, it’s weird, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s hard to watch. And it’s also completely magical. It’s all those things in one that we wanted to aim for.
“Shia and I did lots of work together, and spent a lot of time building that relationship, which meant that when we came to do the film, and we went to really horrible places together – and at the end of every day, we could have a laugh, and work on the script for the next day, and try to leave it on the set.”
Likening the experience to her theatre work (“Sometimes it’s seven hours on stage a day, doing that level of trauma”), Kirby relished the discipline the film required of her. But then she admits she feels similarly about doing something as disparate as Hobbs & Shaw (where she stole the film as Jason Statham’s kickass sister) or the Mission: Impossible series.
“I really like the challenge of those movies,” she enthuses, recalling the steep learning curve she experienced on blockbuster action movie Hobbs & Shaw, having previously worked primarily on drama. “I’d never been on a set like it before, and had that kind of demand on me, physically – and just being on that scale of a movie. I learned loads about the required work ethic.” She would know about actioner work ethics having played alongside both Johnson and Tom Cruise. “When you’re working with someone like Tom, who just works so hard, and is the first person on set, and puts the most amount of himself into something – you do that, too, you know? And then you can just take that discipline and work ethic into something that requires a lot mentally. You just apply the same amount of commitment.”
Vocal about bettering female representation on screen, Kirby personally ensured that her Hobbs & Shaw character was a strong role model that little girls could look up to, “because actually, that’s our job, no matter what the genre,
and no matter what the area. As a woman on screen now, we definitely have a responsibility because there’s lots of representation that you haven’t seen yet of women.”
She’s currently reprising her no-nonsense role as Alanna Mitsopolis, AKA White Widow, on Mission: Impossible 7 and 8, and promises more wonderment from the franchise. “It’s going to be even more daring, and go even further. Because, as we all know from Tom, you never know what to expect, and he’s always surprising you and confounding expectations,” she teases. “He does stuff that’s even more unbelievable. He’s always got to push beyond the last one. It’s even terrifying all of us, to be honest.” Is she going into orbit, as rumours suggest of Cruise’s next endeavour, filming on SpaceX? She laughs, “I saw that! I’m going to ask him if I can come.”
Kirby’s shooting for the stars in a different way with her new production company. “The main intention is to find untold stories, put them on screen, and represent different facets of being a woman. Where’s the female Taxi Driver? Where’s the female Revenant?” she asks. She also has another buzzy film out next year in The World To Come. Also debuting at Venice, it sees Kirby playing a 19th-century woman who falls in love with one of her neighbours (Katherine Waterston) on the American East Coast frontier. “Someone said, ‘It’s such a female Brokeback Mountain.’ Yeah, but that was filmed in the early 2000s. This is the point – it’s so overdue! Why wouldn’t there be a love story between two women during this time?”
Then there’s Italian Studies, a “very experimental, beautiful” film from Adam Leon, co-produced by Kirby and starring “these beautiful teenagers from New York that we haven’t seen onscreen before, who are non-binary and cross-gender. I got to play with them for a summer.”
But for now, she’s doing what the rest of us are during this lockdown year – watching The Crown. “It’s so fun to share Princess Margaret with someone as incredible as Helena Bonham Carter and then Lesley Manville [who will take on the role in Season 5].” TF reminds her that the last time we talked, she wanted to have a martini with Bonham Carter, so did she? “We did! We had a few!” She laughs. “And now I think Lesley wants us to all meet up, which is going to be so fun. Three Margarets!” Kirby’s also planning on putting current Princess Diana, Emma Corrin, in touch with her good friend, Elizabeth Debicki, who will play the older Diana. “I’m really excited for those two,” she says. “I’m going to hook that up. I’m The Crown’s new matchmaker!”
PIECES OF A WOMAN IS ON NETFLIX NOW. THE WORLD TO COME WILL BE RELEASED 5 MARCH. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7 AND ITALIAN STUDIES WILL BE RELEASED LATER THIS YEAR. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 8 RELEASES NEXT YEAR.
‘IT’S MESSY, IT’S WEIRD, IT’S UNCOMFORTABLE, AND IT’S HARD TO WATCH. AND IT’S ALSO COMPLETELY MAGICAL’