Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Here come the gırls!
Forget Clooney and co – in the new Ocean’s film the conmen are all wisecracking women
George Clooney’s shoes are big ones to fill. But that didn’t stop Sandra Bullock stepping into them for Ocean’s 8, the all-female follow-up to George’s supercool 2001 heist movie Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen.
As an old friend of George’s, and with the same devil-may-care spirit, she is a natural choice to play Debbie Ocean, George’s dyedin-the-wool criminal Danny Ocean’s younger sister, who assembles a crack group of female criminals to pull off a high-stakes jewel heist at New York’s Met Gala. So when she was approached a couple of years ago by director Steven Soderbergh and the late producer Jerry Weintraub, Ocean’s Eleven’s masterminds, she went to George for advice. ‘Of course George and I talked about it,’ she says. ‘George shared so many stories about how Jerry could talk you into anything. He could take your car and sell it back to you.’
And it was George’s sublime performance as Danny that helped her find the inspiration to play his charming conwoman sister. ‘Danny and Debbie are both thieves – they can’t help themselves!’ she laughs. ‘They’re always on the take, always on the make. I think even a family dinner would be about who was going to get out of paying the bill. George has his own elegance, so I had to learn how to be the leader, to be calmer, quieter, sit back more, not to make so many jokes, to keep my mouth shut. I had to learn to be cooler than I am.’
The resemblance between the films is unmistakable. As in Ocean’s Eleven, we meet Debbie as she’s leaving prison after five years. Debbie hooks up with her tousle-haired blonde partner-incrime Lou (Cate Blanchett), and they comb New York to recruit the perfect team for the heist Debbie had been planning while inside.
Enter fashion designer Rose (Helena Bonham Carter, having a whale of a time), jewellery-maker Amita (Mindy Kaling), pickpocket Constance (American rapper Awkwafina), suburban mother Tammy (Sarah Paulson) and hacker Nine Ball (Rihanna). They set in motion Debbie’s plan to steal the $150 million Cartier Toussaint diamond necklace off the neck of vapid celebrity Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway).
As with their characters, Sandra and her fellow Oscar winner Cate Blanchett are old friends. ‘Lou and Debbie got everyone together, and that happened very naturally here too,’ says Cate. ‘I’d met Annie [Hathaway] before and I’d worked with Sarah Paulson, but everyone else was new. At first, we sniffed each other out, which happens on film sets. But it only took a couple of days before we all knew each other – and we had a blast. It was the best make-up truck I’ve ever sat in at 6am in my life!
‘Women today have each other’s backs,’ adds Cate. ‘That was very palpable on set. When you’re in a mostly male environment – which most film sets are – if you have a doubt, you don’t show it. Here, if a problem came up, I’d say, “I have a problem with this, does anyone else?” and someone would say, “Me too.” We’d solve it together.
‘The pleasure of the Ocean’s movies is that the plan is always slightly ridiculous and impossible, so something always goes terribly wrong. The thrill is watching them make it work. Women are good at things like that – when you have to do as many things as we do, life becomes like a military operation.’
So does that mean women make better thieves than men? ‘Well, Danny Ocean needed 11 people for his heist,’ says Sarah Paulson. ‘But to steal a $150 million necklace? We only needed eight!’
Ocean’s 8 is in cinemas now.