For her directorial debut, Kate Winslet made a star-studded family drama, in which she was one of the actors, over just seven weeks, securing star Helen Mirren for only 16 days.
The schedule and Winslet’s dual roles were just some of the many challenges she faced helming Goodbye June.
“We were constantly trying to make sure that we were all making our days. I never wanted to drop anything, and I didn’t. I was very proud of that,” Winslet recently told The Hollywood Reporter at a special screening of the Netflix movie in New York, speaking of the shortened filming schedule. “We had seven children in the film as well as all of our adult actors, so just the constant juggle of that and being in front of the camera as well as behind it, just the juggle of it all we had to adapt to very quickly.”
Still, she “loved” the experience, she said, unprovoked, adding, when asked if she wants to direct again, “I really hope I do. I would love to direct again.”
And Winslet’s extensive acting career, including the bonds she’d developed with others in the industry through her 30 years in front of the camera, was key to this endeavor.
“Being able to really lean on great relationships that I’ve developed over the years, that was very meaningful, because we needed to have that sense of goodwill around us,” Winslet said, adding that it was imperative to have people who were “good humored, really willing and supportive of one another.”
For the role of June’s (Mirren) husband Bernie, Winslet approached Timothy Spall, with whom she’d worked 30 years before on a production of Hamlet, and it was this past experience as well as the strength of the script, written by Winslet’s son, Joe Anders, that convinced Spall to board the project.
“I knew that she was a very special person and a very special actress,” Spall told THR of Winslet at the Goodbye June screening. “When I read the script, I said I wouldn’t be able to do it because I was working too hard. But I read it the following day and told her I wanted to do it because it’s so fantastic. And she, I knew, would be all over it because of the way she spoke about it. It was so close to her and such a sense of what it was going to be about. Given her brilliance as an actress and what she’s experienced as an actress, I knew she’d be absolutely perfect. It was time for her to direct.”
And as a director, Winslet lived up to Spall’s expectations, with him calling her “one of the best directors I’ve ever worked with” and praising her for doing “a massive amount of preparation” but making the process “feel completely natural.”
“She did all the work, all the amazing work it takes. She covered every department; she cast it so well; she chose the people to be behind the camera and in front of the camera,” Spall explained. “She was so brilliant about being in charge of things and making you feel as though it’s all happening at the same time. That takes a bit of genius. That takes a very good heart, massive intelligence, a lot of confidence and a lot of openness, and she’s got all of those things. It’s not an easy thing to direct a movie because it’s like being the president or the prime minister. You’ve got a lot of things to take into consideration.”
Co-star Toni Collette, who plays one of Winslet’s character’s sisters and June’s daughter, echoed this praise of the low-key set.
“It was just easy. It was like a totally natural progression for her, having worked in film for 30 years and worked with so many wonderful directors,” Collette told THR. “She creates an incredible atmosphere of freedom. It just felt very grounded, very accepting, very relaxed and free.”
The Wayward star also spoke about how Winslet’s experience as an actress helped her behind the camera.
“The one thing I think we have on our side as actors is we get to work with a lot of different directors. Directors don’t get to do that,” Collette told THR. “So they get to see how other people work. She could obviously have her own intelligence and intuition but also take from all of the wonderful people she’d worked with.”
And for Collette personally, working with Winslet was the fulfillment of a decades-long desire to collaborate.
“I have wanted to work with Kate for decades. I have been a fan. There’s so much in her that I admire as a person, her work, her career, everything, what she stands for, what she fights for,” Collette said. “I got a call out of the blue saying she wanted to talk to me about a project. Then I heard that she was directing. I mean, I would have been happy acting, but when someone chooses you to be in their directorial debut, it’s such an honor. I spoke to her within 48 hours. She took me through the story. I was like, sign me up.”
She continued, “When I read [the script], it was completely heartbreaking and also made my heart soar in the best possible way because it’s such a realistic, gorgeous story about this average, dysfunctional family going through something really, really challenging. I just think it’s a really special story. And she just put the most incredible group of people together on and offscreen. It was such a magical experience, one of the best.”
Goodbye June is now streaming on Netflix.