At afternoon tea with Kate Winslet and Andrea Riseborough, it’s a case of waiting your turn.
The beloved British actresses were in central London Tuesday for a screening and informal discussion about their upcoming Netflix film Goodbye June. Winslet’s directorial debut —anchored by a gut-wrenching script from her 21-year-old son, Joe Anders —is a Christmas film with just as much joy as it has heartache.
Helen Mirren stars as the titular character who, upon receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, has her swarm of four children (played by Winslet, Riseborough, Toni Collette and Johnny Flynn) and their families descend on her hospital room ahead of Christmas Day. Winslet’s Julia and Riseborough’s Molly are forced to confront their long-running feud while everyone tussles with their bubbling grief. Timothy Spall, Stephen Merchant and Fisayo Akinade also star in the movie, in theaters Dec. 12 and hitting Netflix Dec. 24.
Winslet and Anders spoke in depth with The Hollywood Reporter this week about just how the Oscar-winning actress brought her son’s script to the screen.
And over a cup of tea and a macaron at a Netflix-hosted event, the Titanic star further detailed bringing a brilliant batch of actors together. “They are great people. I had to cast people who not only were going to be the only people who could play those parts, but who were going to be lovely,” Winslet says. “I knew they all were —even if I didn’t know them personally, I knew their reputations, because word gets around if someone’s tricky.”
The original plan had been to take the film out to financiers and get another director on board, but Winslet didn’t want to let Goodbye June go. The magic she and Anders were able to conjure on set was more than enough validation. “He really found it fascinating,” she says about Anders seeing his project come to life through his mother.
“We shot it in 35 days, and I had Helen Mirren for 16 days,” she continues. “So I had to be really ready. All those adult actors, all those children, the whole group, loads of different locations, I had to be really, really ready. So for [Anders], there were moments when he turned to me and [would] go, ‘What’s happening? How have we done all this?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know! Let’s keep going!’ We just had to hold hands and run at it.”
Some stellar performances from the film’s child actors strengthen an already solid cast. “The trick with children is you just mother them,” Winslet explains about working with the kids. “I used all of my own experience as a mother in empowering children, showing them how to have fun by saying to them, ‘Don’t learn any lines and make lots of mistakes. OK?’”
What you don’t want is a child memorizing an abstract bit of dialogue, Winslet says. “We didn’t want that, because children bring the joy. And when you’re in a situation where there’s tragedy happening … they just get on with what they’re doing with the coloring or playing or hiding in the bed.”
“It was so funny,” she recalls, “because I would carry the little ones on to set. They always felt like, ‘Oh, where’s Kate taking us?’ I said to them: ‘Do you know, that in that bed, I’ve actually hidden something…’ So then they’re looking for the hidden thing under the sheets [with] no idea that we were filming an entire scene around them and quite complicated emotions.”
Those in attendance at the Netflix event were desperate to get the chance to talk with a prolific actress who has masterfully executed her long-awaited turn in the director’s chair. But Winslet is also just a mother gushing with pride. “He has brilliant ideas. He’s very, very smart,” she says about Anders. “For as long as I can remember, he’s always written… He’s very humble and very shy.”
“I just wanted him to learn,” she continues. “And I wanted him to be around all these incredible actors.”