Video: Kristen and Woody Harrelson talk 'Full Phil' and more with Deadline at Cannes

 

In Quentin Dupieux’s Full Phil, Kristen Stewart had to a eat a lot on screen — without a spit bucket.

In an interview for Deadline’s Cannes studio, Stewart said, “I only puked once. It was when they had filled this cauliflower mash with butter and they were like, ‘There’s no butter. It’s all vegetal oil.’ And I was like, ‘Vegetal oil?’ Woody’s vegan and I was like, ‘You can smell the butter.'”

“I’d have had a spit bucket,” co-star Woody Harrelson said. “I wouldn’t care.”

In Full Phil, Harrelson and Stewart are a father and daughter who’ve taken a trip to Paris in an attempt to reconnect. As his daughter consumes more and more delectable food from room service and a dinner at a restaurant, Phil finds himself in a symbiotic nightmare, feeling the effects of everything she eats and drinks.

“They had a very talented and willful French man making the food,” Stewart explained. “Our process means that I have to eat all day long. They wanted it to taste really good and reflect the French cuisine. And I was like, ‘I’m going to die. I’m not supposed to actually perish.'”

However, she embraced the challenge in terms of how it informed her process. “The eating’s cool because it’s nice to have obstacles,” she said, “like kind of hurdles that you don’t think about when you’re running lines… It’s a metaphor. It’s very symbolic. She’s a voracious bottomless pit, eating her feelings.”

Dupieux said he was inspired by the fact he himself has an 11 year-old daughter. “She’s quite someone, ” he said. “But it’s nothing like the movie. It’s not like that. But I guess it’s almost like a nightmare version of what I’m living with my daughter. I’m living a dream with my family and my daughter… It seems obvious that I may be talking about me and my daughter, plus I’m getting fat.”

I don’t think since I saw Ruben Östlund for the first time — I hadn’t really seen anyone with whom I thought, ‘Whoa, this guy is his own master.’

Harrelson said of Dupieux, “I think he’s got an extraordinary sense of humor, but he also just has a way of shooting things that just heightens or magnifies the experience for you. I don’t think since I saw Ruben Östlund for the first time — I hadn’t really seen anyone with whom I thought, ‘Whoa, this guy is his own master.’ And ‘Whoa, OK!’ He is a true maestro and I think his vision is extraordinary. And if you don’t like the film, there’s only one guy to blame. He’s the writer, the director, the cinematographer and the editor, but he’s great.”

Dupieux explained the philosophy behind the film thus: “I was just making fun of Americans visiting Paris, my version of it, because what you see in Emily in Paris, for example, is not real. I don’t want to say too much, but no, there’s no message. It’s just like I’m making fun of humanity.”

Harrelson said he’d met Stewart some years back when they were considering working together on another project that ultimately didn’t pan out. “I met her when she was about 17. She had just worked with Sean Penn and he was raving about her. And then I saw the movie and she was great in that. And then we hung out.”

“It was love at first sight,” Stewart said of first seeing Harrelson in White men Can’t Jump. “I was just a little guy going, ‘God, he’s f–king cool.’ He took me to a vegan spot in the valley and we totally bro-ed down and then never got to make the movie. And so when this popped up, I was like, ‘I’ve wanted to work with this guy forever.'”

With regard to what she’s doing next, Stewart said, “I’m writing two movies right now and I’m going to go shoot this Amazon show called The Challenger. I have some balls and they’re all in the air and I think I can hold them all. I want to make two movies basically by the end of May next year, I want to be figuring out what festivals they’re going to. And they’re really different. They’re really cool. I want to make an exploitation film and I want to make it for nothing and I want to distribute it myself. I want to make something teeny-tiny and let it trickle and just not be a part of a system that doesn’t behoove me.”

Harrelson said, that in addition to upcoming Apple TV series Brothers with Matthew McConaughey, he has Jason Bateman’s Netflix film Cackling of the Dodos.

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NEW PROJECT: Kristen to play astronaut Sally Ride in 'The Challenger' for a limited TV series

Kristen Stewart will make her TV series-starring debut in The Challenger, a limited series in which she’ll play Sally Ride, the astronaut and physicist who became the first American woman to fly in space. She did this as part of a NASA space shuttle astronaut class of 1978 that was the first to be diversified and not comprised of all white men.  

Kyra Sedgwick’s Big Swing Productions developed and brought the project to Amblin and is executive producing with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and Stewart through the latter’s Nevermind production label. Amblin’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey are also exec producers.

Maggie Cohn will serve as the writer and showrunner; her credits include American Crime Story, The Staircase and Narcos: Mexico. This has been the hot property on the TV auction block this week, and Amazon is close to tying it down.

The series is based on The New Guys, a book written by Meredith E. Bagby, who partners with Sedgwick and Valerie Stadler in Big Swing. They are also executive producers.

In some ways, this has the tapestry to tell the successor story to The Right Stuff, which was based on Tom Wolfe’s book about the culture clash that occurred when the cockiest world’s best fighter pilots jumped into the space race that America was engaged in with the Russians. Bagby tells the story of a group that was called by their predecessors ‘The F*cking New Guys,’ as NASA sought to diversify its pilots and crew for the space shuttle program. Ride was the first woman and the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to fly into space. Also in that program was the first Black and Asian American astronauts, and a married couple. They passed all the rigorous tests to become top of the class, and egos, ambition and romance were part of the cultural clash. They were also quite brilliant.

In 1983, Ride became the first American woman to fly on the space shuttle, and became an instant celebrity. That joy was short-lived, however, when three years later the space shuttle Challenger blew apart 73 seconds into its ascent, killing all seven members of the crew. Ride then became the only astronaut to become part of the Rogers Commission, a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, and it later came out that she pinpointed the problems with O-rings that became stiff at low temperature, and that turned out to be the reason for the explosion. Ride died from cancer at age 61 in 2012, a true American hero.

The hope will be to get this ready to time the series in proximity of the Challenger disaster anniversary. That happened 38 years ago, on January 28, 1986. For Stewart, this continues a career evolution which started after the Twilight Saga films, in which she has established herself as a most watchable actress with range.

In a moment where not a lot is selling in the marketplace, how does a plum package like this happen? Sedgwick explains this was a truly homegrown project, and not one that happened overnight:

“This is something we’ve worked on at Big Swing since 2017, me, Meredith and Valerie, about this new class of astronaut recruited by NASA in the early 1970s,” she said. “Sally Ride was among them, and the focus is this newly recruited wild, feral group of astronauts who were all very diverse. And then on an Oppenheimer track, it also tells the story of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger disaster that Ride took part in. Growing up in Florida, Meredith Bagby was obsessed with space and the shuttle, and she also watched the Challenger explode. Meredith got hundreds of hours of interviews with the members of that class, and we have relationships with all those living astronauts and they will be part of our brain trust on the show.

“She wrote the book and it went on the bestseller lists,” Sedgwick told Deadline. “We wanted so much to tell this story as a limited series. Our goal at Big Swing is to tell familiar stories with a new perspective and point of view. I had a relationship with Maggie Cohn, and she fell in love with the book. Valerie had this dream of having Kristen Stewart, and after more than a year of trying to get Kristen this book through back channeling, she read it and she fell in love. Getting Kristen and Maggie was incredible, for a company nobody really knows yet. We are three girls with a dream.

“Then we thought, what better than to bring in Steven Spielberg to help tell this awe-inspiring story of the astronauts who inspired space travel for a new generation? They helped us prepare the pitch that went out to the marketplace, and it has been extremely competitive and we are close to a deal.”

Making Stewart the centerpiece was also interesting in that TV was not an obsession for her.

“She has never done television, but when she read this she became obsessed with telling the story of Sally Ride from her own unique perspective that I won’t even try to paraphrase because she is so eloquent about it,” Sedgwick said. “She was so stunning in these pitch meetings and that was a huge part of why it has been so competitive. She’s so compelling and was so rabid about telling this story about an American hero who had to hide who she was, in that time.

“Who better to play Sally Ride than one of the great actors of her generation? As they say in Hollywood, passion wins the day. Her passion for being an executive producer is vast. As dogged as we were about getting the script to her, she has been that dogged about getting it sold in the marketplace.”

Even though Sedgwick herself is most closely associated with the role of the closer, it was Stewart who played that role in the pitch process.

“Right now when everyone is saying that nobody is buying anything, she would not listen and nor would we because if we had listened to all the times we were told this would be too hard, we would never have gotten this off the ground. Amblin spoke first, Maggie was great, and then they passed it to me, I was the one to pass to Kristen and was the one who got to kvell about her because I’d just seen Love Lies Bleeding. We were all in it to win it.”   

Auction was brokered by WME (which reps Stewart and Amblin) and CAA (which reps Sedgwick, Big Swing and Cohn).

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Kristen interviews Rachel Sennott for Interview Magazine

Rachel Sennott’s very big year unofficially kicked off at SXSW, where she ate everyone’s lunch as a stand-up comic in crisis, in I Used to Be Funny, and as a queer high school senior starting a fight club, in Bottoms, which she co wrote with her Shiva Baby director Emma Seligman. Now, with an appearance in HBO’s psycho-sexual drama The Idol, the 27-year-old actor is in full-on promo mode. But today, instead of going one-on-one with a journalist, Sennott got a slightly high Kristen Stewart instead.

MONDAY 6:30 PM APRIL 17, 2023 LA

KRISTEN STEWART: What up?

RACHEL SENNOTT: Hiii.

STEWART: How are you?

SENNOTT: Good. I’m so excited. Thank you for doing this.

STEWART: Thank you for having me.

SENNOTT: These Zooms always feel like a comfy little FaceTime. 

STEWART: Totally. I also just split a small edible with my girlfriend, which I don’t usually do. And then I thought, “Oh, fuck, I have to interview Rachel about her movies and her life,” and then I was like, “Step away from the journalist. Your job is to take that edible for this.” [Laughs]

SENNOTT: That will make it the real experience that it needs to be. I didn’t take an edible, but I got these free mushroom-light things in the mail. I don’t know who they were from. Now I’m like, “Should I have eaten them?” 

STEWART: Nice. Microdosing mushrooms is a generation below me. I took an eighth when I probably weighed 80 pounds and just went, “Bleh.” And then maybe once or twice since then because it’s fun around a campfire. But there’s a cooler, whole new approach to drugs that seems therapeutic and nice. I think it’s better this way.

SENNOTT: It’s a little more chill now. I feel like with mushrooms once you’ve had a scary experience, why do that again? 

STEWART: Yeah. It’s too much of a risk. Some people love psychedelics. They’re not for me. Wait, so what the fuck? I couldn’t get two different apps to work in order to watch Bottoms, so I can ask you the most honest question—what is the movie about? The only thing I’ve heard is that you felt excited to make a movie about girls and queer people that was stupid and not have the characters win this moral high ground. It’s so weird to have to fight to do that. 

SENNOTT: First of all, I’m glad because I want you to see it in the theater with other people. 

STEWART: As god fucking intended. 

SENNOTT: I watched so many cuts alone in a room, and I was like, “Is this good?” And then I watched it with an audience of people and I was like, “This is the best ever.” Because it’s basically about these two girls, me and my friend Ayo [Edebiri], and a rumor starts that we went to juvie over the summer, so we lean into it. We start this female fight club so that we can fuck the cheerleaders in the group. It’s sort of starting this fake female empowerment thing and our characters are benefiting from it, which is something that people do in real life. 

STEWART: Baby Tár. [Laughs] That’s cool. I can’t wait to see it.

SENNOTT: Also, it’s literally girls beating the shit out of each other. I remember the first announcement we had for the script, they put “fight club” in quotations and we were like, “It’s a real fight club.” There’s actual fighting in the movie, and someone was like, “This is so inappropriate, women beating each other up.” I was like, “Didn’t we earn that?”

STEWART: Oh man.

SENNOTT: They love it. 

STEWART: It’s so weird. You can see the trajectory of the reaction to the #MeToo movement and how—I don’t want to be derogatory because I think these movies need to happen—but there’s this race to moral efficacy and superiority that people are obsessed with right now and it’s the most boring way to actually help and understand each other. 

SENNOTT: It almost underestimates us. People really paint women one-dimensionally. I read the Love Lies Bleeding [Stewart’s upcoming film] script, and I was like, “That’s a perfect example of a messy, twisted lesbian.”

STEWART: Oh my god.

SENNOTT: It’s so fucked up. I can’t wait to see it.

STEWART: Everything’s just—reality’s breaking. That’s why movies are either so good or so bad right now. I feel like we don’t really have the words for it. And considering vocabulary is also changing so fucking quickly—how old are you? You’re like 27. I’m 33, I love hanging out with you, and I love—

SENNOTT: I feel like we talk the same.

STEWART: Totally. But I’m trying to determine—you’re not an alien, but so many of them are. 

SENNOTT: My little sister and all her friends go to fashion school, and they’re so cool. I hung out with them and I was like, “I’m such a fucking loser. I don’t know anything that they’re saying to me. I think I’m dressed weird.”

STEWART: Yeah. One of the questions I was going to ask you to try and determine if you were an alien was, “Are you easily embarrassed?” Everyone that I know that was raised in the American Pie era is steeped in shame and obsessed with hair removal. 

SENNOTT: I definitely have shame and embarrassment, it’s about the way I handle it. The lowest I ever was, was when I was tweeting during sex being like, “Ha, ha, ha. This is lame.” I was embarrassed, but I was clearly not embarrassed enough because I was sharing that with everyone.

STEWART: How weird and cool. Are you working on anything right now?

SENNOTT: I’m writing a movie that I want to direct that’s about that period in my life. And then I have some stuff—

STEWART: Do you like texting?

SENNOTT: It depends who. Do you like texting?

STEWART: I fucking love texting. It’s a lot of blue on my end and you better fucking love it. 

SENNOTT: But do you prefer one big text or do you want quick, fast, “We’re out of here?”

STEWART: I can have a pretty rapid fire conversation and feel pretty connected and be like, “Are we having the same conversation? I think so.” And then look back and be like, “Wow, weird wordplay happened there.” I like having a record of it. 

SENNOTT: Yeah. I used to be terrified of phone calls. Now I love a cold call, calling someone I haven’t talked to in ages. Back when I was single, I loved calling people I’d been on one date with. It throws them off and you’re like, “I’m insane. I’m fucking creepy.”

STEWART: “Hey, what’s up?”

SENNOTT: Hey. I’ll just call you whenever I want. I don’t care. And you call him for two minutes and then you’re like, “Okay, bye.” That is a power rush for me.

STEWART: What is your sign?

SENNOTT: I’m a Virgo.

STEWART: Whoa. Okay. 

SENNOTT: I feel like we discussed this late at night the first time we hung out, right?

STEWART: The first time we hung out was fun. Me and Dylan [Meyer, Stewart’s fiancée] were just talking about it. We were like, “Remember when she became our little friend that night?” Even though the neon—whatever. It doesn’t matter where we were. [Laughs] I was fucking wasted and I was like, “I fucking love you.” 

SENNOTT: You have to be that way in those environments. It’s like a week straight. That was my first time ever doing that, and I was doing the lightest version. You had so much shit going on, and it’s so overwhelming. You have to find your two people, and then be like, “Stay with me.”

STEWART: Exactly. Okay, so you’re writing this thing. How many projects have you done that you haven’t had a hand in developing or writing?

SENNOTT: I was on a sitcom. I didn’t have a hand in the development of that. [Laughs] Bodies Bodies Bodies I did not. Ally [Pankiw’s] movie [I Used to Be Funny] I auditioned for, I worked with her on the script, but didn’t do it. And then The Idol—

STEWART: For people that don’t know, she played a standup comedian, therefore she probably had to imbue her character with a little bit of her authentic voice.

SENNOTT: I like to add a little sauce.

STEWART: Dope. 

SENNOTT: I just watched the Boygenius film you directed, which is so great.

STEWART: That’s good.

SENNOTT: What’s your dream project to join? Do you love joining when you’re like, “It’s a book.”? Or do you love joining when you’re like, “It shoots tomorrow.”

STEWART: All of the above. I used to have a hard time creating a character and then believing it enough to play it because as a kiddo I was always just called to arms. The character would always be so fully outside of me, and created by someone else, that I was so scared of fucking it up or not doing the best. It’s about being a good student, that’s how kid actors are. I was always like, “If I made it up, it’s bullshit.” I had all these stupid rules for myself that I guess I needed then. As I’ve gotten older, I’m very down to be reckless as an actor. But if I were to ever develop something, which I’m starting to do—I’m going to make this movie [The Chronology of Water] with Imogen [Poots]. 

SENNOTT: Yeah. I want to be more like, “Let me do it.” But the Virgo side—I’m so anxious. I’m literally surrounded by all these lists of my three-year goals.

STEWART: Honestly, you should be so proud of yourself. I don’t mean to sound like a loser, but the Virgo thing is really working in your fucking favor. Because you’ve already held on to so much and not let it slip. I’ve worked constantly as an actor but I’ve always needed an assignment. I was clearly punching the shit out of all the walls of the houses I was in, which was probably annoying for the owners of the houses, aka a lot of the directors I’ve worked with. I was always like, “I am just an actor.” But that’s not true. Sorry, not to cut you off. This is about you.

SENNOTT: No. This is a natural conversation. It is funny though, because no personality type actually works in this industry. No matter what, it’ll drive you crazy.

STEWART: Man. Wait. So, you’ve written stuff, but you haven’t directed a movie yet?

SENNOTT: No. When I was in college, I co-directed sketches, but they’re like a minute. 

STEWART: But you’re writing this movie that you’re going to direct?

SENNOTT: Yeah. Hopefully.

STEWART: Are you going to be in it?

SENNOTT: I don’t know, that’s a lot of pressure. This is going to sound so vain, but I barely even have time to work out when I’m acting and my skin is breaking out. If I was directing and acting, I would look fucking crazy.

STEWART: That is one thing about directing, is that you look like a fucking disgusting mess trash bag all the time. [Laughs] Literally. You’re just like, “I’m so thirsty, and I’ve never heard of ChapStick.” Everything is so outside of your body, which is such a different experience.

SENNOTT: As an actor everyone’s like, “Do you need water? Can we fly some in?” [Laughs] 

STEWART: Oh man. How about process? What does your favorite set look like? Because it’s really fucking important. It’s better to design that shit from the ground up. Every bit of the wheel should be totally cut into and reinvented.

SENNOTT: I love a set that’s, like, controlled chaos, but that’s not true. I had so much fun on Bodies. Halina [Reijn, the director] has this insane energy and she pushed us to be free. And when we were shooting Bottoms, there was a night where we blew up a van and I was like, “This rocks.” But obviously all of those things wouldn’t be chill without an AD who really has it all locked so that you can be free. What’s your ideal set?

STEWART: I feel scared of anything big lately. There’s a weird hierarchy that makes me uncomfortable. This is the most clichéd, rote, expected, and completely genuine thing, but I just want to make a Cassavetes movie. I want my first movie to be a student film, even if it takes three years. I’m also not going to make a movie for more than $5 million, because it makes me uncomfortable and they usually suck. But getting people to agree to do that is so hard. 

SENNOTT: It’s weird because I feel like I started in the super, super indie sphere. I was like, “I can’t wait until I’m getting trailers and shit.” And now I’m like, “Take me back to the Shiva Babyhouse.”

STEWART: I know. [Laughs] You’re so funny.

SENNOTT: But it’s so crazy. I remember the difference between Shiva and Bottoms. For Shiva, Molly [Gordon] and I were staying in the kids’ rooms upstairs. Everyone was so close together that you could literally be like, “Emma?” [Seligman, the director] And she would be there.

STEWART: That’s so fun.

SENNOTT: And in Bottoms, it would be like you’re on the opposite sides of a football field. You’re taking a bus to a van to get to set. And you’re like, “Where is everyone?”

STEWART: [Laughs] I viscerally know that feeling and it’s kind of esoteric. You’re in your own extra-large coat that they bought you specifically for this movie so you can fit your wardrobe under it. 

SENNOTT: And you’re like, “It’s not even that cold out.” Standing alone in wardrobe with that coat on is really dissociative. I’m like, “Who am I?”

STEWART: It’s really infantilizing, too. You’re just like, “I’m here being preserved for my moment.” [Laughs]

SENNOTT: I’m always like, “Can I pee?” When they walk you to the bathroom I always feel like a child. 

STEWART: That’s so funny. What the fuck else? What are you going to have for dinner tonight?

SENNOTT: I actually already had dinner. Is that crazy? I’ve been trying to go to bed early, so I can wake up early. But I had sushi. What about you?

STEWART: I haven’t had dinner yet. I’m probably going to have this chickpea masala thing that I made with some rice. I’m going to stay in tonight. I’m already in bed literally.

SENNOTT: Slay.

STEWART: Me and my girlfriend are also writing something right now, and my brain works so much better in the morning. What’s your relationship with sleep? Because mine is complicated.

SENNOTT: To write I have to wake up at 5 a.m.

STEWART: Me too.

SENNOTT: And then I can only write till 9 a.m. or something, maybe 10 if I’m really pushing it. When Emma [Seligman] and I were writing Bottoms, we would do daytime. But alone, it has to be early. And then with work, I did a lot of stuff this past year where you start with a 5 a.m. call time on Monday, and then you keep pushing it so that by Friday it’s a 5 p.m. call time, and it’s a Fraturday. I got into smoking weed before I go to bed to try to make myself fall asleep but then the sleep is kind of weird. You wake up feeling like, “Eh.”

STEWART: I cannot sleep when I’m working, unless it’s a couple weeks in. It’s very, very, very annoying to dream about the most useless cyclical things. You think you’re trying to prepare for the next day by having these thoughts, and then you realize that you’re lying there organizing blue paint swatches. You get up and you’re like, “You didn’t do shit, but toil in your bed with weird incommunicable ideas.”

SENNOTT: That’s insane.

STEWART: Yeah. I’d love to get a camera on my body too. I think I burn a lot of calories when I’m sleeping, because I think I just never stop moving. It’s so annoying.

SENNOTT: That’s so stressful.

STEWART: It used to be much worse. As I’m getting older, it’s getting better. And when I’m not working, I sleep pretty well. I also got curtains. Dylan moved in, and she was like, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you have curtains?” And I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t sleep.” And she’s like, “No fucking shit.”

SENNOTT: Oh my god.

STEWART: Yeah. Okay. Did the same person who did Shiva do Bottoms?

SENNOTT: Yeah. Emma Seligman.

STEWART: And you guys are best friends. God, that’s so aspirational. It takes a long time to get to that point. You’re so lucky to be doing it young.

SENNOTT: It’s so fun. We got rained out for two weeks, and we’re like, “Fuck. We’re not going to get the last scene.” And then you’re like, “I’m glad I’m having this panic attack with you.”

STEWART: Yeah. Design the shit out of your process. That’s the only way to enjoy it. Me and Dylan are writing a movie. It’s a stoner girl comedy, and it’s really fucking stupid. I think you’ll like it. But the reason I even thought of this is because our producer is our best friend. We’re starting a company. I’ve worked with so many people that I didn’t know and that I didn’t like for so long. It was definitely valuable, but also, fuck that. We should do a movie together. What the fuck?

SENNOTT: I know. We have to figure out what it is.

STEWART: Yeah. I think you’re rad. I’m so happy to talk to you.

SENNOTT: We’ll make a movie of our night at whatever that bar was. We can make it a quest film.

STEWART: Wow. 

SENNOTT: [Laughs] But thank you so much for talking to me, and I hope you and Dylan have a delicious, what did you say? Chickpea? It’s more than just chickpeas. I don’t know why I’m calling it a single chickpea.

STEWART: [Laughs] Where do you live?

SENNOTT: I live in [redacted].

STEWART: Me too. Wait, what are your cross streets? Never mind. [Laughs] I told you I ate a fucking edible. 

SENNOTT: [Laughs] We’ll end it before I give out my address.

STEWART: That’s a good idea.

SENNOTT: Thank you. Nailed it.

STEWART: Bye dude. Nice to talk to you.

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