Vanessa Kirbyis having an incredible year. Less than a month after receiving rave reviews for playing Sue Storm inThe Fantastic Four: First Steps, her newest movie,Night Always Comes, arrives on Netflix, wherein she gives another phenomenal performance, as well as shows off her producing skills. Based on the novel byWilly Vlautin,the film is a raw, dark drama about Lynette, a traumatized woman desperately trying to make $25,000to buy the house in which she, her mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and her older brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen) live. Over the course of one night, Lynette must confront her harrowing history to achieve her goal.
One such figure from her past includes Gloria (a perfectly castJulia Fox),an old friend who is now living a luxurious life funded by her senator boyfriend, though the fact that she has to walk on eggshells to keep him happy makes it clear it’s not all as glamorous as it might seem. Fox’s breakout role came in 2019’sUncut Gems, for which she was nominated for the Breakthrough Actor Award at the Gotham Awards. She, too, is in the midst of an exciting year, as she will also appear in theJordan Peele-produced sports horror filmHIM, set to premiere next month.
Collider got the chance to speak to Kirby and Fox about the powerful and painfully relevant film. During the conversation, Kirby discusses how she and Gottsagen bonded to depict an authentic sibling relationship onscreen and the difference between approaching the action scenes in this film andFantastic Four, while Fox reveals the secret to making truly unhinged dialogue feel natural and recalls teaching Kirby American slang.
Vanessa Kirby Reveals What She Learned From Producing ‘Night Always Comes’
“It was representational of something that perhaps hadn’t been onscreen before.”
COLLIDER: First of all, congratulations on this movie. I was truly blown away by both of your performances. I want to start with you, Vanessa, because I believe this is also the first feature that you’re releasing with your production company, which is so exciting. What is the biggest thing you feel like you learned through this process of producing that you’re going to take with you to future projects?
VANESSA KIRBY: God, I think we all learned so much. This movie was a book, and we read the book, and even though it was such a hard, difficult journey and story of this woman — and we knew it would be really hard to adapt, and we knew it would be a hard film to watch — I thinkwe wanted to take the risk because there haven’t been many Lynettes onscreen before, and there haven’t been many Glorias onscreen, and it felt, to us, like it was representational of something that perhaps hadn’t been onscreen before. So that’s always been a big motivator, and it will continue to be, I think.
It’s a hard protagonist to watch, but I think what the book did so beautifully was it always framed it to go, “Okay, this woman — we might not always agree with what she’s doing, the choices she makes, or the extremities she goes to, but we know why.” Because the system is just not set out to help her. It’s against her, and it’s a daily struggle for her, andwhen human beings are in really desperate situations, they do really desperate things. And that’s society’s responsibility to take care of them and the responsibility for people who have much more. That felt really important to us to attempt to put onscreen. So even though it’s a really challenging watch, we were really honored that we got to even try [to put her voice onscreen].
Vanessa Kirby Talks Learning Slang From Julia Fox and Working With “Hero” Zack Gottsagen
“He’s got the ability of total presence.”
Julia, you have such a gift for making some of the wildest dialogue sounds so natural and so real. I have to know, what is your technique for mastering that sort of conversational flow? And also, was there any adlibbing involved in your scene in particular?
JULIA FOX: Yes,I’m always pushing to riff and do a little bit of improv, because I feel like it just always ends up sounding more natural. I’m such a stickler for that. Even when I watch movies, I’m always like, “It’s too scripted. It’s too scripted.” I love it just to feel so, so raw, and Ben and Vanessa were amazing at letting me do my thing. It’s tough, too, because, like, Vanessa’s British, so she had to really keep up, and wow, she’s just such an incredible, dynamic actress and got the lingo.
KIRBY: I don’t think I did, actually. I barely kept up with her.
FOX: No, you did! You were so good!
KIRBY: She came in, and she went, “Boom.” Every take. I actually thinkwe could have a five-hour movie from just that scene.
FOX: From just our takes. We did so many takes.
KIRBY: She was just genius. She was just riffing all this stuff.My main task was to try not to laugh, because it was so funny. There’s tons of stuff in the scene. If only we could have done, like, a half-hour version of it, but there’s loads of your adlibs in it. So many.
I would watch the five-hour version of that for sure.
FOX: Right?
Speaking of authenticity, Vanessa, you touched on this a little bit, but I really love the focus on the family dynamics in this movie, particularly between Lynette and Kenny. I feel like we so rarely see that representation, but I imagine it’s going to resonate really hard with a lot of people. How did you work with Zack and Benjamin to make sure you were doing that sibling relationship justice and telling it in a genuine way?
KIRBY: Well, Zack’s one of my favorite actors, and obviously, everyone loves him inPeanut Butter Falcon. We were laughing earlier, remembering that we would walk down the street when we were bonding and getting to know each other before we started filming —we went bowling, and we did loads of fun stuff together— and people would always come rushing up to us, and they would always be recognizing him. They would be, like, his biggest fan, and it was so sweet and cool because I feel the same about him. And he’d go, “Yes, yes, I am the star ofThePeanut Butter Falcon— thank you very much.” And he’d be like, “Do you want a signature? Do you want a picture?” So he was one of my heroes, and honestly, I felt so honored to work with him.
And I felt really nervous, because he’s so real, and he’s so present, and he’s so alive, and sometimes, I felt quite act-y compared, because he’s got the ability of total presence. So that was awesome. We really got to know each other. I wanted him to feel super comfortable with me and vice versa. He really does feel like my big brother now, and he still rings me up and calls me his little sister. There’s a whole other movie of them being super happy together that I wish we could have done because that’s how we were off set.
Vanessa Kirby Breaks Down Her Different Approaches to Action in ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘Night Always Comes’
“We wanted her to be someone who you’d believe would be able to know those scenarios.”
Oh, I love it. You’re saying all these things, and I want to see all of it. Hopefully, there’ll be some deleted scenes that we get to see. I feel like this is the year where you are kicking ass left and right, between this movie and obviouslyFantastic Four. How does the way that you approach action scenes in something more grounded and gritty like this movie and something larger scale with more magic involved with Marvel differ for you?
KIRBY: In this one, it was really important that Lynette is not a superhero of any kind. When you read the book, she does a lot of things that are very physically extreme, and I wanted to verify that you never don’t believe that she could do it. So even if there’s a mad fight type thing,we didn’t want her to suddenly do kung-fu or be good at martial arts. [Laughs] Do you know what I mean? This is a person who didn’t have a clue about that stuff. And yet also, we wanted her to be someone who you’d believe would be able to know those scenarios, to know what a dangerous situation was, to know how to navigate it. You wouldn’t doubt [she] could somehow tough it out, because she has to for such a long stretch of this night as she does in the book. It’s almost crazy how much she does. There’s a lot more in the book, even, than we could put in the film.
I asked Julia a lot of questions, because she has such an amazing history, and she has so many friends, and [to Julia] you’ve been around so many women who are real survivors. That was so useful for me. I must have asked you so many questions also about your best friend, Harmony. That was really inspiring to me, and I thought about her all the way through the film, becausethere are so many women like that who had really extreme lives and had been so brave in the face of it.
For you, Julia, I mean, you play such a key role in this movie. I feel like Gloria acts as a catalyst for a lot of things that unfold, but you really only have one whirlwind scene to sort of do it. How do you approach that challenge of knowing that you have a fairly limited amount of space to make such an essential impact on the movie?
FOX: I mean, honestly, the same way I would approach a movie that I’m in a lot of scenes — you just have to really believe it. That’s always my thing.I cannot be a good actress ifIdon’t believe it, so it’s just about setting everything up so that it’s real. And honestly, on a night shoot in Portland with Vanessa and just the vibe, I felt like those were the ingredients that really catapulted us into this kind of terrible situation to be in, but it worked.
