It's not exactly a new thing for an actor to take the directorial reins: just look at Maggie Gyllenhaal, tearing it up on the awards circuit with her new Olivia Coleman-led The Lost Daughter. But it's always exciting to see how a known quantity in front of the camera would operate behind it. The Matrix Resurrections star Jessica Henwick, in a conversation with British GQ, has revealed how she is shooting her own short film—and, what's more, it was done entirely on a phone.
The actor was "occupied writing, directing and acting in her own short film," says the piece, called Bus Girl. It co-stars Harry Potter star Evanna Lynch and Daniel Portman, also an illustrious alumni of Game of Thrones. The article describes the film as a "love letter to the art of cooking set in a fancy London restaurant," and as being "partially inspired by Henwick's pandemic-induced obsession with trying new recipes". Food was, apparently, on the brain. The film was entirely shot on a series of Mi 11 smartphones, and the manufacturer, Xiaomi, was pivotal in the film being realized.
"I had written a couple of shorts in the past," Henwick explains to GQ, but Xiaomi pushed her to direct her first:
"And I was like, 'You know what, I'm done with shorts. They're too hard. I need more time to really sink my teeth in. [...] I'm glad [Xiaomi] were pushing me. I'd fallen into the trap that so many of us fall into, which is: 'I'm not really. I'll know when I'm ready.' The truth is, you'll never know when you're ready. You just need to do it."
The film was shot with a crew of fifty over three days during a break in filming Knives Out 2. "In pre-production, I was in Greece doing remote work, location scouting over a video call. Then I flew to England, made the short, and literally two days later flew to Serbia to finish the second half of Knives Out." That is some tenacious work ethic right there. We're gonna have to start calling her multi-hyphenate Jessica Henwick from now on - she's not just an actor anymore! Wonder what Soderbergh would have to say about shooting off a phone? And how many times did she get Sean Baker on WhatsApp? We guess those are questions for the first feature profile.
Catch Henwick in The Matrix Resurrections when it comes to theatres on December 22.