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Not only was Knives Out a personal favorite of 2019, but the film also went on to score Rian Johnson his first Academy Award nomination and it grossed over $300 million at the worldwide box office. I was already in awe of Johnson's work courtesy of a number of other accomplishments, but covering Knives Out rather extensively made me even more aware of Johnson’s kind, collaborative and passion nature on set.

With Spontaneous arriving on VOD on October 6th, I was lucky enough to have Katherine Langford on our next edition of Collider Ladies Night. As always, we discussed her journey in the industry thus far and, of course, a big topic of discussion had to be her experience working with Johnson on Knives Out. To start, she further confirmed what I already suspected:

“Rian Johnson is one of my favorites as well and he is, talking about the ‘don’t be a dick’/just being a great working human being, he doesn’t have an ego. He just knows what he wants. He allows freedom of creativity for all of the actors on set. And he’s also just a very genuinely nice human being, so much love to Rian Johnson and everything that he does.”

Langford went on to pinpoint something that made her time working with Johnson especially memorable, something that will, no doubt, contribute to Langford’s own craft as she continues to grow and flourish in film and television:

“I remember - talking about kind of freedom and being a lovely human being - he noticed that in between scenes that I was in, that I would go behind the cameras and that I would watch what other people were doing and also the set-ups of different shots. That’s something that I’ve kind of been doing more and more I think throughout acting, just because I really like it and I’m curious how things work. But he saw that I was doing that so he would almost always make sure that there was a place for me to be in between set-ups next to him, behind him to go and watch what was happening. And that, to me, was really, really special because, again, he’s an incredible director, he’s also incredibly busy directing and doing everything, so to even think of having a place and just kind of letting me watch his work was really special and a really great memory.”

Turns out, that great atmosphere on the set of Knives Out is something that Langford got to experience again on Spontaneous with Brian Duffield, another writer-director with an especially unique voice and strong sense of style: 

“Brian was also very freeing and fun, and had his parameters of, ‘Okay, let’s get the job done,’ but also, ‘I want this to be a creative space.’ And I think when you can get the best of both worlds, that’s chef’s kiss!”

That right there is only a small portion of our conversation with Langford. Do keep an eye out for the full episode of Ladies Night dropping this week on Collider!