With director Paul Greengrass’ News of the World now playing in select theaters and arriving on PVOD in mid-January, I recently participated in a group interview with Helena Zengel about making the Western. If you haven’t seen the trailers, News of the World is based on the novel by Paulette Jiles and is set a few years after the end of the Civil War in Texas. The film is about Captain Jefferson Kyle Kid (Tom Hanks), a veteran who goes from town-to-town reading stories from newspapers. While traveling, he meets an abandoned 10-year-old girl named Johanna (Zengel), who was being escorted to Indian Affairs as she had previously been captured and raised among the Kiowa people after her family was slaughtered six years earlier. After trying to deliver the girl to local authorities, he decides to take her under his wing and return her to her only surviving relatives, which is hundreds of miles into the unforgiving wilderness.

During the interview, Helena Zengel talked about what surprised her about filming the shootout, the sequence she was nervous to film, how this project compared to other films she’s worked on, memorable moments from filming, and more.

Check out what he had to say below. For more on the film, read Matt Goldberg's review.

Helena Zengel:

• How did making News of the World compare to the other projects she’s worked on?
• Which sequence was she nervous to film and what was she excited to film?
• What would surprise people to learn about filming the shootout sequence?
• What was she surprised to learn about the old west?
• What will she always remember from filming the movie?

Here’s the official synopsis for News of the World:

Five years after the end of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a widower and veteran of three wars, now moves from town to town as a non-fiction storyteller, sharing the news of presidents and queens, glorious feuds, devastating catastrophes, and gripping adventures from the far reaches of the globe. In the plains of Texas, he crosses paths with Johanna (Helena Zengel), a 10-year-old taken in by the Kiowa people six years earlier and raised as one of their own. Johanna, hostile to a world she’s never experienced, is being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will. Kidd agrees to deliver the child where the law says she belongs. As they travel hundreds of miles into the unforgiving wilderness, the two will face tremendous challenges of both human and natural forces as they search for a place that either can call home.