Asteroid City: The stars of Wes Anderson’s new comedy on working with the esteemed director
Wes Anderson has gathered such a huge celebrity cast for his latest movie that it’s perhaps apt that Asteroid City is set around a stargazer convention – while the characters stare at the skies, the viewers are kept entranced by a different kind of star.
Among the vast cast are A-listers Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston… Known for his highly stylised movies, Anderson seems to have no issue attracting talent to work with him.
Set in the American southwest in 1955, this film saw a small functioning town built in Spain to serve as the titular Asteroid City, with the cast and crew living and working there throughout the production.
Shot while COVID protocols were in place, it also served as a bubble.
Speaking to Sky News’ Backstage Podcast, cast-members talked about their experiences working with Anderson on Asteroid City, which itself is a play within a TV special.
Bryan Cranston on playing the narrator of the TV special about the play Asteroid City:
“I started really looking and doing some research on the more famous newscasters of the fifties – Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite and things like that, and I settled in on someone who kept coming back to me and I was influenced by Ted Koppel, and I sort of love the way he delivered the news.
“And I also feel that those men fall in love with their own voices… So that sort of came to me that we would do it in this sort of registry and without any emotion and without any opinion on what I was saying, so that the actors in the group can supply that – I was just there to monitor and feed in exposition.
“So, I just figured out this is my role, this is what my job is and then, you know, Wes takes a look at it and shapes it and basically says: ‘Faster, faster, faster, faster’. And you do it faster, faster, faster!”
Pic: Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features
Jeffrey Wright on Anderson’s fast-paced script:
“He’s the conductor and he’s setting the rhythm and the tempo and that’s what he wants.
“I think he has a thing for early cinema, 40s, 50s style of stylised dialogue that no one really spoke in the world – it was just this dialect that existed in storytelling, and I kind of love that stuff, too, I love, melodrama and the old forms.
“It’s just a different take on telling the story, it doesn’t mean because it’s antique that it’s not effective – we’ve changed but I think there’s still something that can be moving about those styles, and it’s also a way of accepting that this is a performance – we understand it’s not real, it’s not a documentary and I think Wes likes to celebrate performance in that way.”
Pic: Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features
Scarlett Johansson on the preparation needed to play an actor who herself is playing a character who is preparing for a part:
“There were so many layers of the performance – I’m playing an actor who’s playing an actor who’s preparing something.
Scarlett Johansson in Asteroid City. Pic: Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features
“I had a lot of questions for Wes, and we talked a lot about all these different – like, What’s this play? What’s this movie that [Johansson’s character] Midge Campbell is preparing? Who is Midge Campbell? I think it was good to figure that stuff out.
“The prep was maybe more involved with this film because it had so many different layers – if I go into doing something, I try to come in with something to hang my hat on, so I have something to offer in the beginning and then it hopefully will evolve from there, but this needed a bit of thinking on it and discussion with Wes and a lot of questions and stuff like that.”
Pic: Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features
Jason Schwartzman on working on the film and with Scarlett Johansson:
“It was so fun. It was so interesting. I loved it.
“It wasn’t hard, I’ll tell you, because I felt like I was acting with – the movie was like, done, [Johansson]’s so amazing.”
Pic: Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features
Maya Hawke on the ‘impossible task’ she found herself trying:
“Getting to try something impossible is kind of freeing, you know? Versus having to sort of try to master – being asked to do something simple where you’re like, ‘Oh, no, I’m going to mess this up’.
“I felt that the impossible task that was asked of me was, you know, these people are all so intimidating and so talented, and to enter that environment as a new person, as a young person, as a person without that much experience, and to come in with confidence and to not worry that I was going to ruin the film, which very quickly I realised was actually impossible once I got there, because Wes is so masterful in the orchestra conduction of everything that you couldn’t ruin it if you tried your hardest.”
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‘These people are all so intimidating’
Rupert Friend on living and working together while making Asteroid City:
“One of the things that Wes not only encourages but really engenders is this spirit of community and what it means is that whether you are the main focus of a scene or not is completely immaterial.
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“You want to be there to support your colleagues, whether you’re in the deep, deep background out of focus, as many of us were, or you’re front and centre – that becomes immaterial, so you’re speaking about the egalitarian nature of it.
“I don’t know of a more genuine ensemble than what I saw on set and on the screen for this movie, I mean, any of these people could be the star and everyone gave it to everyone else.”
Asteroid City is out in cinemas now, hear more about it on the latest episode of Backstage – the film and TV podcast from Sky News.
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Joy star James Norton on the ‘postcode lottery’ of IVF – and playing the scientist who was part of creating the first ‘test-tube baby’
Actor James Norton, who stars in a new film telling the story of the world’s first “test-tube baby”, has criticised how “prohibitively expensive” IVF can be in the UK.
In Joy, the star portrays the real-life scientist Bob Edwards, who – along with obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and embryologist Jean Purdy – spent a decade tirelessly working on medical ways to help infertility.
The film charts the 10 years leading up to the birth of Louise Joy Brown, who was dubbed the world’s first test-tube baby, in 1978.
In the UK, statistics show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade
Norton, who is best known for playing Tommy Lee Royce in the BAFTA-winning series Happy Valley, told Sky News he has friends who were IVF babies and other friends who have had their own children thanks to the fertility treatment.
“But I didn’t know about these three scientists and their sacrifice, tenacity and skill,” he said. The star hopes the film will be “a catalyst for conversation” about the treatment and its availability.
“We know for a fact that Jean, Bob and Patrick would not have liked the fact that IVF is now so means based,” he said. “It’s prohibitively expensive for some… and there is a postcode lottery which means that some people are precluded from that opportunity.”
Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie and James Norton star in Joy. All pics: Netflix/ Kerry Brown
Now, IVF is considered a wonder of modern medicine. More than 12 million people owe their existence today to the treatment Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy worked so hard to devise.
But Joy shows how public backlash in the years leading up to Louise’s birth saw the team vilified – accused of playing God and creating “Frankenstein babies”.
Bill Nighy and Thomasin McKenzie star alongside Norton, with the script written by acclaimed screenwriter Jack Thorne and his wife Rachel Mason.
The couple went through seven rounds of IVF themselves to conceive their son.
Norton portrays scientist Bob Edwards, while McKenzie plays embryologist Jean Purdy
While the film is set in the 1970s, the reality is that societal pressures haven’t changed all that much for many going through IVF today – with the costs now both emotional and financial.
“IVF is still seen as a luxury product, as something that some people get access to and others don’t,” said Thorne, speaking about their experiences in the UK.
“Louise was a working-class girl with working-class parents. Working class IVF babies are very, very rare now.”
In the run-up to the US election, Donald Trump saw IVF as a campaigning point – promising his government, or insurance companies, would pay for the treatment for all women should he be elected. He called himself the “father of IVF” at a campaign event – a remark described as “quite bizarre” by Kamala Harris.
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Bill Nighy ‘proud’ of new film on IVF breakthrough
“I don’t think Trump is a blueprint for this,” Norton said. “I don’t know how that fits alongside his questions around pro-choice.”
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In the UK, statistics from fertility regulator HEFA show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade.
“It’s so expensive,” Norton said. “Those who want a child should have that choice… and some people’s lack of access to this incredibly important science actually means that people don’t have the choice.”
Joy is in UK cinemas from 15 November, and on Netflix from 22 November
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