Nathalie Emmanuel on ‘Megalopolis,’ Francis Ford Coppola and Cannes

It’s been just some hours since Nathalie Emmanuel has seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis for the primary time, and she or he’s selecting the precise phrases to explain the expertise.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” says the actress, speaking over Zoom from London in late April, as she pauses for a second to gather her ideas.

Coppola’s epic, which may have its purple carpet world premiere on the 2024 Cannes Movie Pageant, casts Emmanuel in a starring function reverse a stacked ensemble that features Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Fishburne and Jason Schwartzman. “The film appears like an actual name to arms,” she says. “It asks large questions. Regardless of all of the horrible, arduous and devastating realities of the world that we stay in, how can we make it higher? It appears like there’s hope or a chance for one thing higher.”

And there’s nothing fairly like Megalopolis’ wild backstory. Coppola self-financed the $120 million experimental epic that has been ruminating in his thoughts for 4 many years. On the eve of the movie’s large reveal in Cannes, Emmanuel opened up concerning the expertise of capturing Coppola’s ardour venture — which additionally represents an enormous play for the British thespian, who broke out enjoying fan-favorite Missandei on HBO’s Recreation of Thrones. Since then, she’s rolled with the Quick & Livid gang, joined the Maze Runner franchise and gone toe-to-toe with Kevin Hart in his Die Hart sequence.

As for Megalopolis, the movie facilities on an bold architect named Caesar (Driver), who desires to rebuild New Rome — a metropolis related in dimension and scope to New York — as a utopia following an apocalyptic catastrophe. Emmanuel describes her character, Julia Cicero, because the “beloved daughter” of Esposito’s character, the primary African American mayor of New Rome. “She finds herself very intrigued and fascinated by Caesar,” she says. “He additionally simply so occurs to be her father’s form of archnemesis, so she finds herself caught between these two worlds and making an attempt to work out her place in it.”

Coppola’s hopes of creating the movie date again to the Nineteen Eighties. Using excessive after a historic run that noticed him ship 1972’s seminal finest image Oscar winner, The Godfather, adopted by the Gene Hackman starrer The Dialog and The Godfather Half II (each finest image nominees in 1975), and 1979 epic finest image nominee Apocalypse Now, Coppola nonetheless reportedly didn’t have sufficient juice to get the bold Megalopolis off the bottom. He revisited it many instances over time by sharpening the script, and it seemed near going ahead till the 9/11 terrorist assaults pressured one other delay. In 2019, on the eve of his eightieth birthday, Coppola instructed Deadline that he was able to make the “uncommon” manufacturing occur as soon as and for all on a grand scale with an enormous solid. A worldwide pandemic pressured one more delay.

Emmanuel first heard of Megalopolis pre-pandemic when her L.A.-based rep, Andrew Rogers at Impartial Artist Group, tipped her off and promised to control it. That led to a “very informal” assembly with the enduring filmmaker. “We had a chat and a cup of tea,” Emmanuel remembers. “It didn’t actually really feel like an audition. It felt very relaxed, and he instructed me a bit about his inspiration for it, and the character [Julia] that I might be enjoying. He stated, ‘Do you wish to learn a web page of the script?’ I used to be like, ‘Certain, why not?’ ”

Following the pandemic delay, the actress was in Budapest in late 2021 filming a lead function within the horror thriller The Invitation when Megalopolis resurfaced. “I had a name with Francis over Zoom,” she particulars of a gathering that morphed into an audition of types. “We performed a enjoyable recreation the place he requested me to pick a line from a track, a film, a poem, something. To be sincere, I can’t keep in mind what I selected ultimately, however he requested me to say that line in numerous situations. Say it just like the butt of a joke, such as you’re breaking actually unhealthy information to any individual, such as you’ve simply heard the worst information on the earth, such as you’re celebrating, simply again and again in all these other ways. That’s how we talked and bought to know one another.”

Not lengthy after, Emmanuel’s reps referred to as with the excellent news that she bought the half. Taking pictures began in Atlanta in November 2022 and continued by way of March 2023, however earlier than cameras began rolling, Emmanuel remembers every week of rehearsals with extra theater-style video games, very like her Zoom audition. “It was a enjoyable method to assist the actors get linked, be playful and spontaneous,” she says. That sense of journey continued by way of manufacturing and when requested to sum up the expertise of engaged on Megalopolis, Emmanuel leans on one phrase: “Shocking.”

“That’s the phrase I really feel after I take into consideration the expertise and the entire course of,” she says. “A whole lot of stunning, sudden moments. Whereas at instances that may be difficult, it’s a part of the method of figuring all of it out. It makes for a extremely distinctive expertise.”

Emmanuel continues, “There have been days once we went in and also you kind of requested your self, ‘What’s going to occur at present?’ Lots of people can relate to this concept, and I do know I will be this manner, you’ll be able to tether to a spot the place you’re feeling safe and secure, however typically leaping into the unknown is releasing. It’s scary however releasing as effectively. I got here up towards myself rather a lot, and bought to satisfy myself fairly a couple of instances. As an actor, as an artist, as a human being, it’s all the time good to satisfy your self and simply go for it. What’s that saying? ‘Really feel the concern and do it anyway.’ ”

With out spoiling plot factors or particular scenes, Emmanuel says that a few of these spontaneous moments ended up within the completed movie. “There have been rehearsal-type train that we did that ended up within the movie as a result of they had been actually helpful as a approach to push your self and open your self as much as give up to the method,” she notes. “I discovered lots from his method of being spontaneous, playful and experimental. And the identical goes for the actors round me who I noticed and watched do the identical.”

She praises the solid for the best way they supported each other by way of the method. “Everybody was so dedicated to be in service of realizing this story that has been in Francis’ thoughts rising, evolving and percolating for 40 years,” she says.

A lot has been written about Megalopolis in latest weeks after Coppola hosted a personal trade screening on the Common CityWalk Imax theater on March 28 for potential distributors and studio insiders. Among the ink has targeted on the challenges Coppola may face in touchdown a deal, however Emmanuel shrugs off the noise. “That feels a bit above my pay grade,” she says. “With any film, typically they are often critically one factor and commercially one thing else, and it doesn’t actually imply something. Francis has a historical past of creating motion pictures that also throw up new questions over time, and this appears like a kind of motion pictures that can do this. As artists, that is what we made and what we poured ourselves into, we believed in it and did our best possible.”

Emmanuel, who has one other starring function on the horizon with the upcoming launch of The Killers for motion auteur John Woo, says she hopes Megalopolis leaves audiences feeling hopeful. “It’s a love letter to humanity,” she concludes. “In a world that may really feel so unrelenting and painful and devastating at instances, I hope individuals take away a hope for one thing higher and a data that we are able to have company in that.”