interview | jess bush

There is something quietly intimate about ‘Bedford Park‘. Written and directed by Stephanie Ahn, the film follows Audrey, a Korean American physical therapist living in Brooklyn, as she moves through the complicated space between who she is at home and who she becomes when she steps outside of it. At home, she is a daughter carrying the weight of family expectations, translating for her parents and navigating the unspoken responsibilities that come with being part of an immigrant family. Outside of it, she has built a world of own, filled with music, photography and the small freedoms that allow her to feel like herself.

Then she meets Eli, and that carefully constructed balance begins to shift. Their relationship is tender and complicated, unfolding over a brief period of time but leaving an impact that extends far beyond it. Through Eli, Audrey begins to see the possibility of a life that exists outside of obligation, and to recognize how rare it is to feel completely seen by another person.

For Moon Choi, who plays Audrey, that sense of living between worlds was immediately familiar. Born and raised in Seoul before moving to Japan as a child, Choi spent her formative years navigating different cultures and languages. Her connection to Audrey became even more personal as production stretched across seven years, allowing Choi to grow alongside a character who herself is searching for a way forward. The film’s long journey also allowed her to bring pieces of her own life into Audrey, including her love of film photography. Her personal camera appears in the film, while photographs she took herself ultimately became part of Audrey’s world.

That extended process also shaped Choi’s relationship with her co-star Son Sukku. The two had been friends and scene partners for 15 years before making the film, but ‘Bedford Park’ marked their first time acting together in English. What could have been an obstacle instead became another way of making their characters feel unfamiliar to one another, despite the deep trust they already shared.

During TIFF, Schön! spoke with Choi about finding Audrey through music and photography, working with a longtime friend, and more.

When you were younger, was there a particular film, book, character, or performance that first made you fall in love with the idea of make-believe and think, “I want to do this”?

I think I moved around a lot as a kid. I was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, but my family moved to Japan when I was nine, and I graduated elementary school there. That was six years of living and spending my childhood — very formative years — in Japan. I knew that my roots were Korean, and I had to go back to Korea at some point because of my father’s job.

At that time in Japan, it was the golden age of Japanese drama TV series. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but these days, we have K-dramas or K-films trending worldwide. At that time, Japanese drama TV series were the best of all Asian TV series. I grew up watching romance, very ’90s Japanese retro romance TV series, and they used to have commercial breaks very often, like every 10 minutes. Every 10 minutes, I would imitate the main characters. I didn’t even realize I wanted to act, but I was so drawn into the setting that I tried to mimic them and repeated their lines.

I remember a TV series called ‘Love Generation’. It was the biggest hit of the 1990s Japanese drama with Takuya Kimura, who’s still the hottest, most popular Japanese actor. I was very drawn to Japanese dramas, and there was one TV series called ‘Glass Mask’. It’s based on a very long-running Japanese cartoon. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Japanese anime or manga.

When you mentioned that, I thought about ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’. It’s such a beautiful movie.

I love that studio. I grew up watching a lot of Japanese anime and Japanese TV series. I was drawn to ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ and ‘Totoro’, these very personal stories of human connection, and oftentimes they’re staged in a way that feels like a love story. A lot of Japanese dramas incorporate family drama as well. It’s about normal people living their lives in Tokyo, but still falling in love, falling out of love, and then having this obligation as a daughter or as a son, being asked to be loyal to their parents. It’s very similar to Korean tradition as well. I think I was oblivious to the fact that I wanted to be an actor, but I think that’s how I developed an interest in storytelling overall.

A lot of the themes that you talk about are very prevalent in ‘Bedford Park’. Is that what attracted you when you were reading the script? Did those themes really seem very apparent to you when you were reading it?

I think there were many qualities that really drew me into the story. That’s a major part of it. Another major part was the fact that Audrey seemed very disoriented in her own body. I could imagine that because I have all these Korean American cousins and friends who live in New York and LA. You’re asked to play the Korean daughter at home, but then when you go out, you’re a physical therapist living in Brooklyn. You have all these amazing, unique friends, and you love listening to music.

Some people might say, “Well, that’s weirdo music. What music do you listen to?” She has her zone. She has a taste for music and a taste for photography, so she has that passion. Once she goes home to her parents’ house, she’s engaged in this role where she still needs to play the daughter. For parents who don’t speak English, she needs to answer the phone for them and read the mail for them. It’s the double life of being a descendant of immigrants. I think that’s what also appealed to me and really resonated with me. Although I’m not an immigrant, I’ve had similar experiences moving around.

Her headphones almost act like a character in the film; it’s almost like her safe space.

Stephanie shared the playlist with me. She has amazing taste in music. She shared Audrey’s playlist and Eli’s playlist. For Eli’s playlist, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to any of it, just on purpose, to give him his own universe. For me, I listened to Boston. I listened to Sufjan Stevens, who did the score for Call Me by Your Name. Bon Iver is one of my favourites; I even went to their concert before I was cast for this part.

She has that taste in music, and I think listening to her playlist along the way — even during preparation — I listened to it for years and years. It took us seven years to make this film happen. For the past maybe five years, I’ve been listening to that playlist along with my own playlist. That actually changed my taste in music as well.

How did you build Audrey over those seven years, and what was it like growing alongside her as you yourself changed?

When I first auditioned for the part, I think I had just turned 30 or 31, and Audrey in the script is 36 years old, so just about mid-30s. Her parents are talking to her about getting married, about her age, and about what she’s going to do with her life. Stephanie told me that I looked a little too young to be Audrey. I thought I could play someone a bit older, and she said, “But still, there’s something, there’s a layer that could form. It doesn’t have to be physicality, but it could be something about aging as a woman after 32 or 33.”

We never knew it was going to take this long because we never knew there would be COVID. It was before COVID, and then in 2020, COVID happened. Everything was shut down, both in Korea and America, and Stephanie and I were trying to figure out how to make this film happen with Gary Foster, our main producer. We waited and waited, and three years passed, four years passed. After four years, after post-COVID, we decided to make a short film as a proof of concept. We shot that in Brooklyn in two days. We were going to show it to financiers and other possible investors.

When I went back to Korea, I showed it to my co-actor in the play that I was doing, and that was Son Suk-ku, my co-actor, who’s Eli. Actually, in the feature that Stephanie wrote 10 years ago, Eli was a Caucasian guy. Eli Wokoliak was a white guy. When Son Suk-ku saw the short film, he said, “I love this character. I love these scenes. If this were Korean, I would definitely do it.” I said, “You know, I do think that you would be a really, really good fit for Eli, because when I first read the scripts five years ago, I actually thought about you because he has that Tom Hardy vibe that not many Korean actors do.” He said, “Yeah, yeah, why don’t you talk to your director maybe?”

I did, and Stephanie said, “I never thought of this character as a Korean guy,” because she never had that image of a Korean guy who was an ex-wrestler, rough, crass. I showed her some of his clips, and she said, “I love him. I really like him.” Then they met on Zoom, and boom, that started everything.

You guys needed that pause to find him for Eli. I think that is a blessing in disguise, almost.

Also, because we’ve been friends for a long time. We’ve been friends for 15 years. He’s my best scene partner. We were in acting workshop. We did two short films and two plays together. We never did a feature film together, but I knew that he was a wonderful actor, and he had become a superstar after COVID with his film and his TV series that were double mega hits of the year.

All the timing and everything just turned out to be the best timing for us to make this film happen. Sometimes in hindsight, you think that it was a really long time to just wait and wait and see if we get funding at all. But then, when I look back, it was really, really worth it. I’m happy that we had those years.

What was it like building these two characters and approaching the more intimate scenes, knowing that you guys already had this friendship over 15 years?

It’s so natural for us to just act together, which could be a little risky, I guess, because if you’re too familiar with each other, it might be risky. I think there was another challenge for both of us because we never acted in English together. We are Korean actors; usually, we act in Korean. That put a new layer and a new character to the person who was playing Eli and the person who was playing Audrey, because we were speaking and acting in English. It was a big hurdle for both of us, but I think that put a new layer on it that made each other look new to us. We don’t really need to talk about what our plan is or what we’re going to do in the scene. We understand our process.

It’s also amazing to see someone you think you know and how that person works with his own process, but then when he brings something that’s totally unexpected, I think that’s such a good surprise, and it’s really inspiring for me as well. We don’t even really comment on each other. We don’t need to. We don’t want to because we want to just give that room for each other. There’s so much trust between us that we didn’t try to do something new because we knew that the whole circumstance of filming in the U.S. and acting in English would be so new to both of us. We would try to focus together and really just connect.

I wouldn’t know that you guys had never really acted in English before.

It was good that we had those years as a bonus. We did have our dialect coach because we do have an accent in some words, so we had pretty intensive sessions starting about a month before shooting. Stephanie used to comment on things like, “This line, you’d kind of sound Korean,” or “This line…” Son Suk-ku has a very attractive but funny accent that he got from living in Chicago. I don’t know what friends he had back in Chicago. He has a very chill accent. It was challenging, but it was worth it. It was fun.

How do you think Audrey’s relationship to caretaking shaped her, and at what point in the film does she begin to realize that she needs to take care of herself and follow her own path?

I think meeting Eli and seeing him, learning that he has a daughter, and seeing him work during the day, go to school during the day, and work in the afternoons while still trying to leave his past behind and take care of his daughter — all of that affects her. The more she started learning who Eli is, I think she realised what she wants to do with her life as well, and I think it was inspiring for her to listen to his stories.

When you take a look at the scene between the two of them, she’s the one who’s asking questions about his life. “So what do you want to do after school? What do you want to do? Where’s your daughter?” She has so much interest because she wants to know what he does to overcome his trauma, and I think learning how he’s dealing with his life really inspires her. She’s very oblivious to that. There’s no epiphanic moment where she’s like, “Oh, this is what I want to do with my life,” but she’s slowly melting into this world of her relationship with Eli and learning to reflect upon herself. If I were to pick a scene, that would be the dinner scene at Eli’s place, when she really gets to know him and tells him that he should become a social worker.

What was it like filming those final scenes, particularly the moment between Audrey and her mother at the end of the movie?

It was a really heartbreaking scene. She knows physically that her body cannot take this happening because she’s doing something for the sake of her parents, not for herself. She knows that she’s in love with Eli, but she can’t be with him because he needs to go and work and support his daughter. I think she’s just way too heartbroken, but she can’t cry, and she’s just accepting the fact that this person came into my life and left, but left with something so inspiring for me. Those moments that they were together — I think it’s only after Eli left her that she learned, “I could breathe around him.”

What was so special about that person? I felt like I was just being myself. I wasn’t trying to become somebody her parents wanted me to be, or someone she’s aspiring to become. She just felt like herself, and I think she felt seen by Eli. The fact that I’m broken, I can’t get pregnant, I have all these demons inside me, but he just understands her and accepts her. I think the feeling of being seen by somebody is so strong, and that makes you feel like you can breathe.

I’m just looking back in my own life, thinking, who’s been somebody who I feel like I can breathe around, apart from my parents or my close, close best friends? It’s a very, very profound human connection, I think. Sometimes it takes a very long time to feel that around a person, but sometimes you instantly have this connection with somebody who probably has similar scars or similar backgrounds, who understands what you’ve been through and respects you for how you’ve become what you’ve become. 

If you could go back and speak to Audrey at the beginning of the film, what would you tell her?

This is a sweet question. I think I’d tell her to be open, to discover whatever comes into her life, because they’re only together for maybe three months. I think I’d tell her to be more open and open to meeting new people, meeting Eli, just because she tends to hide in her own cave, I think. Listening to music with headphones is her own zone. It might be a comfort zone, but still, it could be like her own cage. She’s trying to engage herself in that bubble, but I want her to be more open and just come out of that bubble.

I think that’s what Eli taught her unintentionally, too: to come out of your bubble and just be yourself. There was a very short montage that was shot right after the very ending, where she’s holding her camera and walking down the streets of Brooklyn, taking photos of people and streets. We had that for Sundance, but we edited it because the ending at the subway is what Stephanie wanted. It was like her bookend, so we respected that choice. We did shoot that extra ending of what happened to Audrey. She’s with her camera, walking the streets of Brooklyn, taking pictures of people and maybe smiling from time to time, looking at these people and the world.

Through that journey of this film, I think she’s come to be very open to herself. I actually have this camera right now.

I was going to ask you if you got into photography or if you were already a budding photographer before this.

Actually, in the original script, Stephanie wrote it as her drawing all the time. I love film photography, so I do take a lot of film photos for my actors and directors, and she actually incorporated that into Audrey’s character. It’s my personal camera. The photos that come after the credits are actually my photos. I took them. It’ll be in the film forever, which is pretty special.

photography. Mallory Turner
talent. Moon Choi
editor + interview. Kelsey Barnes

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tank top. Sunspel

At just 13, Tyler Conti discovered acting almost by accident. Watching a friend perform in ‘Little Shop of Horrors’, he was struck not by the spectacle, but by the reaction: the strange, immediate power of making an entire room feel something. What began as a hobby soon became a calling, taking him from amateur dramatics and Shakespearean theatre to increasingly ambitious roles across stage and screen.

Now, Conti is entering a particularly compelling chapter of his career. In ‘Fightland’, he plays Jay, a sensitive and instinctive young man navigating a world of violence, loyalty and competing influences. In ‘The Gentlemen’, he steps into the heightened, darkly comic universe of Guy Ritchie as Joe Green, a character whose history with Susie Glass brings romance and criminal intrigue into the same orbit. The roles could hardly be more different, yet both speak to Conti’s instinct for finding something emotionally truthful beneath heightened worlds.

With a growing reputation for versatility — and a desire to explore more intimate, naturalistic stories — Conti is beginning to define what kind of actor he wants to become. In conversation with Schön!, he reflects on the formative experiences that shaped his approach, the contrasts between Joe and Jay, working with Guy Ritchie, and more.

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trousers + trainers. Louis Vuitton
hand wraps. Everlast
opposite
jumper. Margaret Howell
shorts. Ron Dorff
boots. Ami Paris
hand wraps. Everlast
socks. London Sock Co.

You’ve said your interest in acting began when you were about 13, after seeing ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at school. What was it about watching someone perform in front of an audience that made you think, “I want to do that”?

I think it was probably the reaction more than anything. My mate was on stage, and everyone was laughing, and I remember thinking, “I want that.” Which sounds quite narcissistic when you say it out loud, but I think it was more that I’d never really thought about acting as something you could actually do. Then I got up there and realised there was this strange feeling of being able to make a room feel something. I was hooked pretty quickly. It was basically a hobby at first, but I think somewhere along the way the hobby started taking over my life.

You went from amateur dramatics to playing Shakespeare as a teenager. How did being thrown into something as demanding as ‘Romeo and Juliet’ shape your understanding of acting at such an early age?

It was probably the best possible way to start because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was 13, had a very thick Essex accent, and suddenly I had all this Shakespearean language to learn. I think it taught me quite early that you can’t always wait until you feel ready, because sometimes you’re just thrown in and you’ve got to figure it out. I also had these lovely older actors around me who really took me under their wing. So I learned a lot about the work, but probably just as much about being part of a company and looking after each other.

Looking back at those first experiences on stage, what do you think they gave you as an actor that you still carry with you today?

Probably a willingness to have a go. I wasn’t thinking about whether I was doing it correctly when I started. I was just having fun and seeing what happened. I think you can lose a bit of that when you become more experienced because suddenly you’re aware of all the rules and all the things you think you should be doing. Those early experiences remind me that acting is supposed to be enjoyable. You have to take it seriously, obviously, but you don’t have to take yourself seriously all the time.

You’ve worked across theatre and television, and you’ve described them as requiring very different kinds of energy. What has moving between those worlds taught you about what a performance actually is?

I think it’s taught me that there isn’t really one definition of a performance. Theatre is very much about keeping the ball in the air for two hours and being completely present, whereas with television you can be much more microscopic. You can have a tiny thought or reaction, and the camera can pick it up. But I actually think theatre has made me more confident on screen because it taught me not to be frightened of doing something big. If it’s truthful, you can go further than you think. You just have to know why you’re doing it.

knitwear + boots. Ami Paris

You’ve played characters at very different ends of the spectrum, from Henry VIII to Jay in ‘Fightland’. Do you find yourself most interested in characters who are far removed from you, or is there usually something personal that you need to find in them?

I think there has to be something I recognise, even if the character is completely different from me. Henry VIII is probably about as far away from me as you can get, but there were still things in him that I could understand. With Jay, there was much more of myself in there, which can actually be more frightening. If you’re playing someone who’s completely different, you can hide behind the character a bit. When there’s something personal in there, you have to be a little more honest with yourself.

Let’s talk about ‘The Gentlemen’. You grew up watching Guy Ritchie’s films, and then found yourself acting inside that world. Was there a surreal moment when it stopped feeling like you were watching that world and started feeling like you were actually part of it?

Definitely. I grew up watching Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, so there were moments where I’d be standing on set thinking, “This is a bit mad.” And then you have Guy Ritchie directing you, and you have to remember that you’re actually there to do a job. My first scene probably didn’t help with that because I was standing there in my underwear with Guy opposite me and Kaya next to me. That was a fairly quick way of getting rid of any sense of glamour or mystery!

You play Joe Green, who returns to Susie Glass’s life with an existing history and eventually becomes her love interest. How much work did you do around the history between those two characters that the audience never necessarily gets to see?

Quite a lot, because even if the audience doesn’t see all of it, you need to feel like it exists. Joe and Susie aren’t meeting for the first time, so there has to be an ease and familiarity there. I think it’s often the stuff you don’t explain that makes a relationship feel real. You don’t need to know every detail of what happened between two people; you just need to know what it feels like for them to be around each other again. That was something I was quite conscious of from the beginning.

The world of ‘The Gentlemen’ is deliberately heightened, but the relationships still have to feel believable. How did you find the balance between embracing that heightened style and keeping Joe emotionally grounded?

I think you have to commit to the world you’re in. If everyone else is operating at 100 miles an hour and you’re trying to make it feel like a normal Tuesday afternoon, you’re probably in the wrong show. But underneath all of that, Joe still has very human wants. He wants things, he gets jealous, he cares about people, he makes bad decisions. Those things don’t suddenly disappear because you’re in a heightened Guy Ritchie universe. In fact, I think the more real those things are, the more fun you can have with everything around them.

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tank top. Sunspel
opposite
coat. Karl Lagerfeld
under-shorts. Adidas
shorts. Studio Nicholson
boots. Grenson
socks. London Sock Co.

What did working with Guy Ritchie teach you about acting that you hadn’t encountered before, particularly given how unconventional his sets and shooting process can be?

To trust that you don’t always need to know exactly what’s happening. There’s a real spontaneity to the way his sets work, but there’s a real confidence behind it. You might be doing something and thinking, “How is this ever going to make sense?” and then you see it back, and it completely works. It taught me not to panic if something feels unconventional in the moment. Sometimes you just have to get involved, listen, react and trust the people around you.

You’ve talked about receiving a thumbs-up from Guy after your first scene. Beyond the obvious excitement of that moment, did his confidence in you change the way you approached the character afterward?

Absolutely. You can convince yourself of a lot of things in your own head, especially when you’re new to a big production. So having Guy give me that thumbs-up after the first scene was a massive relief. I think it allowed me to relax a bit and enjoy it rather than constantly questioning whether I was doing the right thing. And, honestly, I’ve kept that thumbs-up in my head ever since. If you get one from Guy Ritchie, you might as well carry it around with you!

Then there’s ‘Fightland’, which feels like a very different acting challenge. What was it about Jay that made you want to play him?

I liked that he wasn’t the loudest person in the room. There’s a lot of violence and big personalities around him, but Jay has a kind of quietness to him. He’s loyal, he’s sensitive, and he genuinely wants to do the right thing, even when he doesn’t always know what that is. I found that really interesting. I also liked that he isn’t some perfect moral compass. He makes mistakes and gets himself into trouble, but you understand why he does things.

tank top. Sunspel
trousers + trainers. Louis Vuitton
hand wraps. Everlast

You’ve described Jay as vulnerable, instinctive and relatively honest in a world where other people may be more guarded or aggressive. Did you see his vulnerability as something he was conscious of, or something that simply came through in the way he behaved?

I don’t think Jay is walking around thinking, “I’m a vulnerable man.” I think it’s just who he is. He’s not particularly interested in putting up a front, which in that world can actually make him quite exposed. He reacts emotionally and sometimes before he’s had time to think things through. I think that’s what makes him vulnerable without him necessarily knowing it. He’s not trying to show you that side of himself; you just see it.

Jay is also easily led and constantly being pulled in different directions. As an actor, how do you play someone who is reacting to the world around him rather than necessarily controlling his own story?

I think you have to stop trying to make him smarter than he is. Jay doesn’t always have the whole picture, so I couldn’t play him as if I knew where everything was heading. I tried to stay with whatever was happening in front of him. If someone says something that changes his mind, then it changes his mind. If something scares him, you see it. He’s quite instinctive, so I think the trick was not to overthink him when he wouldn’t be overthinking himself.

There’s a striking contrast between Joe and Jay: Joe exists in this highly stylised, heightened criminal world, while Jay feels much more emotionally exposed. What did moving between those two characters teach you about the different ways you can create truth in a performance?

That you can get to something truthful in completely different ways. With Joe, there’s a lot of style and confidence around him, so you can use that. With Jay, it’s almost the opposite. He’s much more open, and the emotion is closer to the surface. I actually went from one job straight into the other, so it was useful having them be so different. You put on Joe’s clothes, and you immediately feel like one person; then you put on Jay’s, and suddenly you’re somewhere else. Sometimes the physical stuff gets you into a character before you’ve even had time to think about it.

You’ve said you’re interested in exploring more naturalistic, relationship-led work next. After ‘The Gentlemen’ and ‘Fightland’, what are you now looking for in a character that you haven’t had the opportunity to explore yet?

I’d love to do something where nothing is exploding, and nobody is trying to kill anyone for a little while! I’m really interested in work where the drama comes from people and their relationships rather than the circumstances around them. Something like The Bear, where a scene can be incredibly tense without anyone necessarily pulling a gun out. I think there’s something really challenging about finding the drama in everyday life. I’d like to disappear into something like that for a bit and see what I can find.

coat. Karl Lagerfeld
under-shorts. Adidas
shorts. Studio Nicholson
boots. Grenson
socks. London Sock Co.
opposite
knitwear + boots. Ami Paris
tank top. Sunspel

photography. Dean Ryan McDaid
fashion. Andrew Burling
talent. Tyler Conti
grooming. Tarik Bennafla @ Stella Creative Artists using Horace
production. Martin Buckley
editor + interview. Kelsey Barnes

Ellie Moon has always been drawn to the places where storytelling and performance intersect. A Dora-nominated actress and writer, Moon began performing in community theatre as a child in Kingsville, Ontario, before building a career that has moved between stage and screen. Her work as a playwright has been produced at leading Canadian theatres including Crow’s Theatre and Tarragon Theatre, while her film career has seen her write and star in two features of her own: ‘Adult Adoption’, named one of The Globe and Mail’s Best Films of 2023, and ‘Young Female Playwright’, which won the New Visions Award at Cinequest before making its Canadian premiere at TIFF as a Cinematheque Special Event Presentation.

This year, Moon experienced a particularly memorable TIFF, appearing in two films at the festival. Alongside ‘Young Female Playwright’, she appeared in ‘Everybody Wants to Fck Me’, starring Taron Egerton and Jess Henwick, which premiered to strong reactions at TIFF. She is also set to appear alongside Billie Eilish in Sarah Polley’s forthcoming adaptation of ‘The Bell Jar’, a project that holds particular significance for Moon, who credits Sylvia Plath’s novel with playing an important role in her own discovery as a writer.

She speaks with Schön! while at the Toronto International Film Festival, reflecting on finding her voice, the personal response to ‘Adult Adoption’, bringing ‘Young Female Playwright’ to TIFF, and more.

You’re an actress, writer, playwright, and novelist, and your career moves between stage and screen. Where did that instinct to tell stories begin for you?

When I was 6 or 7, I started doing community theatre at the town hall up the street from my house in Kingsville, where I grew up. I was hooked right away.

You’ve had a significant career in theatre, with your work produced at places including Crow’s Theatre and Tarragon Theatre. What did the stage teach you about acting and writing that you still carry into your film work?

In theatre, you get immediate feedback. You can feel when you have the attention of the audience, and when you’ve lost it. And that applies for both acting and writing. I think the biggest thing stage taught me is that while it’s important to learn about structure and technique, the only real rule is to hold the attention of your audience. And often that’s a matter of paying deep attention, and having real courage, whatever that means to the actor or writer. Witnessing courage makes us pay attention.

Your first feature, ‘Adult Adoption’, was a particularly personal project: you wrote it and starred in it. What was it like creating a film from the ground up and then having audiences respond to it so strongly?

It’s hard to find the words to talk about how much ‘Adult Adoption’ and the response to it means to me. When I’m having a bad day, I go and read the Letterboxd reviews. Not for the compliments, though I appreciate those, too. But it makes me feel far less alone in the world to have made something that makes other people feel less alone.

Your second feature, ‘Young Female Playwright’, is another project you both wrote and starred in. What was the initial spark for that story, and how did it evolve from the idea in your head into a finished film?

I was procrastinating working on something else and was at a point where I had enough distance from some of my experiences in theatre to reflect on them. The project came together when Pony Nicole Herauf came on as its director and producer. There is now a lot of both of us in the film.

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opposite
jacket. Armani
dress. 217vintage

‘Young Female Playwright’ won the New Visions Award at Cinequest before coming to TIFF as a Cinematheque Special Event Presentation. What did that TIFF screening mean to you, particularly with the film being so closely connected to your own voice?

It was pretty wonderful to premiere in Canada at TIFF. The film sold out so quickly that we ended up having to add a screening just so the cast and crew could see it, too!

You’re now experiencing a pretty remarkable TIFF milestone: having two films there in the same year. What has this year felt like from inside your career, especially seeing ‘Young Female Playwright’ and ‘Everybody Wants to F*ck Me’ become part of the same TIFF experience?

It feels like an incredibly lucky moment. I don’t say that to diminish my hard work. But you can work very hard for a very long time and not get very far without a bit of luck. So a year like this is owed to a lot of luck, and I’m grateful for it.

You appear alongside Taron Egerton and Jess Henwick in ‘Everybody Wants to F*ck Me’. What drew you to that project, and what was the experience of joining an ensemble that included such established performers?

I thought the script was brilliant and wild. I am so excited for the conversations the film will generate when it gets a wider release next year. It was such a lovely group of people, in front of and behind the camera, and they all made me feel so welcome on that set.

The film premiered at TIFF to strong reactions. How does watching an audience experience something you’ve acted in compare with seeing audiences respond to a project you’ve written?

I think it doesn’t feel that different. Of course more of my ego is wrapped up in the response if I’ve also written it. But truthfully, by the time something comes out, I am usually sure enough in my feelings about it that an audience’s reaction is often something I understand as being about those people, or the moment we’re in in the wider culture.

jacket. Armani
dress. 217vintage
opposite
jacket. Armani
dress. 217vintage
boots. Steve Madden

You also have Sarah Polley’s adaptation of ‘The Bell Jar’ coming up, alongside Billie Eilish. What can you share about that experience, and what did working within Sarah’s interpretation of such an iconic piece of literature mean to you?

I was in heaven. My agent called shortly before I was about to start shooting and asked if it would be okay if production had to trim my hair a bit. I politely explained that if they needed to chop off my head to make the movie with me in it, I was totally down. (I don’t think my agent passed that on).

But the experience was incredible. ‘The Bell Jar’ is one of my very favourite books and played a big part in my discovery of myself as a writer. And I really cannot say enough good things about Sarah Polley. Her work is astonishing. She is a genius and a person of enormous integrity, and she ran an amazing set. I think the movie is going to be an absolute knockout, and I am so excited for everyone to discover it.

There’s an interesting throughline in your work between writing and acting; you often seem to occupy both sides of the creative process. Does writing change the way you approach a character as an actor?

Yes, whether or not I’ve written the role, it informs a lot. I think I feel the honour and responsibility of playing small roles, much more than I’d be able to grasp if I didn’t also write scripts. Because when it’s your script, you are reminded all the time how every moment matters.

Does being an actor affect the way you write? Are you more conscious of performance, physicality, or the rhythms of dialogue because you know what it’s like to eventually inhabit those words?

Absolutely. I have no formal training as a writer, so everything I know as a writer, I learned by being an actor. It is so interesting to watch good actors do almost anything. Thinking about this helps me to get out of my own way, when writing scripts. All I need to offer is a blueprint for the actor to live inside.

You’re also working toward your debut novel. How has moving into fiction writing felt different from writing for theatre or film?

It’s so much more to hold in your head at once. The other big difference is the knowledge that what you write won’t be interpreted by other artists (actors or a director, etc.). It is a direct line from you to the reader. I have found this process completely thrilling, and it’s challenged me to be even more precise in all my work.

When you look ahead, what kinds of stories do you want to keep telling, whether you’re writing them, performing them, or ideally doing both?

l love anything that invites us to look at uncomfortable truths or parts of ourselves that we might rather avoid. I believe the purpose of art is to challenge dissociation, and that feels like it’s becoming more and more important every day.

jacket. Armani
dress. 217vintage
boots. Steve Madden

photography. Nina Caputo
talent. Ellie Moon
hair + make up. Myla Martin
editor. Kelsey Barnes