Cailee Speany: “Civil War allows you to exorcise your fears…”

The 25-year-old American actress discovered in Priscilla by Sofia Coppola is part of the suicide mission in Civil War by Alex Garland alongside Kirsten Dunst. Interview.

Cailee Speany, 25, earned her stripes in the shadow of the King. In Priscilla by Sofia Coppola, the American actress played the title role, that of a young girl in bloom whom Elvis Presley chose as his wife and kept in his golden prison of Graceland. This story of a painful emancipation earned her the Volpi Cup for best female performance at the last Venice Film Festival. Speany reappears today in a larger prison, the United States, a country in the grip of an open and uninhibited war between armed factions. This worst-case scenario was imagined by the Englishman Alex Garland in the well-named and well-appointed Civil War. The young actress is Jessie, a photojournalist who will follow her mentor Ellie (Kirsten Dunst) on a perilous expedition to meet the President of the United States. In the meantime, Cailee Speany via videoconference invites us to her hotel room in Austin, Texas where the premiere of the film took place.

After Civil War, Alex Garland wants to stop directing films

Civil War marks your second collaboration with Alex Garland after the series Devs (2020). This film is therefore part of a continuity…

Cailee Speany: Alex likes to work with the same people from film to film and that's not just limited to the performers. Take, Rob Hardy, he's the cinematographer of almost all of his films. On his sets, there is a rather reassuring theater troupe side. Alex had my name in mind when writing the role of Jessie. This was also the case for Stephen McKinley Henderson who plays Sammy. In short, I heard about the film very early on, especially since Civil War took a long time to come to fruition. Alex had to put this project aside until he realized Men (2022). We regularly met to talk about Civil War in order to explore all the issues raised by this story… For my part, I did research with more or less famous photojournalists in order to understand their way of working, to understand their relationship to danger. A danger directly linked to their artistic gesture. When you have the chance to be involved in a project in this way, a very strong emotional connection is inevitably created.

Civil War has an atypical profile, beneath its appearance of a big warrior machine hides a more intimate film which avoids overkill… How did Alex Garland present things to you?

Knowing Alex's work, I knew that we would be closer to an independent film, at least in its auteurist vein, than to a blockbuster. However, we never talked about the film in those terms. The idea was to know what we wanted to tell and express…

…Precisely, what vision of the present does the film offer, in your opinion?

Civil War is pure fiction which does not intend to predict anything. Cinema allows us to exorcise our fears and ask questions about what is beyond us. When I read the script, I was frightened by this vision of the world which, if we accept its phantasmagorical part, finds correspondences with our present.

Who is Jessie that you play?

An aspiring photojournalist who seeks to bear witness, to report on reality. She's ready to do anything for that. She dedicates her life to this passion which becomes a guideline for her. It's interesting to work on a character within a film whose function is to create images. There is a sort of dizzying abyss. With Kirsten (Dunst) who plays my model in the film, we drew a parallel between our characters and our relationship to the film industry, a world based precisely on the gaze and the image. I am the youngest who looks up to her elder and seeks to learn alongside her…

Between you and Kirsten Dunst, the thing in common is Sofia Coppola. We actually discovered you in Priscilla of which you played the title role…

Let us point out that I turned Civil War Before Priscilla. During rehearsals, I met Kirsten and although we talked about Sofia Coppola's work, I didn't yet know at that time that I was going to shoot with her. Nothing was decided. It was towards the last days of filming that I went to see Kirsten to tell her that Sofia had hired me. She then took me in her arms: “ You are going to experience extraordinary moments! » She told me how enriching working with her had been, particularly in her way of approaching the characters, of detecting the mystery that emanates from them and of constructing her composition from these gray areas. Kirsten was 23 when she filmed Marie Antoinette. I was 24 at the time of filming Prisicilla. There is something similar in our destiny.

Besides the psychological aspect, your work on Civil War was, as you can imagine, very physical…

There was something very immersive about the filming. Alex created a space that was difficult to escape from. The film set was a world in itself. From then on, it was impossible to escape. Navy Seals (elite commandos of the American army) constantly supervised us. We had to follow them. The sounds of bullets and explosions that you hear in the film have become the norm for us, a daily soundtrack…

Civil War by Alex Garland. With: Wagner Moura, Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny… Duration: 1h49. Released April 17.