{"id":50379,"date":"2025-08-07T12:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50379\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:33:09","slug":"kristin-scott-thomas-gets-personal-in-my-mothers-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50379\/","title":{"rendered":"Kristin Scott Thomas Gets Personal in ‘My Mother’s Wedding’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tKristin Scott Thomas<\/a>\u2018s first foray into directing is surprisingly personal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was about about six, seven years ago,\u201d the British star of screen and stage tells The Hollywood Reporter about the origins of her upcoming film. \u201cI realized that my brothers had absolutely no recollection of their father.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScott Thomas, the eldest of five children, found herself wanting to make something for her siblings. Her father, an English Royal Navy pilot, died in a flying accident when she was just five. Her mother remarried and had more children with another Navy man, who also passed away in a similar tragedy when Scott Thomas was 11. She used to turn her memories of these two father figures into animated films for her brothers and sisters, but one day, someone suggested she make a feature film instead.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been curious about it for a very long time,\u201d Scott Thomas, best known for her roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral, The English Patient, and more recently, Fleabag and Slow Horses, says about sitting in the director\u2019s chair. \u201cI find it very difficult to actually get my head around the fact that I made the decisions. That was really hard for me, because for so long I\u2019ve been in the position where I am being driven rather than driving.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScott Thomas takes to the driver\u2019s seat with confidence in Vertical\u2019s My Mother\u2019s Wedding (formerly titled North Star<\/a>) set to hit U.S. theaters on Aug. 8 after its 2023 TIFF debut, with Scarlett Johansson<\/a>, Sienna Miller<\/a> and Emily Beecham. The three women play sisters Katherine (Johansson), a Royal Navy captain, Victoria (Miller), a celebrated actress and Georgina (Beecham), a palliative care nurse. They reunite in the English countryside for the third wedding of their twice-widowed mother, Diana (played by Scott Thomas).<\/p>\n

\n\tDiana\u2019s first husband was a Navy pilot who died shortly after Victoria\u2019s birth, and his best friend, who then became Georgina\u2019s biological father, also passed away when the girls were young. If it sounds familiar, Scott Thomas is glad. In My Mother\u2019s Wedding, she takes an intimate, often autobiographical look at motherhood. The women battle \u201cdisastrous\u201d romantic lives and raising children with an enduring sadness for the men they never truly knew, all while their eccentric mother is getting hitched.<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, Scott Thomas talks to THR about making My Mother\u2019s Wedding and what\u2019s in store next. She discusses casting the \u201clittle gaggle of women\u201d \u2014 Johansson, Miller and Beecham \u2014 and what she found particularly difficult about directing her first film: \u201cThat was a difficult corner for me to turn \u2014\u00a0to stop being apologetic. \u2018I\u2019m really sorry I\u2019m asking you to do this.\u2019 No, they\u2019ve agreed. They\u2019ve turned up. They\u2019re happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKristin, when did this journey start for you?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was about about six, seven years ago. I realized that my brothers had absolutely no recollection of their father. My brothers are from different fathers, so I\u2019ve got one brother who has the same father as me, but he was born after our father died, and my stepfather had a child with my mother and then, of course, he died. So I have two brothers who have absolutely no recollection \u2014\u00a0and actually, my sister [too] because she was only a baby. Nothing to hang their hat on. Yet it\u2019s half their DNA, it\u2019s really kind of a big deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tI was the eldest child of five. I would put down my memories and make them animated films. I\u2019ve always loved animated film. And I\u2019d give them to my brothers and sisters [and say], \u201cThis is what happened. This is what [he] was like.\u201d Of course, everybody\u2019s memory is different\u2026 But my memory is the correct memory, because I was almost six when my dad died and 11 when my stepdad died. So anyway, [the film] started like that. I wanted to do this as a personal project. And then someone said, \u201cWell, it\u2019s really interesting, how did that affect your life?\u201d And they said, \u201cYou should make this into a feature film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKristin Scott Thomas<\/a> on the set of \u2018My Mother\u2019s Wedding.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBonnie Chen<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd that\u2019s how My Mother\u2019s Wedding was born?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, I said, \u201cYeah, but I don\u2019t want to do a feature film that is all doom and gloom and misery.\u201d Because if you ask me or any of my siblings whether they had a happy childhood, they say yes. People say children are so resilient. They are to a degree, but they will go with the flow. But on the other hand, if you don\u2019t deal with these huge events in a child\u2019s life, if you don\u2019t somehow get them out in the open, then they can turn against you. And like Katherine in the film, she\u2019s just become so driven and so obsessed. She hangs on to these memories as if they were her life jacket, and she can\u2019t survive without them. Which is why they\u2019re all so upset when their mother remarries.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd you have two sisters \u2014\u00a0were these three central characters loosely based on you? Are you Katherine?<\/p>\n

\n\tI think there\u2019s some of me in every single character. When you\u2019re writing fiction based around autobiography, there\u2019s got to be stuff that comes in. I think everybody, when they\u2019re creating characters, there\u2019ll be something in there that they can recognize. I\u2019m very different from Katherine, I\u2019m very different from Victoria, and I\u2019m very different from Georgina. You could say that Katherine is career-driven \u2014 well, I\u2019ve been career-driven. Victoria is is an actress, I\u2019m an actress. Georgina is a homemaker, and I\u2019m a homemaker. So quite a lot of women are in that situation. I mean, the one thing that [I am] similar [in regards to Katherine] is that I am the eldest and always being accused of being bossy.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a lot going on \u2014\u00a0lost fathers, Georgina\u2019s marriage is in jeopardy. Victoria is dealing with her own demons, and Katherine is struggling to balance her own marriage with bringing up children and being away for work. What exactly were you trying to spotlight, or is it just an exploration of womanhood in general?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s an exploration of motherhood, really, because all of them are mothers, and they\u2019re all trying to have a romantic life as well as being a mother. How does that all work together? Sometimes I explain the film by saying, \u201cYou\u2019ve got three daughters going home to their mother\u2019s third wedding, and the daughters are romantically disastrous and their mother is deliriously happy and they\u2019re furious about it.\u201d It\u2019s the passing of the baton between being a daughter to being a woman. And that\u2019s what she says in her speech, [Scott Thomas\u2019 character] says, \u201cI brought you up not to be daughters, but women.\u201d It\u2019s a film about getting real and not living in a fantasy world of, \u201cPoor me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m exploring children, sisters, interactions. To be an adult daughter with a mother is very different from being a child with her mother. I\u2019m exploring the feeling of responsibility towards your children. Katherine is such a detached mother. Her son even calls her Katherine. It\u2019s a very hands-off approach, and she feels guilty about that, even though there\u2019s nothing to be guilty about.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was it like co-writing the script with your husband of one year [Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait]?<\/p>\n

\n\tMy fresh new hubby. [Laughs.] He really encouraged me, and then I said, \u201cI can\u2019t do it by myself.\u201d And he said, \u201cWell I\u2019ll help you.\u201d He has an enormous amount of experience in newspaper editing, he\u2019s quite good on plot and how to make things go from A to B, narrative. I\u2019m much better on dialogue and the way characters interact. So we work quite well together.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tScarlett Johansson, Emily Beecham and Sienna Miller in \u2018My Mother\u2019s Wedding.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKerry Brown<\/p>\n

\n\tHow was it sitting in the director\u2019s chair? Is this something you\u2019ve always wanted to do?<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve been curious about it for a very long time. I\u2019ve worked with a lot of directors who were actors at some point, and that is always really interesting for me, an actress, because they see both sides. They see what it\u2019s like to be in front of the camera, and they see what it\u2019s like to be behind the camera, the prepping. I find it very difficult to actually get my head around the fact that I made the decisions. That was really hard for me, because for so long, I\u2019ve been in the position where I am being driven rather than driving. That was quite hard.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m completely in my element when I\u2019m on a film set. I\u2019ve been doing it for such a long time I\u2019ve practically grown my own battery pack in the back of my skirt. Scarlett and Sienna were both child actors, they were all very comfortable on that set. We just became this little gaggle of women, lots of them seemed to be nursing babies at the same time, which caused quite a headache for the first AD. We constructed a very affectionate, freewheeling film set. It was a very happy film set. I managed to do a few things like keep everything very local, so there wasn\u2019t much traveling in the mornings and things like that. It\u2019s all the things that you find out being an actress, the stuff that\u2019s really tricky. We shot the naval ship first. Suddenly, we were on this ship and I was feeling incredibly apologetic for making everybody wait in the car. That was a difficult corner for me to turn \u2014\u00a0to stop being apologetic. \u201cI\u2019m really sorry I\u2019m asking you to do this.\u201d No, they\u2019ve agreed. They\u2019ve turned up. They\u2019re happy.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat a baptism of fire, filming on that ship.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah. And we were so well looked after by the Navy. They pulled out all the stops, and they were amazing. I have an affection for being on those ships, because it really takes me back to my childhood.<\/p>\n

\n\tI was going to ask about that element, how you honored military work. That must have been a particularly personal intention.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah. I\u2019m talking about a parent\u2019s commitment to a career. It can be a bit perplexing for a child, but when you go onto a ship and you see your dad with all his uniform on looking like Prince Charming, you learn to think, \u201cOh, that\u2019s really big.\u201d You go onto a ship, the size of the thing is so enormous. It really dwarfs you. So you feel that what they\u2019re doing is really, really, really important, which I think perhaps a lot of kids don\u2019t have because they see their dad going into an office or going into a factory or getting on a tractor.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s fascinating that you shot that scene first, because the chemistry between you all was so great. Scarlett, Sienna and Emily so convincingly portray sisters. I know you\u2019ve played Scarlett\u2019s mother twice before [in The Other Boleyn Girl and The Horse Whisperer]. How much say did you have over casting, and why was everyone so right for each role?<\/p>\n

\n\tOh, thank you, because we had a very good casting director called Lucy Bevan. But the role of Victoria, I\u2019d only ever met Sienna once, very briefly, in passing. I\u2019d seen her be really funny once, and I thought she\u2019s a brilliant actress. She\u2019s so good, and she\u2019s so beautiful, and she will just understand this character. So I sort of wrote it for her, always thinking about her.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt took us quite a long time to find the right person to play Katherine and so with Scarlett, I just rang her up. I had a very short window, because I was doing Slow Horses, and I knew she had a very short window. So I said, and I\u2019m terrible about this \u2014\u00a0people send me scripts and then weeks go by and it\u2019s still sitting there, looking at you reproachfully, saying, \u201cRead me! Read me!\u201d \u2014\u00a0I said to Scarlett, \u201cPlease can you read this really quickly and let me know yay or nay?\u201d And she rang me back the next day and said, \u201cYeah, I really want to do it.\u201d And after that, everything just went tick, tick, tick, and fell into place. It was incredible.<\/p>\n

\n\tI was impressed by her British accent.<\/p>\n

\n\tOh, good. It\u2019s a very British film, so it was quite a brave move.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Scarlett Johansson, Kristin Scott Thomas on the set of \u2018My Mother\u2019s Wedding.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBonnie Chen<\/p>\n

\n\tWas it weird directing a project that you\u2019re also starring in?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was so hard. I never want to do that again! It\u2019s just so difficult giving other actors what they need, and at the same time, observing them.<\/p>\n

\n\tMy Mother\u2019s Wedding is finally set to make its U.S. debut on Friday. How are you feeling about that?<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m really excited about it, because I think it\u2019s a great time to be able to go and see it. You can\u2019t help coming out of that with a smile on your face. There\u2019s something about that song at the end, that great swooping movement\u2026 It\u2019s something about seeing the light through the clouds, about being able to get through really bad moments. It\u2019ll be all right in the end \u2014\u00a0that, I think, is a really lovely, reassuring thing to see, especially at the moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s funny at times, moving at times. It\u2019s quite naughty at times. It\u2019s a very sweet tale of a family coming to terms with unexamined trauma.<\/p>\n

\n\tI know you\u2019ve got Slow Horses which is proving to be almost genre-defining television. Are you comfortable in TV or do you want to get back in the director\u2019s chair?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, it\u2019s funny. I know [Slow Horses] is television, but it doesn\u2019t feel like television\u2026 It is a very, very, very, big thing \u2014 lots of people involved and very, very, very high quality. I really do think it\u2019s one of the best if not the best. It seems a bit difficult to say [it is] the best television there is out there, because I\u2019m in it. But I really do think it\u2019s just so beautifully made. I\u2019m really proud to be in it, to belong to it. And I love watching it. I\u2019ve always forgotten the plot and [when] I watch it, I\u2019m just as gripped as you are, as the next door neighbors [are].<\/p>\n

\n\tThe quality is so much more luxurious than half the films I\u2019ve made, because I\u2019ve made a lot of films in France where it really is 38 people, including the cast and everything. It\u2019s really tiny. And I really, really love that. In fact, I\u2019m gonna do another one in September \u2014\u00a0a film, I\u2019m acting. It\u2019s a French comedy about a family and I play the matriarch. I would love to do some more directing and I\u2019ve got a plan for that. I\u2019m going to do some stage work, so I\u2019m going to be quite busy the next few years.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat can you tell us about your next directing job?<\/p>\n

\n\t[Smiles]. There\u2019s nothing to say at the moment\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tMy Mother\u2019s Wedding is in U.S. theaters Friday, Aug. 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kristin Scott Thomas\u2018s first foray into directing is surprisingly personal. \u201cIt was about about six, seven years ago,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,3389,42621,344,1310,42622,3586],"class_list":{"0":"post-50379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-kristin-scott-thomas","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-scarlett-johansson","15":"tag-sienna-miller","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}