{"id":374355,"date":"2025-12-28T16:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T16:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/374355\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T16:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T16:18:08","slug":"daisy-ridley-on-we-bury-the-dead-her-next-movie-with-han-solo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/374355\/","title":{"rendered":"Daisy Ridley on ‘We Bury the Dead,’ Her Next Movie with Han Solo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThis is your biannual reminder that the independent offerings of Daisy Ridley<\/a> deserve your attention. While she patiently awaits Disney and Lucasfilm\u2019s next move with regard to Star Wars, Ridley has been releasing a couple well-received indies per year, save for Disney\u2019s highly acclaimed sports biopic, Young Woman and the Sea<\/a> (2024). On Jan. 2, Ridley kicks off the new year with another well-regarded film in We Bury the Dead<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tZak Hilditch\u2019s contemplative zombie thriller, which premiered at 2025\u2019s South by Southwest, chronicles Ava Newman (Ridley) as she journeys from America to Tasmania in hopes of finding her husband alive. The U.S. military botched a nearby weapons test that obliterated the population of Tasmania, creating either a pile of dead bodies or zombies that gradually become more aggressive. Ava\u2019s husband, Mitch, had the misfortune of being on a work retreat there at the same time.<\/p>\n

\n\tAva\u2019s marriage was already on the rocks. Her and her husband\u2019s struggle to conceive a child slowly chipped away at their union, so she is simply looking for closure in whatever form it takes. Ridley ultimately channeled people in her life who were going through similar fertility challenges as her character.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI knew a couple people that were going through IVF at the time. It can take a toll emotionally and physically on women, but also on their relationships while they\u2019re going through it. So that actually felt really [palpable] at the time [of We Bury the Dead],\u201d Ridley tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cI understood that feeling of wanting something so much, and how difficult that can be, in a way that I never had before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn May of 2025, Ridley wrapped her first romantic comedy opposite none other than Solo: A Star Wars Story star Alden Ehrenreich<\/a>. She nearly worked with the embryonic Han Solo toward the beginning of their Star Wars careers a decade ago, so the Phillipines-set The Last Resort<\/a> is a long time coming for the Lucasfilm stablemates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI signed onto [The Last Resort] before I knew Alden was doing it. Alden and I were supposed to do a movie together ten years ago. It ended up not happening, but we became buddies, so I was really thrilled when he came on,\u201d Ridley says.<\/p>\n

\n\tRidley and Ehrenreich\u2019s promotion of The Last Resort will undoubtedly lead to some awkward Star Wars questions, but Ridley\u2019s husband, Tom Bateman, has them both beat. In August, he wrapped his own romcom called The Love Hypothesis, which is based on Ali Hazelwood\u2019s novel of the same name. The twist is that the book was born out of fan fiction that centered on his wife\u2019s Star Wars character, Rey, and Adam Driver\u2019s Kylo Ren. Bateman\u2019s character is even named Adam after Driver.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo be clear, Tom didn\u2019t know that [The Love Hypothesis] was fan fiction, and I didn\u2019t remember that it was fan fiction. So he had a number of auditions, and then he was told when he got the part that it was fan fiction, which was news to him,\u201d Ridley shares. \u201cI guess he told me, but I don\u2019t think I put two and two together. It wasn\u2019t until we got to Montreal [for filming] that someone again said that it was fan fiction, and I was like, \u2018Huh.\u2019 So I\u2019m really looking forward to seeing the film. Sources say that it\u2019s very good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, during a recent conversation with THR, Ridley also discusses the next collaboration between her and Bateman following 2024\u2019s Magpie, as well as her favorite film of 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tAva is an American who\u2019s doing volunteer dead body retrieval in Tasmania, and she\u2019s singled out at times for being a \u201cYank.\u201d With the majority of We Bury the Dead\u2019s cast and crew being Australian, did you also feel like a fish out of water?<\/p>\n

\n\tYou know what? I\u2019ve never felt more a part of things. Actually, no, I have felt this a part of things before, but this was still a really, really wonderful experience. So I felt so much in the fabric of everything, and I didn\u2019t feel like a fish out of water. It was really lovely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tDaisy Ridley as Ava in We Bury The Dead<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Vertical<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter playing mothers in The Marsh King\u2019s Daughter and Magpie, do you think that context was helpful for this woman who\u2019d desperately been trying to get to that position?<\/p>\n

\n\tI knew a couple people that were going through IVF at the time. It was something that I had [previously] read about and heard about, but I didn\u2019t know people [until then] that were really having that experience. It can take a toll emotionally and physically on women, but also on their relationships while they\u2019re going through it. So that actually felt really [palpable] at the time. I understood that feeling of wanting something so much, and how difficult that can be, in a way that I never had before, and that was really what I was holding onto in playing her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe most unsettling scene is not with a zombie; it\u2019s with a soldier (Mark Coles Smith\u2019s Riley). You\u2019re used to playing other people, but not like that. Did any of those disturbing circumstances creep into your psyche at all? Or does your work generally not follow you home?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI generally don\u2019t take my work home with me, but there were things that weren\u2019t scripted that ended up happening during that sequence. At the beginning of all of that, Ava is really listening to Riley, and she\u2019s really understanding in many ways where he\u2019s coming from. There\u2019s a desperation to his grief that feels more apparent than Ava\u2019s, but they\u2019re also mirroring each other in some ways. It then takes that very strange, creepy turn. So, in the running out, I had to slam the door, and then I screamed a couple things that were not scripted because the feeling was high. But then you cut, and it\u2019s great, and you move on. But that sequence certainly felt properly frightening in the moment.<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tDaisy Ridley as Ava in We Bury The Dead<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Vertical<\/p>\n

\n\tIn my mind, one of the defining images of you is your emotional audition video<\/a> for Star Wars: The Force Awakens over a decade ago. When you have to cry on screen now, something you do several times in We Bury the Dead, is it similar to a light switch? Can you just turn it on and off?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, not at all. For me, crying isn\u2019t always the way we show sadness. So when it came to We Bury the Dead, I didn\u2019t know what some of these scenes would end up being. I tend to ignore stage directions anyway because you just don\u2019t know until you\u2019re there. But I certainly didn\u2019t know how some of the scenes in this film were going to go, and that\u2019s really a testament to [writer-director] Zak [Hilditch] and the amazing cast and crew. We felt very safe and very open to see what happened in the moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tI can always tell that you have a spidey sense for when the Star Wars questions are about to start, and you\u2019re always a good sport about it. That being said, when you were weighing your upcoming Philippines-set movie (The Last Resort) with Alden Ehrenreich, how much did the inevitable Star Wars questions affect your decision?<\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs.) Hilarious. Well, I signed onto that before I knew Alden was doing it. Alden and I were supposed to do a movie together ten years ago. It ended up not happening, but we became buddies, so I was really thrilled when he came on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat should be a fun press cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs.) Yeah.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlden\u2019s fictional son, Ben Solo, made headlines recently. The Hunt for Ben Solo was both news and old news to you at the same time?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, I hear things. I\u2019ve got my ear to the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYou said that Adam Driver volunteering that information was the biggest surprise of the year, and you\u2019re right, he\u2019s usually very reluctant to talk about Star Wars.<\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs.) Yeah. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWas the second biggest surprise of the year when the writer of Magpie<\/a> (Ridley\u2019s husband, Tom Bateman) said he was going to be acting in a movie that began as fan fiction about Rey and Kylo Ren?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs.) To be clear, Tom didn\u2019t know that [The Love Hypothesis] was fan fiction, and I didn\u2019t remember that it was fan fiction. So he had a number of auditions, and then he was told when he got the part that it was fan fiction, which was news to him. I guess he told me, but I don\u2019t think I put two and two together. It wasn\u2019t until we got to Montreal [for filming] that someone again said that it was fan fiction, and I was like, \u201cHuh.\u201d So I\u2019m really looking forward to seeing the film. Sources say that it\u2019s very good, and I think it will be really charming and really fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs far as a Magpie follow-up, whatever that may be, has Tom been delivering pages to you fairly often?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOh yeah. We have something that we are currently out to for someone to direct, which is fantastic. He has two or three other scripts that are ready to go. I also read the first draft of something that he just did, which is amazing. So he\u2019s currently working on that now.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a pattern in your work that began with Rey ten years ago, and it continues all the way through Ava in We Bury the Dead. You often play characters who are either lonely or alone for prolonged stretches. What do you make of that trend?<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know. I guess there can be a lot of drama in that. But I have never had a plan of what I want to do next. I\u2019m just drawn to what I\u2019m drawn to, and the films that I\u2019ve been drawn to, I\u2019ve absolutely loved working on them. The Last Resort, which I made with Alden, really does buck that [loneliness] trend. I got to be around people. I mean, there is an element of loneliness to the person I play in that, but she really finds so much joy in the people around her. So it was really fun to do that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the end of the year, and people are releasing their lists of favorites. What film grabbed you the most this year?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie of the year for me is Train Dreams. But I will say that I have not seen Hamnet, which I can\u2019t wait for. I\u2019ve not seen Sentimental Value, which I can\u2019t wait for. So I\u2019ve seen screenings of a lot of movies lately, and while I\u2019ve loved a lot of stuff, Train Dreams is really the one that got me. Ugh, it\u2019s just a wonderful, wonderful movie.<\/p>\n

\n\t***
We Bury the Dead opens in cinemas on January 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is your biannual reminder that the independent offerings of Daisy Ridley deserve your attention. While she patiently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[63632,145367,88,206,183212,156995],"class_list":{"0":"post-374355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-alden-ehrenreich","9":"tag-daisy-ridley","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-the-last-resort","13":"tag-we-bury-the-dead"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}