Principal photography on short film Our Party from writer-director Joshua Prendeville has wrapped in New Zealand. The film is a modern adaptation of the celebrated Katherine Mansfield short story The Garden Party (1922). It follows 18-year-old Laura as she prepares her opulent home for a party when news of a neighbourhood tragedy forces her to confront a reality from which she has been sheltered from in her privileged life.

The lead role of Laura is played by Davida McKenzie (Klara and the Sun, The Speedway Murders) whose real-life sister Thomasin McKenzie (Joy, Last Night In Soho, Jojo Rabbit, Leave No Trace) plays her on-screen sibling in the film. The Wellington siblings are joined in the cast by Michael Hurst, Alison Bruce and Theo Shakes. Writer-director Prendeville is a New Zealander known for The House Within (2024), a documentary on writer Dame Fiona Kidman, which will be released theatrically in 2025.

The Post caught up with the McKenzie sisters after filming on Our Party wrapped …

Hi Thomasin! What was it like playing the older sister in Our Party to Davida, your real-life sister? Did your sibling dynamic influence how you approached the role?

We both went to Marsden School in Karori in Wellington, which is where Mansfield also went. So we really felt that these characters were very close to us, whether they had been set in the 1920s or as they are in Joshua’s film, in 2025.

Hi Davida! You play Laura in Our Party, a character forced to confront a tragedy while planning a lavish event. What challenges did you face in portraying someone caught between the privilege of her world and the harsh reality outside it?

DM: Well right now with such crazy events in the world yet also celebrating my graduation from school with the leaver’s ball and all the crazy preparation for moving to London … it’s hard to ignore the contrast between tragedy and privilege. This story was on point in 1922 and still resonates today.

Having worked on projects like Klara and the Sun and The Speedway Murders, how did your experience in those roles inform your portrayal of Laura?

DM: I guess the other films I have been in have been dystopian or futuristic or set in the past, ever since Silent Night. Our Party is set right now. We shot in a real house, not on a set, and this made it seem all the more real, as though there was no acting required.

How did it feel to work so closely with Thomasin?

DM: I loved playing this role opposite Tom. My favourite moment was when they cranked the music up really loud and we just had to dance and have fun. That was really a blast. Dancing with Tom and Michael Hurst and Alison Bruce who played our dad and mum, was just like real life. In fact only the week before I was at my graduation ball and danced with my own dad and mum in exactly the same way. This film was perfect timing. Everything that Laura was experiencing with leaving school, I had just experienced too.

Source: thepost.co.nz

With Joy, actor Thomasin McKenzie brings attention to one of the heroes of IVF.

When actor Thomasin McKenzie got the script for Joy, she had no idea the impact the lead character would have on her. The British biographical drama, which also stars Bill Nighy and James Norton as surgeon Patrick Steptoe and scientist Robert Edwards, respectively, tells the true story of the world’s first baby created using in vitro fertilization. McKenzie plays Jean Purdy, a British nurse and embryologist who, alongside Steptoe and Edwards, worked to develop the landmark fertility treatment. And although the movie comes 46 years after the first “test-tube” baby Louise Joy Brown was born, the film’s themes around women’s autonomy are still as prevalent today as they were back then.

After accepting the role, McKenzie had a major task ahead of her in regards to preparation. Although much had been documented and publicized around the creation of IVF, not much was publicized about Jean Purdy’s involvement — her role in the development of IVF was largely ignored by the scientific community, despite attempts made by Steptoe and Edwards to spotlight her work. For Joy, McKenzie, alongside screenwriter Jack Thorne, his wife Rachel Mason, and director Ben Taylor, pieced together who Purdy was — and the impact she had on women and families around the world.

Here, Queue sits down with McKenzie to discuss bringing the story of Jean Purdy and the world’s first IVF baby to the screen.

An edited version of the conversation follows.

When watching Joy and seeing Jean Purdy’s impact on science and IVF, I was a bit embarrassed to not have known about her prior to watching. Can you tell me about what it was like getting the script and learning about her?
Thomasin McKenzie: I wasn’t familiar with Jean Purdy before either. I knew what IVF was; it had been around my whole life. The first IVF birth was in ’78 and I was born in 2000, so I thought IVF was a given. I didn’t know anything about how it was invented or the history behind it, so there was lots to learn. A lot of the research was done by Rachel Mason and Jack Thorne, the co-creators. They spent years looking into the history and talking to as many first-hand accounts as they could. They looked at historical records, academic papers, and interviews. Part of the research I did was talking to the man who brought IVF to New Zealand, Richard Fisher. I [happened to have] babysat his grandchildren and I’m still quite close to the family, so when I mentioned to them that I was doing a film about IVF they let me know about their grandfather.

What a full-circle moment for you! What stories did he share with you? TM: Yeah, they are a fantastic family. They really generously set up a dinner between Richard Fisher, me, and Ben Taylor, Joy’s director. Richard told us some pretty incredible stories. Some were about when IVF was first introduced and he would be driving to work to go to the clinic and there would be people picketing and shouting abuse at you. The scene when Jean opens the box [from a protestor] — it feels very personal and scary because someone has delivered that directly to her door and it’s pretty violent.

As part of your preparation, you and James Norton visited London’s Guy’s Hospital to see embryos and chat with medical professionals there. What was that experience like? TM: Going to Guy’s Hospital was incredibly moving. I was able to see embryologists at work extracting DNA from embryos. I saw embryos in an incubator. They have really advanced incubators where you can watch the embryos develop onscreen. You can see the cluster of cells and look at the person next to you and you think, “That’s you!” The level of science is mind-boggling.

Much of Jean’s impact was forgotten or pushed aside by the science community. As you learned more and more about her, did you find it frustrating that she was left out of so much discourse around IVF?
TM: It was infuriating because there’s very little on her. Jean was a very private person. Rachel and Jack did painstaking research to find out as much about her as possible, but there was very little information out there. I feel like I know Jean very well, and I really feel for her. It is true that she had endometriosis and that she wasn’t able to have children of her own, so the fact that she helped other people have children — twelve-plus million babies — shows that she’s left such a huge impact.

According to the World Health Organization, one in six people are affected by IVF. Everyone knows someone who’s been through IVF. She’s left such an impact on the world and she deserves to be known. It is infuriating that the medical scientific community refused to include her in the acknowledgments. It wasn’t Bob Edwards and Patrick Steptoe — they tried to get her recognition. Also, the women who gave themselves to this work also need that recognition because women’s bodies are complicated things. They were testing out IVF and trying different things, like the levels of hormones. These women were so generous because [IVF] wasn’t necessarily going to work for them. But they did it for people in the future.

It’s their contributions back then that have allowed for all of us to be given a choice. Unless you’ve been tested, you don’t understand the sadness that could come from not being able to have children.
TM: Speaking for myself, I’ve always wondered if I was able to have children or not because I have anxiety around health and things. I think it’s a feeling for women that we can be let down by our bodies — sometimes a lot — because of all that we go through. Not just periods but everything else that comes.

Jean is seen as an equal by Patrick and Robert even in spaces where it was solely men discussing women’s bodies. Was her input something that was apparent when you initially read the script?
TM: Yeah, it was apparent that Jean is the one who helps to hold it all together. If she hadn’t been part of the team, I really don’t think it would have happened. I don’t think there would have been success in that realm of IVF. I think she was the key there and the one that brought them back together. The shock she has in that scene with Bob because they didn’t continue without her like she thought they did . . . they needed her.

Jean is ostracized from her church because of their disapproval of IVF. And the film also delves into the pressure women have to be mothers — especially back then — even when they can’t reproduce through no fault of their own. Those themes are still prevalent today. What was it like depicting that onscreen?
TM: It’s the judgment that people place on others who make the decision not to have children or maybe they’re struggling to have children. There are so many things you don’t know, like their medical history, and there’s so much judgment placed on people when it comes to that. But at the end of the day, it’s just about choice. It’s about the woman’s choice to have control over her own body and her own decisions. Their autonomy is incredibly important.

The film is spread out over a decade, which means your wardrobe and hair had to reflect a lot of changes for Jean. How did those choices help inform your portrayal of Jean and the mindset she was in?
TM: Naturally, I look very young. The costumes and hair and makeup all had a huge impact. My natural hair isn’t the best so I wore either a full or partial wig for Joy. I wouldn’t allow people outside of makeup to see me without the wig. I just wanted to have that separation between Jean and me. That separation is really important to me, it’s a confidence thing. I think Jean did have a lot of confidence in her abilities, she knew she was a very smart person. When I put that wig on, I was like, “I know science!”

You, James, and Bill all worked quite closely together on this film. What was your collaboration process like?
TM: It was very joyful. There’s no other word for it. James is such a laugh; he’s so boisterous and also caring and thoughtful. Bill is just Bill: He’s an icon and legend. He carries that name unbelievably well. He is so thoughtful and caring and aware and sings all the time.

When you look back at your time over filming, is there a specific scene that sticks out in your mind?
TM: Definitely the scene between Jean and Muriel, the matron, about the woman’s right to have a choice about abortion. It is a massive decision to have a child. It upends your entire life, particularly women’s lives because it’s our body. Whether you choose to have a child, or whether you choose not to have a child, whether you choose to adopt or for someone else to carry your child, it’s a choice. That felt so important to acknowledge in the film.

Lastly, what do you want people to take away from the film, especially given how timely it still is today?
TM: I think there’s a lot of love in this film. A lot of love went into making it, and a lot of love resulted from the true story. There are so many things people could and should take away from it, but I’ll keep it at love.

Source: netflixqueue.com

Thomasin McKenzie on embodying Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest twisted creation
After roles in ‘Old’ and ‘Last Night in Soho’, the New Zealand actor breaks even crazier new ground in the sapphic thriller ‘Eileen’.

When she was six years old, Thomasin McKenzie’s grandmother asked her what she wanted to do with her life. She listed every career you can think of — with one exception. “I said, I do not want to be an actor,” she recalls. “Little did I know.”

Thomasin is one of those actors so self-effacing and ego-free in the moment that it’s difficult to match her in person with her myriad screen roles. With her young face and sharp features perpetually etched with worry, she’s become a go-to dramatic foil for directors like Jane Campion, Taika Waititi and Edgar Wright. After her breakout role in Debra Granik’s grossly underseen Leave No Trace in 2018, Thomasin has bounced from one buzzy project to the next. She popped up in The Power of the Dog, was present on the beach that makes you old in Old, brought much-needed humanity to the contentious Jojo Rabbit, and starred opposite Anya Taylor-Joy in Last Night in Soho. You already know Thomasin McKenzie, but she would like for you to get to know her more.

She moved to London a few months ago for a film — Joy, about the world’s first IVF baby — but decided to stay. The long haul flights from the US to her home in New Zealand after every project were getting too much and it was time for a change. We’re meeting in a north London bakery in her new neighbourhood. “I’ve worked in London more than anywhere else,” she says. “It felt like the right next step.”

Filming Last Night in Soho, a movie enamoured by London’s cultural scene, was “a great introduction” to the city, she says, and she’s kept in touch with Edgar, who continues to show her the sights. “He’s the best tour guide possible,” she says. And, obviously, in between projects she’s acclimatised to the UK through the usual suspects: Love Island and The Great British Bake Off.
Thomasin, an actor since her teens, says she treated the job “almost like a chore” at first. Descended from a dynasty of actors — her mother, Miranda Harcourt, is the daughter of Kate Harcourt; both were made Dames for their services to theatre — acting is in Thomasin’s blood, but she wasn’t naturally drawn to it. “My dad has done it, all my siblings have done it, I think I was just a bit over it,” she says. She gave in and first started acting to earn pocket money, then quickly found that she was good at it. “I also realised that acting gave me a voice,” she says. “I think there is a little bit of an activist in me that wants to be able to share important messages, and acting is an amazing way of doing that.”

She finds herself at, as she calls it, “an interesting point in my career”. The pandemic put the kibosh on her usual schedule of three or four films a year and it gave her the time and space to reevaluate what she wants from her career. Now, she only does two carefully chosen projects. “My team and I have been more selective,” she says. “I’m not doing everything that comes to me now.”

Set in nowheresville, Massachusetts, her latest film, the dark, seedy and gripping Eileen is a nasty little powder keg of a thriller about a dejected young woman who becomes consumed by a new arrival in her town. (If you think you know where it’s going, you really don’t). It feels like a perfect stepping stone for her as she makes the deliberate decision to step away from younger roles. Though Eileen may be in her early twenties, an abusive upbringing has warped her development, making her unworldly and almost feral; at once, Thomasin is playing both an adult and a child. “It’s a coming-of-age film, in a way,” she says.
Adapted from the Ottessa Moshfegh novel by the author herself (and her partner Luke Goebel), the script for Eileen came to Thomasin not long after she, like most girlies, had read My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the BookTok darling about a depressed heiress who sedates herself for a year. She immediately knew she wanted to play another of the author’s somewhat twisted creations. “Ottessa’s writing is almost… queasy,” she says, thinking of the right word. “It makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable.” Because of this, she says she was “a bit intimidated, at first” by the writer. “I tend to ramble and can be a bit… word vomit… but she’s really lovely, and her and Luke are just so smart.”

Eileen’s journey to the big screen retains all of the novel’s murky, mordant humour. We first meet Eileen discreetly ogling a couple making out and stuffing handfuls of snow into her pants to cool herself: her own Eileen-ish way of masturbation. At her workplace, a men’s prison, she hallucinates being ravished by the guards. She goes home to her shabby attic bedroom and mainlines candy like a sugar-addicted six year old. Though it didn’t make it into the film, novel-Eileen is addicted to consuming laxatives, getting off on, as Ottessa writes, her “oceanic, torrential” bathroom visits. “I would have done it if I had to, but I’m happy I didn’t,” Thomasin says, sounding genuinely relieved. But as grimly funny as Eileen’s unorthodox life is, Thomasin felt a duty of care towards the character.

But Thomasin’s thoroughness with Eileen was as important for her as it was for the character. “At the time I was going through my own mental health journey, and I’m the kind of person who really likes receiving diagnoses.” She spent evenings on set journaling her idea of Eileen’s thoughts and feelings in the following day’s scenes. “Sometimes I can maybe take it too far,” she says. “But it’s a great way to communicate with your director–” She breaks off, distracted by a woman at the table next to us, who’s opened a notebook and started scribbling down notes and drawings. “My journals were much like that,” she whispers. “But yeah, it’s a way for me to let the director know that I’m dedicated, and I’m passionate about what we’re making.”
Starring opposite Thomasin in Eileen is Anne Hathaway as Rebecca Saint John, a counsellor at their prison; a woman as glamorous as her name suggests, whose vivacity and charm breaks apart Eileen’s sheltered life. “It was probably the most starstruck I’ve ever been,” she says, a lifelong fan of The Princess Diaries. Given that Eileen is similarly awed by Rebecca, did this off-screen dynamic inform her performance? “It really helped a lot, actually. I just had to behave as Thomasin,” she says. “Usually you’re not allowed to stare at another actor, but Eileen was a great excuse for me to just stare at Anne.”

Following Last Night in Soho, I point out that this is the second time in Thomasin’s career that she’s starred in a 60s-set film opposite a glamorous blonde woman her character is obsessed with. “Oh my god, that is so true. I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she says. Perhaps she needs to do a third to close out the trilogy? “Yeah, like [Edgar’s] Cornetto Trilogy. Maybe [next time] I could be the blonde woman?”
While filming Eileen, Thomasin became conscious of the difference between her and Anne. “I definitely wouldn’t consider myself to be a glamorous person,” she says. “I don’t have that grace. I’m a bit awkward, a bit clumsy, a bit erratic. It was the same with Anya; that was great casting because we’re also very different people. Anya and Anne have this natural grace and elegance to them, and it’s nice to see that contrast.”
I tell Thomasin she’s being too hard on herself. She’s not looking for a compliment. She explains that she’s always been drawn to outcast characters hovering at the fringes, never quite fitting in, because that’s how she’s felt a lot of her life. “It doesn’t bother me,” she says. “I like that part of myself — I own it — and I get to play really cool roles because of it. I’m happy to be a bit awkward.”

Source: i-d.vice.com

Thomasin McKenzie Watched Mark Wahlberg Movies to Prepare for Eileen

Thomasin McKenzie takes it as a compliment when people don’t know she’s from New Zealand. The 23-year-old actor—who broke through with 2019’s Jojo Rabbit and 2021’s Last Night in Soho—regularly showcases accent work so good that her Kiwi heritage can come as something of a shock. “After the first screening of Leave No Trace, I went up onto the stage and we did a Q&A and the reaction of the audience was so gratifying,” she says. “Everyone was turning their heads and looking at the person sitting next to them like, What the hell? Who is this person? I was pretty stoked.”

In the latest addition to her impressive oeuvre, McKenzie tackles the titular role in the psychological thriller Eileen, the first film adaptation of an Ottessa Moshfegh novel. (Moshfegh and her partner, Luke Goebel, wrote the screenplay together.) McKenzie plays the mousy, repressed Eileen Dunlop, a 24-year-old who spends her days working as a prison secretary and caring for her alcoholic father (Shea Whigham) while fantasizing about the men at the prison. Yet when the new prison psychologist, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), arrives, she pulls Eileen into her intoxicating orbit.

The film, directed by William Oldroyd (Lady Macbeth), is anchored by a stellar performance from McKenzie, who holds her own against an electric Hathaway. Below, McKenzie tells Vogue about sharpening her Massachusetts accent, accidentally getting too into character, and her relationship with her costar Hathaway.

Vogue: Were you a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh before you read the script for Eileen?

Thomasin McKenzie: I’d read her book My Year of Rest and Relaxation sometime during COVID, before reading Eileen, before even hearing about the script. I knew it was the first of Ottessa’s books to be made into a film, so I was really interested.

Her writing makes you feel queasy but also grips your attention, and the film manages to capture that same feeling.

I know exactly what you mean. Her style of writing is queasy, uncomfortable, and very truthful. It’s very visceral. It was really fun playing with that tone in the film and trying to achieve that feeling you get when reading her work.

How did she help you develop Eileen as a character?

She was there for two days for rehearsal, and we all sat around a table and talked through the script—about Eileen’s relationship with her dad, Rebecca, and the Polk boy. The thing I was most nervous about was the accent because Ottessa is from Massachusetts, so she knows the accent very well. So I was quite stressed that I wouldn’t get the accent right because she’d be the first person to pick up on it if it was wrong.

You do a lot of accent work in your roles. How do you develop them?

A lot of time on Zoom. For the longest time, when I was younger, I used to wish that I actually was from America, just because I was so frustrated at the amount of time and money I’d had to spend on accent coaching. But now I’m really grateful to be from New Zealand. I find it very uncomfortable using my own accent when I’m working, so being able to put on an accent for a character is really helpful to me. [Massachusetts has] an interesting accent. There’s a lot of Irish influence on it. I watched a lot of films with Mark Wahlberg.

I’ve also noticed that you’re such a physical actor—

[Makes a face.]

Are you surprised?

I’m flattered! Physical in what way?

You bring this timidness to Eileen. Then I think about your performance in Jojo Rabbit, which had a ferocity to it. Even in scenes where you’re not talking, you carry yourself in a way that is wholly representative of your character.

She’s very self-conscious, she’s got struggles with her body image, she hasn’t received a lot of loving touch from her family, she hasn’t had any kind of romantic relationships, she doesn’t have any friends. I wanted to give a feeling of that, so I try and pull my stomach in, tuck my pelvis, and round my shoulders a little bit to give a feeling that she was trying to protect herself, in a way.

Knowing how isolated and disgusting she felt influenced my shell around her. With Elsa in Jojo Rabbit, she’d spent so much time in that space behind the wall, so she was hunched a lot. Being able to come out of that cubbyhole and stand up straight—I remember thinking that would be a really wonderful feeling, to be able to fully stretch herself out, or even to sit on Jojo’s sister’s bed and feel the warmth and the cushiness of the mattress. Elsa was quite a confident girl. She was sassy and more confident in her body. She wasn’t so afraid to take up space like Eileen was.

One of the most poignant scenes in Eileen is when she waits at the window for Rebecca and realizes she’s not coming back. Can you tell me a bit about filming that?

I have a funny story about that scene, which I don’t know if the props department would be very happy with me telling. Eileen was smoking throughout that scene, and we had to do the take over and over again. I’d asked if I could have a pack of what I thought were fake cigarettes on hand, and after a few, I was like, Wow, the placebo effect is really working. I feel like I’m getting some head spins. Once we finished those scenes, I mentioned it to the props lady and she was like, “Oh, no, they’re real cigarettes.” I had asked for Shea Whigham’s cigarettes because I knew he would always have some on hand. I didn’t realize that he had been smoking real cigarettes, and she didn’t realize I was asking for fake ones. So I was a chain-smoker for that day.

In the book’s basement scene, I believe the gun goes off when Eileen and Rebecca are fumbling with it. But in the film Eileen is holding it, and she says she pulled the trigger because she was angry. What do you make of that?

I think Eileen was in such shock and so angry that her body pulled the trigger for her. I realized when filming on the day that Eileen’s sister, Joanie—who abandoned Eileen and her dad—had been physically abused by their dad. So for Eileen, pulling the trigger was also kind of acknowledging her own pain and the abuse that she received from her father and expressing her anger and pain from that. I don’t think it was a fully conscious moment, though.

Eileen and Rebecca have quite an interesting dynamic. How did you two build rapport off-screen?

Luckily for us, I feel like our real-life relationship reflected the relationship between Eileen and Rebecca. I’ve been such a fan of Anne ever since I was a kid watching The Princess Diaries. Those are my all-time favorite films. When I met her for the first time, I very much was starstruck. Anne naturally is a really formidable person. She has such grace and style and intellect to her, just like Rebecca. So just like Thomasin was in awe of Anne, Eileen was in awe of Rebecca in similar ways. But luckily our relationship is much less toxic.

vogue.com

“Collaboration makes me really happy,” Thomasin McKenzie tells us. “I just finished a production and the relationship I had with the director and the entire crew and cast was so joyful and loving and collaborative. That made me so happy because it’s what I love the most.”

We’re meeting the New Zealand actress in London as she prepares to promote her lead role in the upcoming Edgar Wright thriller, Last Night in Soho – so where more fitting for our interview and shoot than that same energetic London neighbourhood? After effortlessly waltzing her way through a series of photos at the Parisian restaurant Brasserie Zédel, we’re now comfortably ensconced in the luxury of the Hotel Café Royal, one of Soho’s longest-established mainstays.

McKenzie is arguably best-known for her supporting roles in the award-winning Jojo Rabbit and the action-packed True History of the Kelly Gang, as well as her breakout appearance in in Debra Granik’s 2018 drama Leave No Trace, for which she received much critical acclaim. It’s her quietly captivating, chameleon-like qualities as an actor which allows for her to take on such varying roles with an ease that belies her 21 years.

“The best career advice I’ve ever received is a piece of advice from my mum,” she explains. “It was life advice, but now I take it as career advice, and that is to be like water in a stream – flowing freely and easily past obstacles or ‘rocks’ – and just not being too taken aback or stopped in your tracks by things, but being able to move around them and continue on with your life.”

That concept of fluidity and flexibility is clearly something that appeals to McKenzie, who describes her idea of self-care as “stillness, and not feeling the pressure of time”, and says that her ideal superpower would be “the ability to transform into absolutely anything”.

“With that power, you basically have all the powers,” she points out. “You could be a bird, you could be a fish, you could be a chameleon, you could be an elf. I could live out my dream of being a fairy.”

So, with Last Night in Soho garnering huge levels of press and attention ahead of its release, putting her firmly on the map as an in-demand leading lady, what would advice would she give her younger self, who was just starting out as an emerging teenage actress?

“Just not to care so much, and to be gentler on myself,” she says, thoughtfully. “Because life is joyful and not everything is such a big deal. You’ll survive.”

Watch our full video interview with McKenzie above, in which she reveals what makes her happiest, her unusual party trick, the most luxurious purchases she’s ever made, and the job that changed her life.

Source: Harpersbazaar.com