Vanessa Kirby on ‘Italian Studies’ and What She’d Change About Her Teenage Years
variety.comMarc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorVanessa Kirby didn’t go all Method for “Italian Studies,” but she didn’t need to in order for her character to seem a little out of sorts.“The Crown” actor filmed the Adam Leon-directed indie drama — she stars as Alina, a successful writer who finds herself wandering around New York City with a group of teens after she suddenly suffers severe memory loss — while doing a play in London.“Adam said, ‘I don’t want you to have a process.
I want you to come as you are. If you are knackered, you come knackered,’” Kirby, who earned an Oscar nomination for her work in “Pieces of a Woman,” tells me on this week’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast.When she was jet-lagged, which she was many times after coming to the New York set straight from a transatlantic flight, Leon told her to lean in. “To not know one day to the other what it was, or what we’d be filming, or what the scene was, or there not be a scene — it was very challenging for me,” she says.
Kirby compared Leon’s less structured process to holding onto the edge of a pool: “You have to tear your feet one by one, get your fingers off and just sort of plunge in.”Most of her co-stars were real New York City teens who Leon worked with on a small downtown live variety show. “It was actually terrifying because I actually really didn’t enjoy being a teenager,” Kirby reveals. “I didn’t know who I was.
I was very emotional. I look back at it, quite a painful, existential experience.”Asked what she’d change about those angsty years, Kirby says, “Oh, god.
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