Mia Threapleton admits that she wept tears of joy on the Tube after learning that she had been cast in a leading role in Wes Anderson's new film The Phoenician Scheme.
"I genuinely didn't believe it was true," Kate Winslet's daughter says. "I was on a train at the time and I just sat down on the floor and had a little cry."
The role is a game-changer for Mia, who, though grateful for Kate's advice and support, has never wanted to trade on her mother’s famous name.
When she auditioned for the role, she got Academy Award-winning Kate to play opposite her as she read her lines for a tape sent to director Wes – but asked her mother to stay off screen and disguise her voice, which she did by putting on a Cockney accent.
Wes says: "Mia was one of many people auditioning and she was very good. I saw her on a little small square on my computer screen and I thought: 'Well, whoever this is, she’s got special talent.'
© Joe Maher, Getty Images"Eventually, I put together that Kate was Mia’s mother, but I didn’t know she was from an acting family when I saw her at first."
Mia continued to impress him by using a table napkin to improvise a nun's habit for her role as Sister Liesl, a novice nun and the estranged daughter of businessman Zsa-zsa Korda, played by Benicio del Toro.
"There was some sort of mock nun’s habit and some polite little plimsoll shoes. And it was very nice," she recalls. "But the one thing that was missing was a proper veil. It was reaching the end of the day and I looked over to the coffee table and there was a napkin from lunch that wasn't stained with anything. So I quickly pinned this thing to my head, Wes took a photo of it and that's where that came from."
Mia, 24, began acting as a teenager, slipping under the radar by using her father's surname (Kate's marriage to film director-turned-painter Jim Threapleton ended in divorce in 2001).
© Mike Marsland/WireImageShe made her film debut aged 14 in a tiny role in Alan Rickman's A Little Chaos, and later co-starred with her mother Kate in Channel 4's 2022 Bafta TV Award-winning film I Am Ruth.
She then landed roles in TV shows including Dangerous Liaisons and The Buccaneers and the Netflix drama Scoop, in which she played an aide to Prince Andrew.
The Phoenician Scheme is her first starring role – and it’s been quite the whirlwind from winning the part to joining her co-stars at Cannes Film Festival in May for the premiere.
Immersed in the role
"I had three months from finding out I'd been offered the job to when I landed in Berlin," she says.
Much of the film was shot at Studio Babelsberg in the German capital.
© Variety via Getty Images"That felt like a good amount of time to get as deep into this as I could, which included talking to a deacon of a Catholic church, going to Rome to absorb Catholicism and reading the Bible."
Once on set, she soaked up every experience. "We would do 'lunch club' and have sandwiches outside on picnic benches and then go straight back to work. There were no trailers… it was just the best."
One co-star in particular helped her to settle in. "I was quite nervous; it was my first day and I felt as though I was going to be sick," Mia says.
© Getty"Benicio came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said: 'It's okay. We're going to do this together and it’s going to be fun.' And we did, and it was great fun. It was just fantastic."
If her nun's costume was drab, she had some glamorous accessories: Cartier created a dazzling rosary and Dunhill made a bejewelled corn-cob pipe as gifts from Zsa-zsa to Liesl, the potential heiress to his vast fortune.
"I had Liesl's rosary and pipe with me all the time – during scenes and not," Mia says of the three-month shoot. "They became extensions of my hands. Every single day there was a pinch-me moment."
Interview: Gill Pringle
