Very little is yet known about Steven Spielberg’s next film, except that it’s a sci-fi story. It sounds like that’s about all the info Josh O’Connor got before signing on, too. “He just said to me, ‘I’ve got this idea for this movie I’ve wanted to make for a long time.’ And he sort of described it, but not enough,” O’Connor recalls of their first meeting in a new profile for GQ. “He didn’t tell me the story of the movie. He just said, ‘It’s kind of like this, and there’s like these two characters.’ And I was like, ‘Right.’ And he was like, ‘It is kind of this, but it’s not.’ And I was like, ‘Right.’ And he was like, ‘Sound good?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, but not because of that, because it’s you! You haven’t told me anything.'”
Notice how O’Connor is also not telling us anything; he’s very careful not to reveal too much about the plot. Previously, he told Deadline that he shares the screen most with Emily Blunt, and that their characters are related “in some way,” though he wouldn’t say how. For GQ, he described the movie as “an ensemble thing,” hesitating to even call his character the lead. “I think he’s the lead!” Blunt countered, adding, “It is a big ensemble piece, but Josh is very much the heartbeat.”
That still doesn’t give much away, does it? Returning to facts we know: O’Connor and Blunt co-star in the movie with Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, and Wyatt Russell. The as-yet untitled film is based on an original story treatment from Spielberg with a screenplay by David Koepp (with whom he collaborated on Jurassic Park and War Of The Worlds). It’s been called a “UFO film,” and O’Connor described it to Deadline as “old-school Spielberg” in the world of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and E.T.
“My first day of filming, there was a lighting rig that was just a big beam of light from car headlights, smoke, rain dripping off pipes,” he now shares with GQ. “And you’re like, ‘This is such a Spielberg setting.’ In some ways you don’t even acknowledge it. But for you and I… Steven Spielberg has been the architect of our childhood. Little things penetrate your mind, whether it’s the headlights [in] Jurassic Park with the rain coming down… or those kids eating all that pudding before their little Tyrannosaurus Rex comes in the window.”
On working with the filmmaker, O’Connor gushed to Deadline in May that Spielberg is “just the most special person.” The actor said, “He seems to have the most incredible amount of energy I’ve ever witnessed. He comes up to you, he whispers in your ear like an excited child about an idea, a thought, and it’s truly inspiring.”
The film reportedly wrapped in June, and while O’Connor remains mum on spoilers, he continues to praise the legendary director. “He’s not in any way complacent. He’s still calling you the night before, being like, ‘What do you think of this line?'” the Challengers star says to GQ. He tells an amusing anecdote about getting texted a note from Spielberg—”The door is ajar, just push”—that completely unlocked an emotional scene O’Connor was struggling with. It turns out, the text was actually meant for Spielberg’s wife about a literal door, but it was in keeping with the way the auteur “will say something that’s mind-blowing and poetic and incredible,” O’Connor explains. “I was right to investigate it, because it is the kind of thing he would write. And it fucking worked!”
