The filmmaker reflects on how a collection of favorite songs ballooned into a dreamy time-traveling thriller.
Her trip to the Cafe de Paris was her boot camp.
And since Eloise goes wherever Sandie goes, the young girl is along for the ride.
Anya Taylor-Joy and Matt Smith in ‘Last Night in Soho’.Parisa Taghizadeh / Focus Features
You’d hear the tick and you’d have to be exactly on that beat.
The continuity on this film was unlike anything I’d ever done before."
“I just liked the idea of being governed by something else,” says directorEdgar Wright.
Edgar Wright working with Anya Taylor-Joy on the set of ‘Last Night in Soho’.Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features
“It’s an interesting thing because the scenes become as long as the songs.
That first dream sequence, [singer] Cilla Black is going to take you from A to B.
This is the length of the song.
Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise in ‘Last Night in Soho’.Everett Collection
It can’t go any longer.”
“I’ve been amassing 60 songs or so that I liked since 2007,” Wright says.
You might say theLast Night in Sohoconcept started long before that.
Wright sees the film, in part, as “your perception of a decade versus the reality.”
“When my older brother was born, at some point my parents stopped buying records.
It was all the music that I listened to when I was growing up.”
“We can’t ignore that Anya is blossoming like an amazing firework on the red carpet.
She looks amazing in everything,” he remarks.
“She has this timeless quality.”
And that playlist Wright had curated became her roadmap.
“It was a playlist and a story,” Wilson-Cairns remembers of their meeting.
“And it was very much like, ‘This is in this sequence.
What they created is a musically charged film that veers toward “a lucid dream,” Wright says.
“And movement choreography is a big part of that.”
“I’m not a natural dancer,” the actress says.
“So another part of my preparation was doing dance lessons in Wellington.
Yeah, there was a lot of dance prep involved.”
At times it felt to Wright that he bit off a little too much to chew.
Another moment came while editingLast Night in Sohowith editor Paul Machliss: synchronizing the street lights with the soundtrack.
‘Whose idea was this?
It was my idea.
Don’t do this ever again!’
I’m having this grumbling commentary,” Wright says, laughing.
“But when the end result comes together, you forget that enormous stress.”
