Kirsten Dunst is truly grateful that her husband Jesse Plemons stepped in to film a crucial scene for Civil war, the new film in which she has the lead role, but that didn’t make the two-day shoot particularly enjoyable.
Yahoo Entertainment spoke to the stars of Alex Garland’s new film, out in theaters April 12, which portrays a near-future dystopian America embroiled in a second civil war. Dunst, Wagner Moura and Cailee Spaeny play journalists traveling from New York to Washington, D.C., while the federal government is under siege by a rebel coalition called Western Forces. Along the way, the group encounters several different American groups, but it is their encounter with an enigmatic soldier – played by Plemons – that is the film’s most disturbing scene.
“In fact, another actor was supposed to play this role and couldn’t do it. And so I kind of asked Jesse as a favor… to do it for us,” Dunst recalls. (The couple, who have two children, married in 2022 after six years together.)
“He would be with the kids and in Atlanta while I filmed. So he really did it as a favor, because nobody wants to play a role like that,” says Dunst. “And it was actually really scary reading the script and then filming it over the course of two days. I’m so grateful he decided to do this for us. actor, so it really worked well.”
In the film, Plemons, dressed in camouflage, asks the group, “What kind of American are you?” The actors agree that the mass grave scene with Plemons, featured in the trailer, was the most difficult to film.
In the film, the Western Forces are formed by a California-Texas alliance, which in current times might seem like two unlikely states to join forces given their blue and red political orientation. However, all the actors say they were not at all surprised by the plot – unlike many on social media.
“Why wouldn’t they come together to fight a tyrannical president?” asks Wagner.
Garland wrote the film with a specific story in mind: how the US became embroiled in a civil war. And although that story isn’t disclosed on screen, he was willing to describe it to any cast member who asked. Dunst, Spaney and Moura, however, never thought to ask.
“It’s so interesting that none of us asked,” says Wagner.
“No, we kind of accepted that you were immersed in this film immediately in this war and reading the script, I didn’t even have any doubts about it,” adds Dunst.
“We got what Alex was doing,” says Spaney.
The film generated some controversy just for the title, and although it is a political film with a clear anti-war message, it does not get involved in controversial issues. Filmmaker Alex Garland told Yahoo that he didn’t seek to polarize audiences.
“Part of the intention of the film has to do with journalism and a representation of journalism. And another part of the film has to do with division and polarized politics and populist politics, and really with extremism and possible consequences of extremism. If you’re going to have that conversation, it wouldn’t make sense to have that conversation and then you’d be polarized yourself,” he says.
Garland says it wasn’t planned that Civil war was going to be released during an election year, but that’s how things played out due to “logistical requirements,” many of them in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. O 28 days later the writer hopes to “create a compelling and engaging narrative that is a conversation rather than a lecture.”
“Because conversation is what really struggles to exist in public discourse,” he says.
Civil war opens in theaters and IMAX nationwide on Friday, April 12
