Keira Knightley Talks ‘The Woman in Cabin 10’ and Why She’s Looking for More FUN Roles
Kira, I start every single interview I do with the exact same question. It is a very important one. How are you today? Genuinely, how are you doing today? I’m pretty good. I’m a bit tired. I’m not sleeping so well at the moment. Now, some of that Are you not either? No, it’s been a weird week. Well, it’s been a weird week. Okay, so I’ve had my my husband, it was his fault one of the nights cuz his phone kept going off. Wanted to kill him. Rude. Another night, my kid had a nightmare. Fair enough. You know, another night the cat suddenly behaved very strangely and last night I don’t have anyone to blame. I just couldn’t sleep. No, but K, can I tell you because my dog has been being weird this week and last night I also did not have anyone to blame. I think it’s something just like in the going on, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I’m really hoping I would really really like a nice night’s sleep tonight. I feel you know when you’re feeling a little edgy from the lack from the broken sleep. Yes. I’d like to feel a little bit calmer. Yes. Same. Well, I am so excited to be talking to you about the woman in Cabin 10. And I want to start with the fact that this is just so real for like so many women. Like, she’s just being gaslit all of the time and being told not to question the super duper rich. And it’s very real in like a frustrating kind of way. And I’m really interested for you like what makes you say, “Yes, I want to live in that headsp space for a few weeks for a shoot.” Well, I mean, yeah, when when you phrase it like that, it does seem like an odd choice. Um, but uh but no, I think I was just like what I actually liked was her certainty because I think often and I know that I would be like this. If I walked into a room and I said this happened and everybody else in the room said no it didn’t and you’re nuts and actually nobody was there and what are you talking about? I would go oh gosh yes I’m so sorry. You’re completely right. I I must be completely insane. And I love playing a character who is like no I know something happened. I am going to get to the bottom of it. I don’t care if you all call me crazy. I’m just going to keep going. Keep going. Keep going. So I think that there’s power in that certainty which actually was quite nice to play because I never feel very certain about anything. So it was just I I enjoyed being certain about it. Well, and that’s something that your director Simon has said was very important to him from the start. He wanted it to be so that Lo was so certain that the viewers never doubted her. And it didn’t occur to me until after I finished it. I was like, “Oh, that’s 100%.” I was with you 100% of the time. I was like, “She saw what she saw. That’s a thing that happened.” He didn’t want the unreliable narrator being the thing that the filming the film was about. He wanted particularly because she was a woman, he wanted to take away all of the stuff that would make you go, “No, she’s not right.” And yet still, so actually she’s a completely reliable narrator and yet still she’s standing in the room and nobody believes her, you know. So I think he found that a much more interesting sort of dynamic to explore than she’s having a nervous breakdown and then she sees this thing and then whatever, you I think so. We wanted her to be, you know, she’s completely capable. She completely like she’s really good at what she does. She stands in this room, she says something’s happened and everyone says, “No, it doesn’t.” What? It’s crazy, right? And it’s and it’s so nice for the genre. And I asked him about it and he told me that it’s because at least in part for him, he really does believe that the things that we show in in media and in pieces of art that we consume do have a way of staying in the brain. And obviously that’s true, right? That’s why art has persisted for as long as it has. So, I’m interested for you when you get the pitch that way, right? Because I you’ve read a lot of characters in your career. You get a lot of like, we want you to play this and we want you to play this mother who’s doing this and this crazy woman who’s doing this. When you get the pitch of like a woman who is just certain about what has happened and is right about what has happened for you as Kira, what is that like for you as an actress? Does it feel refreshing? Like what’s kind of that immediate reaction? It it was refreshing again because normally within characters they’re not certain and actually that’s what makes them interesting, right? And that’s what makes people interesting. But you suddenly realize actually that certainty and that non-questioning is in itself an extraordinary character trait and actually one that I don’t think that I’d played before. But also it is everybody’s nightmare. I know I’m I can’t remember all the films I’ve done so maybe I have played it before but I don’t I don’t I’m running through the catalog right now. I see you going no have you? I’m like maybe I have but I don’t remember. Um but uh but I think it it is everybody’s nightmare. I mean, it’s yes, there’s the gender thing about it, which is women are less believed than men, obviously, but even for men, the idea of standing in a room, being certain, telling the truth, and everybody telling you that you’re either insane or lying, it it is the stuff of nightmares because you can’t not question yourself and question your reality and question everything that’s happening around you and question every single relationship that you’ve got with every single person. And therefore that level of suspicion, you know, you know that somebody is a murderer in this very extreme version of this, you know, or you know somebody’s been treacherous or you know, you know, whatever, but you don’t know who it is. And that insanity of being suspicious of everyone is is really interesting, you know, and what that does to a person and how a person responds to that when the pack turns against them. um and the strength that it takes when the pack turns against you to keep to your line and not just you know be one of the pack particularly if that pack are incredibly powerful and incredibly rich. Well, one dynamic that I really really loved for you in this movie is you got to work with Kais Scotilario on this which for me is also delightful just cuz it’s kind of a little pirates reunion even though I don’t think you guys work together at all on Pirates 5. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one. And she was really cute cuz what she said when she got that part partly she like she was like oh great I get to work with Kira and then I wasn’t in that movie. So we felt like we were having a little bit of like a you know we got you were at the very very end. There’s a very small scene. You are in Pirates 5 Kira. Am I? Yeah it’s Yes, you are. Is that the cameo that I did? That is the cameo you did. That is that is where you reunite with Will Turner and it brought my heart so much joy. You are in Pirates 5. Okay, great. Good to know. Thank you very much. Uh, cool. I do remember I just had a baby. I’m like that whole period of my life is very hazy. It was very sleepd deprived. I And I feel awful even correcting you, but I just want you to know that you were there. Yeah, you were there. I saw you. Okay, fine. I’m just I’m just a big Pirates fan, Kira. I’m really trying to hold it. I just went to the new Pirates themed bar in Disney World. I’m living my best pirate life these days. Amazing. Maybe me and Ka need to go together. We’ve got kids. We’ve got kids. Can I just come? Can I just go in the background and watch and just have fun with you? Yeah, we’ll be pirishy together sitting there in the pirate bar. Cool. Back to uh Woman in Cabin 10, though. I do want to ask because I read an interview where you said that ahead of Black Doss that you were looking for something that involved curious creatures doing strange things. And I’m really kind of interested in that draw to curiosity. And I’m wondering if it was the same kind of drive in play here. Yeah, I mean it’s always slightly that drive, you know? I mean, more so with like something like Black Dove where you’re like, “Wow, this is really out there and weird,” you know, but but this is that uh how the super wealthy and the the the worlds that they inhabit and the super yacht being that kind of extraordinary. I mean, it’s like it’s a floating castle. It’s like a medieval castle, right? Cuz it’s very upstairs downstairs. You have the servants living at the bottom with very little light. You have the rich and powerful at the top in very spacious rooms. You have secret staircases where the servants are meant to come up, never be seen, clean everything, whatever, and disappear again. You know, there’s something very medieval about that whole thing. And and yet it’s also in this particular period of time, it’s very aspirational, right? So, it’s kind of having a look at that aspirational sort of lifestyle and then kind of subverting it and twisting it and turning it into this sort of claustrophobic nightmare where this palace suddenly becomes this prison and everything glitzy and glamorous suddenly becomes like horrifying and weird. Um, I I sort of thought I thought that was quite a fun thing to do, you know, to do with this sort of very aspirational object. Well, if I may go a little bit broad in your career a little bit because we’ve talked a lot about how this movie is a very realistic nightmare for a person, but you as an actor have also, in my opinion, really embraced like the play side of acting. You’ve done so many fun things. You’ve been a pirate king and the sugar plum fairy and you’ve been an assassin and you’ve been in period pieces. Like, you really get to do the fun of acting. And I’m I’m really interested for you when you’re choosing projects. How much does the fun of it all really factor in for you? It does factor in and I think it factors in more like now I think there was a midsection where I think I wanted serious. I wanted dark. I wanted to go to the place I wanted you know I mean I mean and there’s still like a lot of that. I mean Black Doss is fun. It’s still pretty dark you know. you know, I mean, just as they, you know, it’s like a bit of a but um but I think the fun and the play is is a huge side of it and it’s also a very liberating side of it, right? Because you can kind of go I mean this for example, I always wanted to be the the man in a 70s thriller. I mean who doesn’t want to be like the Warren Bey role in Parallax View. You don’t want to be the girl in Parallax View. You want to be Warren Bey in Parallax View. Um so I feel like for me it’s like my teenage self getting to be Warren Bey and Parallax View in this. So, it’s still that fun of being like, yeah, I’m that kind of I’m the hero in one of those thrillers, you know, and that kind of and so that that in itself is about play and fun. Um, but I think I am at the moment looking for pieces of entertainment and looking for things that audiences are unabashedly entertained by, you know, and and I think that’s maybe because I’m at a point I’ve got two kids, I read a lot of can read a lot of very dark scripts and I do tend to goof I don’t want to go there right now. I need, you know, I can I can do the thrillers because there’s an element of fun and I find them fun watching them. You know, I love being on the edge of my seat going, “Oh my good, who who did it? Who was the murderer? Who was, you know, um and so being a part of kind of making that is is fun?” Well, in that sense, I will leave you with this one. Is there anything in particular that you still really want to play? Whether it’s dark, whether it’s light, is there any kind of character that you’re like, I I want to sink my teeth into that. I want to be this person. We start Black Doss on Monday. I’m so excited to be a spy again. And it is the kid in me. I haven’t like I haven’t shaken the kind of cool and I get the gun and I get to do the bits and yeah, I get to be the person that’s fighting and and I win. I’m really good at it. And I do find it really s and my cashmere is still perfect and my hair is perfect afterwards and nobody notices. Um, I do think like the silliness of that and the fun of that is still I’m I’m very much looking forward to to diving back into being a cool cool spy assassin. I mean, can you can you tease anything plotwise about Black Dog season 2? Cuz I love you as an assassin because here’s the thing. As much as I’m like a pirate girly, when I was a kid on the playground, I was playing spies. So, seeing you in this, I’m like, this is this this is this is the thing. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s my it’s me being able to be James Bond. It’s like, oh god. Yeah. I always wanted to be James Bond. Um, yes. Can I can I? No, I can’t. There’s more murder and mayhem and twists and turns and a lot of Kashmir and that is You’re really good at this. It’s like you’ve been trained not to give secrets away. I know, right? You’re not getting anything.
Keira Knightley tells TheWrap about why she took on her new Netflix film, and why she’s making an effort to star in more things people “are unabashedly entertained by”
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