Rebecca Ferguson Breaks Down Her Career, from 'Mission: Impossible' to 'Dune' | Vanity Fair

i read a script and i will automatically have a gut feeling towards it the philosophy is following that in combination with how the dialogue goes with the director who i'm going to work with if those two align it's a very good start hi everyone my name is rebecca ferguson and this is the timeline of my career [Music] the whole story i think about getting the role in new yeti del new times was i started off in a modeling agency because my mom had forced me in to do this competition but i was far too short and obviously didn't look like a supermodel so i was put into the people category and that's when the soap opera looked for their actresses they went through the people catalogue and i was asked to do a casting and i think i turned it down once or twice until my mother pushed me into the rooms and forced me to do it i think at the age of 15 it was a good age to capture someone i think because the work environment became second nature to me we were doing two and a half episodes a day so you would receive all of your scripts on the friday for the entire week and then you study during the weekend we had two sets shooting at the same time and because i was the lead i had to run in between so i rehearsed then shot the rehearsal shot and shot rehearsed it was an intense learning skill in in learning lines and crying very fast i draw the blade upon myself if you come one step closer i will cut my throat and die right here play acting i will not be your mistress this was my first ever casting that wasn't in sweden and i did have approximately seven birth scenes i think uh where i had to give birth in different variations you know in bed on all four and two blocks of stones pushing balloons down having my first casting abroad and landing that role and then being nominated with the most incredible actors it was terrifying and wonderful and odd and unimaginable they came we've never met before right the casting for mission was one of the most insane everything with tom cruise is insane full stop having lunch it's all just insane and that's why we love him but yeah i was in the desert on a camel uh called barbie i remember and i was asked to meet tom cruise and and i was you know from the camel the same day i was on an airline uh arriving luton who and there he was so relaxed in a lovely blue cashmere jumper blue jeans and shoes how about that yeah and it was just really weird we bonded we laughed we drank coffee it felt very normal and i think a couple of days later they called and said you've got the role but you can't tell anyone it's a secret we'll let you know when you can tell someone when i arrived back in morocco after the meeting with with tom they then flew over the stunt team to test my skills on martial art and general moves if i had what it took to be able to train me to a level that i could do my own stunts i apparently had i had skills maybe from dance or something it felt very natural so it felt very obvious that i would be doing the stunts myself [Music] that was the first day of shooting and i remember heights was an issue for me and wade put me in a harness and he brought me up two meters and then slowly dropped me down and then he brought me up to like four meters and slowly dropped me down and then he just kept on bringing me up and up and up to 15 or something and he just let go of the release so i flew with total force down and then a soft landing i mean i was petrified and excited and i wanted to hit him and i mean i was so furious and i loved him and he said this is the worst thing that would ever happen if something malfunctions that feeling of an instant drop will be nothing and that kind of took me to a stage that i could do the jump but i remember swearing when i jumped up and i straddled tom and he held me and i just every single bad word i could say i just screamed in his ear and he went great are you ready then where this afternoon when the police brought scott back home she was across the street and when she saw me she got aggressive aggressive how what if rachel killed megan funnily enough i had just accepted the role and i went on holiday and by the pool there were three separate people reading the book and my ego just wanted to run up and go i'm anna by the way but it was quite fun because it was so present it was such a popular book for the time i think i was interested in the fact that she was neurotic and caught in a very horrible relationship that she was trying to get out of and i also i the idea of speaking american has always um been a challenging thought and i always do love a challenge and then also to be honest one of my main reasons was i really wanted to work with em emily blunt she's absolutely phenomenal incredible incredible woman i'm i'm gonna stand right here i'm not gonna come closer i just need to talk to you i don't want to hear anything you have to say it's just pretentious i am very very sorry i shouldn't have to hide in my own home it's humiliating and there are rules i think she was just over excited you want to speak to her yes that's a very good idea i shall say florence although you pay the rent on my apartment would you mind not visiting i did all the research i could and couldn't stop listening i mean it's spectacular but to be honest i was so drawn to meryl i was so flabbergasted and not starstruck because meryl just doesn't evoke that she's so much more than for you to be starstruck it's more in awe really of who she is i'd come to set sometimes when i even i wasn't in the scene just to see what she was like and to to study her as an actress [Music] and i have never met anyone so humble and kind she would walk out and have fun with everyone there she would do this scene over and over again and a little bit of a stand up in between just to keep everyone happy but god i remember the first table read simon who plays the pianist they all sang they all did the the performance at the table read and i didn't i remember thinking where am i why am i in this what have they done it was all around an incredible experience well let's just try and be happy tonight hey man i'm trying yes you certainly are you know what i feel is not scientific it's not rational i feel hate i feel pure hate for that thing i remember walking around with daniel espinoza the director he was so extremely eloquent very smart mathematical philosophical i mean the man plays chess to calm down i was excited about his brain i was excited about where he wanted to take this i also love being thrown into environments that i've never been before i mean i had to do harness work and line works with rope to hover and to look like we were floating in in the iss international space center i found the floating quite difficult because what you don't understand is counter reactions to things if you push something something else moves in a different direction there is never a stillness you're constantly hovering so when we were doing scenes and just talking we were sitting on big pilates balls and kind of moving around there was never a moment where you could just be still and when you learn lines and when you're having a discussion or when you're listening to each other i pause i look i listen but you can't and if someone's gonna also now throw in a third situation of giving you something or water's coming you're gonna have to push up from this angle to grab the water from this angle and come back to a conversation so your brain is literally trying to handle four or five things at the same time what i think is interesting is every film i do we can compare to nature disaster politics of today it's all constantly on the agenda but you can also just simplify it with the fact that it's just a story it's a story about people being stuck in an environment and having something threatening them and they all reacting in different ways due to their past or due to their own torment and i think i saw that this film in a much more simpler way how we respond to threat and what is threat and he says you've been your plan all along to make sure that that creature doesn't get to earth of course you are the american i believe i might have heard of you oh well if you've heard of me all the way over here i must be doing something right that was something very wrong i absolutely love buzz lemons quirkiness musical i can i can i can appreciate a musical i also can find musicals kind of in my face annoying when they sing all the information you know i understand that you're hungry and you're gonna take the bus what got me to fall in love with this was the director who basically rocked up with a beanie on his head and a television under his arm i love the fact that he didn't think that i would have a television he said you just stay here where's your where's your tv room and i said upstairs and hi and he went great don't worry about it come upstairs in a bit i thought this dude and i said to my boyfriend can you just stay just don't go anywhere and he just started he just started telling the story about pt barnum painted the most stunning picture and i thought i'm happy to be a teacup in this film i actually don't care who i am and then i happen to become jenny linde who obviously was someone i knew about so when i went on board i said i'm really happy to sing and they said we've got it covered and i thought no i know you've got it covered but when i acted i'm gonna have to sing and because i went to music school i trained i got my voice ready and i did every take singing and i said it's a possible sort of merge them i tried to push for my own voice to be in this film and then i thought don't you're not even close i obviously don't have lauren's incredible effortless tones i listened to the way that she paused and sang but she also embodied my movements so it was a complete merge of her voice and my breathing and my movements and my singing [Music] it was really fun and and i would see hugh and all the oddities trained together and i would always feel a little bit left out a little bit like jenny probably i wanted to be in the gang in the cool gang such a fun shoot hugh is a really really close friend which means the environment is a complete utter safe space you can do silly choices you can challenge each other you can throw curveballs you can discuss things and test limits because when you're that close you know limits he's a thespian people come to my show for the pleasure of being hoodwinked just once i'd love to give him something real now tell me where he is i can't help you i will get to him one way or another please don't make me go through you i was about six months pregnant i think and i was quite big and i still was doing the stunts so yes we had buckets on the set i would throw up and to be honest i would hide those buckets no one really knew about it because i knew that if i would tell them then they would call it a day i do actually have a story which i'm not sure if i should share it's about a fanny fart that's literally when we fart with our families i'm gonna go for it i don't care shaun harris is one of the actors he is awkward uncomfortable so terrifyingly scary and he knows it and then i kind of fell in love with him in the second film we've got a good connection and there's a scene where i could do my famous killer thigh move when i jump up and i wrap a leg around since i'm ridiculously pregnant and boobs out to here they forklift me up i have i think four stunt guys lifting me up on him and i do the twist and he kind of lies down on the ground i have to position myself positioning yourself on top of someone's face when you're pregnant not sexy and i then have to grab my leg around his neck and i pull my leg and the biggest fanny fart comes out and he's literally caught between boobs and my um big tummy and all i heard was get me out of here [Laughter] and i sad enough said i can't just deal with it i can't move babes playing evil is not difficult i need to tack it in a way that goes even darker now for me to be a mother to be honest someone asked me this and said how are you going to do this and i thought i don't really compare them they're not interesting i have a wonderful son at home he's the same age i have also very clear things i need to be doing the way i have to you know chop him up that my head is quite focused on the task ahead which i also found quite interesting for the role it's like filleting sushi really it wasn't until the moment that jacob started screaming i realized how how much it affected me i'm behind the scenes i'm waiting for the sound or the noise that i know is my entrance and he started making this squealing sort of animalistic guttural screams and i nearly burst out crying behind the camera and i knew that i was supposed to enter so i was standing wiping tears from my from my face and here i am two seconds later saying i don't compare it's not difficult i'm just bloody acting aren't i i went motherly was my choice i cradled him to play someone embracing a child and shushing them and lullabying them into safety before killing them would probably be the most abhorrent horrendous thing i could ever imagine but jacob sold that he he made that scene damn i thought he had another few minutes i wanted to mimic a little bit of facial movements like jack nicholson did when he walks up the stairs but i needed it to be mine not his and we hadn't really decided how she reacts in here but i was playing her character that had these tentacle emotions so i tried to access that when i was walking and sensing all the characters that have been in this house previously i remember touching the walls and then i remember walking and then he said to your right is the elevator and i remember just thinking well hi there i remember just sort of communicating to this memory of something i could feel it was just for me wonderful we are house atreides there is no call we do not answer the emperor asks us to bring peace to arrakis house atreides accepts i was very knowledgeable on denny's work which was enough to have a meeting with him and he walked me through the story and thrown into his childhood dream and to be a part of someone's nostalgic sort of memory of something is is is even better and after that obviously i got the book up i read scripts it wasn't difficult in the sense that denny had a vision and then within that he gave me space to play and to bring my own idea of a scene and then i had you know the most exquisite actors to work against i mean tim timothy charlotte rampling sterling scottish got i mean just so many will you protect paul with my life there are two separate versions of desert that were needed for the film so we have the rocky hilly mountainy locations of wadi ram and then we went to abu dhabi but it was so hot that we could only film from 5 30 until 7am until the sun came up because the heat was so it was so hot the cameras would literally melt and we were in these suits which was manageable when it was that hour but then later on it was unbearable what if i'm not the future of house of treaties i remember one of the scenes i didn't really understand how large these these sand worms were going to be and i remember there was a scene where we were running and we have one nearby and denny says and then look at it and i remember thinking oh no there it is and he goes no no look up and i went oh no and he goes no no look up and i kept on going i remember thinking wow this the scale of this is pretty insane i think i evolve constantly with each job that i do sometimes i think you just need to shake it up a bit why do i act in a certain way why do i have certain tics and mannerisms which puts me in very stereotypical roles so i need to change my action to be offered the roles that i'm also after i very rarely feel pressure when it comes to making a film i deliver a character i have fun doing it to bring it back for example to to tom cruise he always makes movies for the audience every time you're next to him on set he will ask the question how will the audience receive this do they understand the arc he constantly thinks about them i constantly think about myself because i just i think about a character i create a character i have fun with a character overall i just want people to have a great experience and to enjoy the film

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 614,802

Rating: 4.9732165 out of 5

Keywords: career timeline, career timeline vanity fair, doctor sleep, dune, fallout, mission: impossible, rebecca ferguson, rebecca ferguson 2021, rebecca ferguson career, rebecca ferguson career timeline, rebecca ferguson doctor sleep, rebecca ferguson dune, rebecca ferguson interview, rebecca ferguson movie, rebecca ferguson movies, rebecca ferguson roles, rebecca ferguson vanity fair, rogue nation, vanity fair, vanity fair career timeline, vanity fair rebecca ferguson

Id: 2jwN1TjN-_g

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DirectorOfFood22]

I really liked her in the recent Mission: Impossible movies and Dune

[u/s_y_s_t_e_m_i_c_]

She was great in Doctor Sleep.

[u/unkellGRGA]

As a swede she is probly my favourite talent we have right now

She is great in MI, loved her in Doctor sleep and was perfect casting as Lady Jessica in Dune

[u/reynoldclio]

she was the best performer in Dune

[u/LordTreeblat]

Incredible performance in dune! Best of the whole cast

[u/El_kal91]

Story time people: After seeing her in the most recent MI movies, I honestly couldn't help but fall in love with her whole look in Rogue Nation. Didn't help I actually took LSD before watching so I was fixated lol.

Fast Forward to Doctor Sleep releasing, I got early screening tickets, and was also entranced by her and I said in the theater "I need to meet this beautiful woman, I just have to".

Now fast forward again two weeks later, after the religious experience that is Doctor Sleep and her character I decided to put her as my lock screen. Then I took a trip to New Orleans with a bunch of friends for their 30th. First night there I'm on my phone, drunkingly walking thru Bourbon Street, and something told me to look up and to the left. There she was, I couldn't believe it, I didn't believe it so much that I looked for like 30 seconds to make sure it was her and without any hesitation I went up to her and tapped her shoulder. She was startled by that and threw herself in her husband's arms and I felt so bad. I drunkingly rambled about how I loved her in Doctor Sleep because I literally just saw it two weeks before and asked to take a photo. I felt so bad I scared her though. Then as I'm about to take a picture my friend comes up on her shoulder and asks what's going on, drunk as hell, and I tried explaining but I knew he wouldn't get it so I told him I'll be one second, I took the pic, thanked her and apologized again, and went off. That was the first night I was there and I was off a high the rest of the trip. It was crazy, she was literally on my lock screen, I didn't show her that, but I couldn't believe it. So when watching Dune two nights ago, I still couldn't believe I got to meet Lady Jessica randomly in New Orleans.

Here's the pic in question: https://imgur.com/28QrJpc

TL;DR: I obsessed over Rebecca Ferguson ever since MI, saw Doctor Sleep, and two weeks later ran into her in New Orleans, drunkingly.

[u/Singer211]

She’s such a brilliant actress.

I hope she starts getting the chance to be the lead in some films in the future.

[u/CollumMcJingleballs]

Sean Harris was living about three internet fetishes at once with that Fallout story.

[u/SpinoC666]

I thought she was great in The Greatest Showman.