Why Scarlett Johansson Made Age an Issue With ‘Eleanor the Great’

Scarlett Johansson was behind the camera last year on her feature directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, fixated on the performance of title star June Squibb when she had a vision.

“I said to [one of my producing partners, Jonathan Lia], ‘If I do my job well and do what I’m supposed to do, I can imagine June walking the Croisette at age 95, starring in this incredible dramatic role that she’s so amazing in’ and I thought that would be my dream,” the veteran A-lister, 40, explains of being selected for the Cannes Film Festival. “To have it actually become a reality is amazing. I’m still processing it.”

Johansson has just days to wrap her head around what will be a milestone May with two films in the Cannes lineup. In addition to the Un Certain Regard world premiere of Eleanor the Great, Johansson will walk the Palais steps for Wes Anderson’s competition entry The Phoenician Scheme alongside co-stars Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benicio Del Toro, Willem Dafoe, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Riz Ahmed, Rupert Friend, Hope Davi, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera and others.

But she’ll likely be clutching the arm of Squibb most tightly. Eleanor the Great casts the nonagenarian as Eleanor Morgenstein, a 94-year-old who suffers a devastating loss, leading her to relocate from Florida to New York City to live with her daughter and grandson. She unknowingly wanders into a support group, where she reveals a story that brings her a level of attention she did not intend. A young journalism student, played by Erin Kellyman, pursues her as a friend and mentor but the situation spirals, forcing Eleanor to confront the truth. The cast is rounded out by Johansson’s fellow Marvel alum Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jessica Hecht, with whom she shared the Broadway stage in A View From the Bridge (for which Johansson won a Tony).

Johansson, co-founder of These Pictures, recalls Tory Kamen’s script landing on her desk courtesy of Maven Screen Media veteran producer Celine Rattray with a personal note from Squibb, who was already attached. “Basically never or very, very rarely have I read a script and thought, ‘Oh, I know how I can direct this.’ It doesn’t really happen to me,” says the two-time Oscar nominee, who next stars in Jurassic World Rebirth. “This script was so moving and it had such potential that, weirdly, I felt very certain that it was something I could be capable of doing.”

She’d only hopped into the director’s chair two times previously, first on the 2009 short These Vagabond Shoes starring Kevin Bacon followed by a 2015 concert special, American Express Unstaged: Ellie Goulding. (Johansson was also once attached to direct an adaptation of Summer Crossing, a once lost Truman Capote novel, that never came to fruition.) Even with the weight of a Marvel superstar behind it, getting Eleanor made was a herculean task for many reasons not limited to cash, schedule, insurance, story, you name it. “Things like this take forever to get made,” Johansson says matter-of-factly. “It would be easier to make something that was the sequel of a $180 million movie or a genre movie that was subpar. To get much, much, much less money for an independent film with an original story that has a lead actor who was 94 was very, very, very challenging.”

But Squibb’s involvement also fueled the fire. “June was feeling up for making the film and we had to take advantage of that,” Johansson notes of her leading lady, whose fame reached new heights thanks to the well-received Sundance darling Thelma. “I knew that if I signed on to direct it, the period of time to make it would be quick. We needed to shoot in the winter time, and when I got the script, it was probably July or August.”

That led to a “humongous scramble” to arrange the pieces in time to shoot in New York. “Every day the movie fell apart in 400 different ways,” Johansson continues. Asked to elaborate on specifics, she delivers: “Oh my God, so many different ways. It once looked like we were going to be able to get the majority of our money from an independent financing company and then right down to the wire, in order for them to make it, we would’ve had to completely dismantle the entire plot device that was driving the narrative engine of the film. It was crazy. At that point, everything just fell apart.”

The filmmakers found a savior in Sony Pictures Classics which provided “a great full circle moment” for Johansson. She was 10 when she starred in one of the label’s earliest films, 1996’s Manny & Lo. “I’ve obviously been a huge fan of basically everything that they put out for forever,” praises Johansson. “I remember seeing the blue title card with Sony Pictures Classics on it and I remember it so vividly because the fact that it was an independent part of Sony felt like such a big deal. They really got [Eleanor], and they came in and saved the day so that we could make our start date. I am so grateful that there are companies out there that are still making original ideas and putting faith in first time directors.”

Johansson’s cast has a lot of faith in her, too. During an appearance on New York Live, Hecht complimented Johansson as “detail oriented,” “meticulous” and “so loving” in helping her manifest her character while Squibb told THR that it’s impossible not to fall in love with her A-list director. “She’s so down-to-Earth. She is so real. We really met on that level, the two of us, because we are both that way,” Squibb says. “With her knowledge as an actress, she knew immediately what I was doing, where I was going and how I was shifting everything. That’s wonderful because you don’t often have that. I’ve worked with wonderful directors that don’t have that kind of knowledge like Scarlett does.”

The knowledge was well-earned. Johansson has spent a lifetime on movie sets, dating back to her debut at age 9 in North. “Whatever the 10,000 hours part of it is [to master something], I’ve quadrupled that,” she explains. “I grew up on sets, and I’m a huge sucker for efficiency. Even in my job as an actor, I can read a call sheet and tell you exactly what’s going to make us fall behind and what we’ll owe the next day.”

What she didn’t know until she planted feet on her own set is how it would really feel to direct actors. She has said in previous interviews that she’s picked up tricks of the trade from just about every helmer for whom she’s worked, an enviable list that includes Anderson, Christopher Nolan, Noah Baumbach, Taika Waititi, Cate Shortland, brothers Coen and Russo, Sofia Coppola, Woody Allen, Cameron Crowe, Jonathan Glazer, Spike Jonze, etc. But it was advice from Iron Man 2 boss Jon Favreau that stuck with her. He told Johansson that he zeroed in on everyone’s “unique style and what they need” in order to best direct them as individuals.

“I didn’t know what it would feel like at all, and I didn’t necessarily have the confidence that I would be able to direct actors,” she says. “But then in doing it, I realized that I’m always working with actors. I’m working with directors and actors in the development stage, in the rehearsal process, in blocking and giving notes, taking this and applying that. That part of it felt almost immediately pretty natural.”

So what kind of director is Johansson? “I rule with an iron fist. I have my own tent and nobody can come in there — ever,” she jokes, getting serious quickly to add that it’s hard for her to have perspective on what others see. Plus, she’s much more comfortable complimenting her ace collaborators.

“I was really inspired by everyone’s ideas, their abilities and what they brought to the table,” she says, singling out department heads, the director of photography, casting director, composer and on down the line. She continues by saying that everyone signed on for the gig not for the money but because they believed in the story. “It’s so universal that it feels personal because it deals with themes that reflect profound human experiences. At the heart of it, it’s about love, acceptance, forgiveness and, of course, grief, and these are themes every single person can relate to. People connected to the story, whether they were coming from the financing side or the creative side. They were like, ‘I want to do this.’ They knew there was no money in it, but it’s such a special story and they could just see it the way I could see it. It really became the little engine that could, and we were able to pull it together by hook or by crook. I don’t know if I’ve ever been a part of exactly this kind of experience where it becomes a labor of love that everybody deeply connected to.”

Asked to put her vision to the test once more in picturing what the future holds for her behind the camera, Johansson says she’s game as long as the material matches what she found in Eleanor. “Whatever I work on next, regardless of the size or the genre, I would be looking for those same kinds of deep characters and it would be important for me to try to find performance-driven stories.”

For now, though, she’s going to enjoy this moment, and this realization of a dream come true by taking Squibb to Cannes for a stroll down the Croisette: “Premiering in Cannes, I don’t know how I will be able to process the hugeness of it. It makes me nervous, but I’m excited as well. I’m very proud of it and proud of all the work everybody did to make it.” There’s actually a word she’s coined to describe the feeling, inspired by her 10-year-old daughter, who often says she’s scared of something on the horizon until Johansson directs her to the right words: “It’s nerve-citement.”

This story appeared in the May 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.