Cailee Spae­ny: ​‘Peo­ple feel real­ly inspired by Sofia Cop­po­la and nour­ished creatively’

After break­ing through on Alex Garland’s sci-fi TV series Devs, Cailee Spae­ny was cast in her next film project: a dystopi­an epic enti­tled Civ­il War, slat­ed for release in 2024. While shoot­ing the film, Spae­ny grew close to co-star Kirsten Dun­st, who rec­om­mend­ed her to Sofia Cop­po­la for the role of Priscil­la Pres­ley in a biopic she was prepar­ing to cast. A year lat­er, she won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val for her per­for­mance. For Spae­ny, it’s a full-cir­cle moment.

LWLies: I’d love to know about your rela­tion­ship with Sofia Coppola’s films. When did you dis­cov­er her? 

Spae­ny: I was already a mas­sive fan – she was my dream direc­tor. When I was a kid, I said, if I could work with any direc­tor in the world, it would be Sofia. I didn’t go to any act­ing class­es, I just stayed in my room all day and watched films. And then I came across The Vir­gin Sui­cides, and it just rocks you as a young teenag­er. And I was in this fun­ny daze for a while. For the first time, I asked myself who was behind the cam­era. I nev­er put any thought into that because I was just watch­ing per­for­mances. Then I watched her whole fil­mog­ra­phy and was fas­ci­nat­ed by her, and was real­ly shocked by the way that she por­trayed young peo­ple, and young women specif­i­cal­ly. She gave them per­mis­sion to be com­pli­cat­ed and dark and have wants and needs and deep desires and be lay­ered and com­pli­cat­ed. It was just refresh­ing to see, and as a kid, it gives you per­mis­sion to explore your own per­son­hood, and feel com­fort­able in your own skin.

It must have been very sur­re­al work­ing with Kirsten Dun­st on Civ­il War.

That was such a strange way to enter Priscil­la, because she put it in a good word for me. You know, she played Marie Antoinette when she was 23, and then I was 24 when I played Priscil­la. It felt love­ly to go in with her bless­ing. Fun­ni­ly enough, I was with Kirsten one day when she found out that I could be poten­tial­ly play­ing Priscil­la, and she was wear­ing a shirt that the Rodarte sis­ters [Kate and Lau­ra Mul­leavy] made. She told me, they were inspired by Grace­land when they made this shirt, and you just found out you might be in Priscil­la… it felt so spe­cial. It’s been real­ly nice to have these women around me.

The young star of Priscil­la details the icon­ic allure of her role and hav­ing the chance to work with one of her teen heroes.

I feel like there’s some truth to that cliché́ about it being like hav­ing a fam­i­ly, work­ing with Sofia. It’s true. That is what Sofia does, you know, she works with the same peo­ple over and over again, and that says a lot about her as a per­son and how she real­ly takes care of her cast and crew. And peo­ple want to do a good job for her. I think they feel real­ly inspired by her and nour­ished cre­ative­ly. She put so much trust in Jacob and I to play these roles, at times when we didn’t trust our­selves. But she has such a clear vision. When you put on a Sofia Cop­po­la movie, you know it’s a Sofia Cop­po­la movie. Even on the days that I was run­ning around like a chick­en with my head cut off, I knew that she had a plan. That she was gonna find a way.

Priscil­la Pres­ley pro­duced the movie and it was based on her mem­oir, so you had a lot of access to ref­er­ence mate­ri­als. How did that impact your research process?

It’s a bless­ing and a curse because you get this wealth of infor­ma­tion and there are gold­en nuggets along the way. When she was telling me how she felt on cer­tain nights, or inside jokes they had, or even just watch­ing her relive cer­tain times with Elvis, that was price­less to have. But then at the same time, know­ing that at some point she was going to watch the film was unbe­liev­ably hard to take in and dif­fi­cult to sit with. The pres­sure was a lot. I just want­ed to get it right for her because I think her sto­ry deserves to be told, and I want­ed her to feel safe, and like it was in the right hands. But I remem­ber one time we were on the phone, and she said, ​‘I have all the faith in the world in you, and you can call me when­ev­er you want. Whether you want to talk about this, or you just want me to talk about any­thing. I’m right here.’ I think I got real­ly lucky, in terms of play­ing a real-life per­son and hav­ing that per­son be around. She is a gen­uine­ly kind soul.

I read an inter­view with you from when Devs came out, and you would have prob­a­bly been about 20 at the time. You men­tioned you were a big One Direc­tion fan as a teenager…

[laughs] Did I men­tion that?! Was I going around say­ing, ​‘I love Har­ry Styles’?!

Well, I was won­der­ing, were you able to relate your own expe­ri­ences as a teenag­er grow­ing up in mid­dle Amer­i­ca into this por­tray­al of a teenage girl being swept up in this flur­ry of chaos?

Yeah, I think that was one of the few things I could relate to, in terms of sit­u­a­tion. Emo­tion­al­ly there were tonnes of things I could pull from my own life, and I think that makes it uni­ver­sal to all women, but in terms of her being swept away from this life she was liv­ing as a lone­ly Air Force brat, get­ting cat­a­pult­ed into this strange, some­times suf­fo­cat­ing dream world like Alice in Won­der­land… the only thing I could com­pare it with was com­ing from Mid­dle Amer­i­ca and get­ting thrown into this indus­try and try­ing to nav­i­gate it and hold on to your­self. It can be incred­i­bly stress­ful and isolating.

How old were you when you had your first major role?

I was audi­tion­ing for four years before Pacif­ic Rim Upris­ing, so there was a build-up, but I didn’t have a pass­port. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was 18 years old, still liv­ing in Mis­souri and I got plucked out and thrown right into the deep end. It was a bap­tism of fire.

I’d love to know about your prepa­ra­tion process with Jacob, cre­at­ing this rela­tion­ship over the course of a decade, where these char­ac­ters are in and out of each other’s lives.

As soon as I knew that he was cast in the film, I knew it was real­ly impor­tant to get a hold of him. So I sent him an email, and I just said, ​‘Hey, I’m so excit­ed to work with you. Can we start hang­ing out?’ which is always a bit of an awk­ward thing to do. But I set up friend­ship play dates, like, we went to the movies, and we took horse­back rid­ing lessons togeth­er because Elvis loved hors­es. I real­ly went for it. And he was game! Jacob has an amaz­ing work eth­ic which is incred­i­bly inspir­ing to be around. We’re sim­i­lar in the way that we prep things – we both real­ly go all the way and we would call each oth­er and cross-ref­er­ence notes. He was just some­one I could real­ly lean on. And I thought he did an absolute­ly amaz­ing job of cre­at­ing this ver­sion of this myth­ic per­son, not as he’s seen in pub­lic, but how he is behind closed doors.

I’ve seen the incred­i­ble ref­er­ence mate­ri­als that Sofia cre­ates for every film before she even starts shoot­ing. What inspi­ra­tion did she pro­vide for you besides Priscilla’s mem­oir and photographs?

Sofia always had this pho­to book right beside her, but she kept it pret­ty close to her, like a secret safe­ty net of these ref­er­ence films and shots. She has such a deep knowl­edge of film, it’s kind of intim­i­dat­ing, but also a great resource to have. There were two moments though: there was a shot from Sid and Nan­cy – I hadn’t seen that film before; I loved it – of them walk­ing off the boat, arm in arm. Sofia used that as a ref­er­ence for when Elvis and Priscil­la were in Vegas for the first time. I remem­ber she actu­al­ly played the sound­track on the set in Toron­to, on these huge loud­speak­ers. We’d be walk­ing and these big flash­bulbs would be going off and we’d get to the limo, and Jacob and I would look at each oth­er like, ​‘Oh, we’re doing it!’ We real­ly felt the world. Sofia real­ly puts you right into that space, which is such a gift for an actor. And then there was anoth­er shot from Bar­ry Lyn­don, when they’re in the back of the car­riage, and he’s smok­ing and blow­ing smoke in her face. And there’s a shot with Elvis and Priscil­la in the back of a lim­ou­sine and things are going down­hill, and he’s smok­ing a big cig­ar. I’m just sit­ting back there, as we’re drift­ing apart in the sto­ry. Sofia always had those ref­er­ences just ready to go.

Sofia’s scripts are very min­i­mal, which can be very dif­fi­cult for an actor because you have less dia­logue to rely on. Was this a new chal­lenge for you?

You know, read­ing the script, I was talk­ing to Jacob one day in prep, and I said, ​‘I think you have more lines than me in this movie!’ But you’re with Priscil­la for the whole jour­ney. A lot of it takes place in the still, silent moments. When you read the script, you’re a bit like, ​‘There’s not much here,’ but Sofia has such a clear vision and to me, when I watched the film, those qui­et moments were the most pow­er­ful. I love that shot when she’s putting on false eye­lash­es right before she’s about to give birth – it says so much about the time, and who she is, and the pres­sures she had on her but also her calm­ness and con­fi­dence while she’s doing it – like she knows exact­ly how to deal with this world.