When in Rome … discover yourself

A British star on the world s stage Lily James repertoire of roles includes Meryl Streep s daughter in Mama Mia Here We Go Again Baywatch siren Pamela Anderson Pam Tommy and WWII Prime Minister Winston Churchill s dedicated secretary in the Oscar-winning Darkest Hour Completely Dawn in theaters Friday sees James as Josephine Esperanto a Hollywood star in s Rome playing and behaving very much like Egypt s first female Pharoah Her American boyfriend Joe Keery Stranger Things is her costar and Willem Dafoe her cosmopolitan limo driver The movie Josephine s making may be a swords sex and sandals fantasy but it gifts James dazzling in full flowing costume and makeup with a memorable entrance as she leads her entourage down a hallway and out into the stadium where from her throne she rules on a life or death gladiatorial match I was sent the script by Saverio Costanzo the director-writer James recalled in a Zoom interview I know actors say this a lot but I was truly so moved by the story by his writing It s like a giant poem really Then I connected to the character an enriching fulfilling experience set in the Cinecitt studios in Rome with this beautiful cast telling a story with great complexity Josephine is an American movie star in an Italian production We hear from Cinecitt s Italian workers she s an often impossible diva What are we supposed to think about her Well she s a bit of a mystery for sure In a way I think she s engineered and built this version of herself the movie star version of Josephine that she s built over the years in order to survive Hollywood and to become a star But you realize that the distance between who she truly is and this projection of herself is getting greater and greater And this very lonely woman has emerged She s very unsatisfied She s lost her inspiration and then she meets this young girl who s all innocence and purity and optimism with a real genuine beauty I think Josephine sort of falls in love and wants to destroy her all at once They go off into the night Kind of this going down the rabbit hole like in Alice in Wonderland As this evening transpires you see a woman unravel and by the end I almost feel that she s given up this character Certainly as an actress she doesn t have the power anymore to pretend While Josephine is truly a movie star but do we know if she can act Does it matter It s a very heightened style of acting we were going for in the Egyptian setting Certainly not the naturalism we re used to now Personally I think that she s a wonderful actress But she s lost her will to do it