Summary

• A seemingly normal party unfolds into chaos and introspection due to an unexpected guest, sparking drama and revealing hidden truths in The Uninvited.
• The star-studded cast of The Uninvited, led by Elizabeth Reaser and Walton Goggins, delivers powerful performances and insightful messages.
• The narrative directorial debut from Nadia Conners explores themes of regret and change, inspired by real-life experiences.

A seemingly normal get-together unfurls into a night of chaos and introspection in The Uninvited. The indie dramedy revolves around Rose and Sammy, a former actor and Hollywood power agent living a seemingly idyllic life and throwing a party with many of their friends in celebration of a new movie's launch. However, when an elderly woman arrives during the party and claims to know things about the house and the party's guests, tensions rise and everyone reevaluates their lives.

The Haunting of Hill House's Elizabeth Reaser leads the star-studded cast of The Uninvited alongside Walton Goggins, Rufus Sewell, Pedro Pascal, Lois Smith and Eva De Dominici. Serving as the first narrative directorial effort from Nadia Conners, and her first feature-length directorial movie since the documentary The 11th Hour, the dramedy is one carefully crafted to explore many insightful themes and is supported by powerful performances from its cast.

In honor of the movie's South by Southwest premiere, Screen Rant interviewed Nadia Conners, Elizabeth Reaser, Walton Goggins, Lois Smith and Eva De Dominici to discuss The Uninvited. The writer/director opened up about how certain aspects of her life influenced the creation of the script, and its evolution from a play to a feature-length movie. The cast also broke down their various characters and what resonated with them to play them.

The Uninvited Is Not Biographical (But Is Inspired By Conners' Life)

Screen Rant: Give it up for the team behind The Uninvited! Nadia, you are the writer/director behind the movie, so set this one up for us. Who was not invited where? What is the premise?

Nadia Conners: That's a great question, because I think that who is the uninvited changes as the story sort of unfolds. Initially, you may think that it is Helen, the character played by Lois Smith, you might think it's Rose, played by Elizabeth Reaser. You might think it's Walton or Eva. Every single person, every character goes through a cycle of being sort of not wanted at this party. But I think that, overall, after you kind of go through these different episodes within the story, you realize that the uninvited is time itself. The passing of time, because they're all sort of stuck in the past, and what they can't let go of, and what they need to let go of.

Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind the piece?

Nadia Conners: Yes, actually, it's based on a real-life experience where my husband and I — who happens to be played by Walton [laughs] — we were getting ready to throw a party when an elderly woman showed up in our driveway, believing she'd return home.

So, this is a biopic?

Nadia Conners: It's not. [Laughs] But actually, what it was was it resolved very quickly, and it was an elderly woman who had gotten turned around. She was in her car, she was in a Prius, just like in the movie, and she wanted to know how to get into the garage. And in about 15, or 20 minutes, I helped her figure it out. We called the police, and they took her home, but I was profoundly affected by this experience. And then people started showing up at the party, and I kept trying to tell people about this woman, and there was something about this experience of not only the distress of the woman, but the sort of feeling of the party guests that they were immune to this, the features of our lives, this mortality.

So, I think that was the inspiration for me was to want to pop that bubble for them for myself, but also to retrieve this older woman who obviously was in distress and had her own story. But, why was I so connected to that story was I was vanishing from my own life at that period of time, because I was a woman who had worked my whole life, and just had a child, and found myself at home with a child, and I was a stranger to myself. I saw this older woman who had become a stranger to herself, and so there was this twinning disorientation between the two of us.

So, I kept imagining the story of a woman. "What if she didn't get taken home? What if she came in to wait for somebody to come pick her up, and the party continued on outside?" And then Rose, who Elizabeth played so incredibly, beautifully, as this woman who was balancing this one foot in the outside world, one foot still stuck in the house. And then Eva plays the younger woman who can come and go freely, because she's not encumbered yet. She's not in this domestic space, she's not the mother yet, she's not responsible yet. But as the evening proceeds, she becomes that.

The Cast All Resonated With Their Characters (Though Goggins Has His Own Humorous Take On His Casting)

You set it up perfectly! For the illustrious cast, I would love to hear from each of you. Your characters were set up, but tell us a little bit about why they appealed to you, and the story at large.

Elizabeth Reaser: I was really drawn to the script, it was just amazing. It was so fun to read. I feel like Nadia is such a funny writer, but also really cuts through BS, and her voice really spoke to me. And the character of Rose, the woman that I play, I found to be really struggling inside. She's a former actress, and she's living in Los Angeles, trying to have some self-worth, and it's quite broken. I think, in some ways, when the movie begins, she is in a complicated marriage, and it all just really spoke to me.

Lois Smith: When I first met Nadia, we talked, and then I read this, I was always so intrigued by it. This double life, double story — more than double. It takes place in the Hollywood Hills, and the house is so important. There's this house, and my character is an intruder. An intruder in a life which is already fraught, and I always considered Rose — Elizabeth's beautiful performance as Rose — the center, and then I nudge into it. So, I'm waiting to see what works, because now the movie's out there, and we'll find out what it does to people.

Walton Goggins: I actually didn't have a choice. Everybody else had that choice, I didn't, my marriage was contingent on it. [Laughs] No, I've been fortunate enough to read my wife's writing for 19 years, we've been together a very long time, and had been looking for this day for a really long time to get on the boards together, as it were. And this was originally a play, and I've read it during every iteration, and it just brought tears to my eyes. I didn't think that I was gonna get the opportunity to play Sammy, and it just came about as the movie picked up steam.

I was just so taken with them, with everyone's story. But for Sammy, who's kind of throwing this party, the reasons why he's throwing it become evident as the movie goes along. The stakes that are there for him, and for everyone involved, it's like we're all stuck, and then the stranger comes to town. And we're all fundamentally changed by the end of it, and that was with me from the very beginning, the very early drafts that I read five years ago when it was a play to what we ultimately filmed. It's funny as s--t, but then when it lands, it lands, and it says something about this world that we live in.

Eva De Dominici: So, when I first read it, I realized I needed to play this character, I needed this script, it really made me feel identified. I'm a mother, I have a four-year-old kid, and this really connected me, to my own motherhood, and how lonely I felt. When I had my kid, trying to maintain a career train, I remember that I was desperate, desperate, after having my kid. Desperate to prove to the world that I could still function, that I could still succeed, I could still be an actress. And I felt that in roles.

I cried, I literally cried when I read it, because Delia, of course, she's this up-and-coming actress. She's having her momentum, she knows she's the center of attention in this party, because she's the leader of the movie they're celebrating. But behind the smiles and the glam, she's not really comfortable in her own skin, and she comes to the party looking for a friend, and I think she finds it in Rose. And Rose helps her to start solving this conflict she has, because she's dealing with a personal and urgent matter.

Nadia Conners: Something that I find very interesting, also, is that you came to find this friendship. You didn't know that, but you needed it, and you've really picked up on the loneliness. I think Elizabeth played the loneliness, and it was really tricky because she played the loneliness self-aware and comedically at first, which is kind of what it is when you're living in it day in and day out. How do you not have gallows humor about it? But then, it becomes very heart-wrenching when she's actually confronting the sources of her loneliness in her.

Pedro Pascal plays the old flame, and then her husband, who has abandoned her within the marriage. And so, I think that this friendship is so extraordinary. Again, the whole thing takes place in one night, to be able to sort of get all of these things going and in motion, and the way these actors built that whole world so that it was alive from minute one, and it was happening. And it had an urgency and a necessity, this connection. But I think, because Rose was stuck in her past in some way, because she didn't know how to integrate being a mother and being a woman, she's stuck in this living room, literally and symbolically, with Helen and Delia at one point.

You see these women stuck together, and the party's out of reach. The world becomes out of reach, because you don't know how to integrate yourself anymore. And when Rose confronts all of these things about herself and her past, all of a sudden, she's unstuck, and she's able to take this sort of leadership position with Delia. She's able to look at her with profound empathy, and tell her something that no mother ever tells you, which is how lonely and how hard it is, and what you're facing. That really is that story in there.

It feels like it's heightened, too, because these characters are under different types of stress, but because they're all in this industry. They're all agents and actors, and I always wonder, was that part of the appeal? Do you like playing actors? Do you feel like you can kind of satirize yourselves a little bit when you take on these roles?

Elizabeth Reaser: I was interested in it, because it is so depressing to be an aging actress. [Chuckles] It's a really horrible sort of time thing to navigate. So, I was really fascinated by the idea, and that Nadia wrote that experience so well. But the idea of getting all these people stuck together in a house, I just love that as a premise, is people stuck somewhere, a what's going to happen over the course of a night. But I do think Sammy's character, he plays an agent, a power agent, and it felt very authentic, and funny and dark. And, to me, it felt very real. As someone who lives in Los Angeles, and is an actress, it felt frighteningly real. [Laughs]

Walton, were there people in your circle that you were studying, like agents and managers, as you were getting ready for this?

Walton Goggins: No, absolutely not. [Chuckles] I've never talked to an agent at all. I mean, look, I lived in LA for 30 years, it's my favorite city in the world. But there is a, regardless of how successful you are, low-grade anxiety that is pervasive in that town. And whether you know it or not, you always want something. I've worked with a lot of people over the course of my career, and it's maybe an amalgamation of all of them. But at the end of the day, I do maintain that people just want to tell stories, and sometimes they lose sight of it, and things become more important than they really are. You can lose sight of what's right in front of you, and life can pass you by.

Smith Feels Honored By Her Long & "Fortunate" Career

Lois, you've had such an amazing career. I have to ask you, on this subject, what has been your secret to surviving Hollywood?

Lois Smith: I was interested in the conversation being about aging actresses, about which I know almost nothing. [Laughs] And whilst I'm talking about Los Angeles, where I have never lived, where I come and go — see, there you go. I'm beginning to understand my whole life. [Chuckles] I guess my secret is being just so fortunate. Now, how did that happen? It's a combination of things, I'm sure. But I have been so fortunate. I started out, I moved to New York, my first job was a featured part in a Broadway play. This was in 1952.

And before long, a couple of years I was working in what was then live television and film. So because of that, I got to, early on, be able to make a living as an actress all the way through now. That is not always possible, I've just been fortunate. For me, the theater has been my No. 1 love. Still is. But I couldn't have managed without the other loves that came along. And I do love it. Storytelling, you got it, Walton. I think that's what we do, and I think that's worth doing.

There's one cast member I want to shout out who couldn't be here, Pedro Pascal. You mentioned earlier, he's probably shooting a Marvel or Star Wars. He's very big right now. What has been your experience with Pedro? How was your experience filming with him on this?

Nadia Conners: He's amazing, very supportive. In fact, we all spent a lot of time together, Elizabeth, Walton, myself and Pedro during COVID. So, we had this connection that was sort of personal. At that time, I was doing The Uninvited as a play — or it was supposed to be a play, but then all the theaters shut down. And I started to re-conceive it as a film, and it's not ironic that it was Elizabeth and Pedro and Walton and all these people that we were sort of in this moment in this world together. He seemed to be perfect for the former love that was a late-blooming movie star. [Chuckles]

And Elizabeth, you guys knew each other back in the day, so you already had this incredible chemistry. The two of them play former lovers in a weird way, and so they had that back. [Laughs] It was unintended, and then it was just right there. And then he did get very busy, but he had said, "Yes," and he followed through with it, which was kind of amazing, because it was really kind of hard to get the schedule to work. But everybody, like Rosie and Ari, and everybody in this room, huge gratitude and love for making this whole thing work.

Because the initial idea was we were going to run it like a play, but because everyone's schedule was so complicated, we ended up having to do the whole thing out of order, which was extremely hard. Particularly on Lois and Elizabeth, because they had the lion's share of the scenes. And there were some funny moments where we were in the living room, and we were kind of all sure we had shot that scene before, because you keep coming back to the same lane. [Laughs]

But anyway, that was off of Pedro's schedule, but we made it work. Although, you could talk about having to do one of the hardest scenes on day one, practically. Well, no, the one in the alley was like day two. Can you believe it?

Reaser Has History With Pescal (That She Doesn't Remember How It Started)

What was your history with Pedro? Had you guys worked together?

Elizabeth Reaser: I don't think so, but Pedro claimed that we met when we were like 21. We have a mutual friend, but I don't remember that. [Laughs] But, over the years, we've just known each other and we have so many mutual friends. And Pedro, until however many years since Game of Thrones, was just a normal guy. And now, he's wildly famous, he's an actual movie star. But it makes sense if you know him, because he's truly himself. Who you see is who he is. He's just that person, he's so lovable.

There are a lot of Justified fans on Screen Rant, and it recently came back with City Primeval. Is there a future ever again for Boyd? What can you tell us?

Walton Goggins: There's always a future in my imagination. Always. I think everybody - all the players involved - want another lap. I didn't anticipate that, and it took a while to kind of jump back into that. But once we did it, we kind of kept it from everybody. I had such a good time, and I think Tim was inspired. And there is more to say, actually. I didn't think there was, but there is. Everything is in line. I think everybody's just waiting for schedules and FX to say, "Go." We'll see. We'll see what happens.

About The Uninvited

Rose and Sammy enjoy an idyllic life with love, a Hollywood Hills home, and a curious son. During a party, Sammy assigns unusual significance to it, while Rose juggles preparations amid distractions. The unexpected arrival of Helen, who claims residence there, oscillates between confusion and lucidity. Strangely, Helen possesses intimate knowledge of the house and its guests: an Ingénue, a director, and Rose's former flame. Helen's revelations during the party spark drama, unearthing hidden truths and compelling Rose to confront her past, future, and the desire for change.

The Uninvited premiered on March 11 at South by Southwest and is awaiting wider distribution.

Source: Screen Rant Plus