“In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast” features in-depth conversations with today’s most noteworthy actors and creators. Join host and Awards Editor Jack Smart for this guide on how to live the creative life from those who are doing it every day.
“Welcome to my insides,” says Rebecca Ferguson with a laugh. In a deep dive of a podcast interview, the actor manages to cover everything from technical secrets to life advice, providing her fellow artists as close to a spiritual roadmap as you could get.
“Live. Try. Fail. Try again,” she advises. “Just go for it. And it’s a hard job, it’s a really, really difficult job and it takes a lot of time. And you do feel sad a lot and you feel under a microscope. And the more you get to know yourself, the more grounded you can be in this world of scrutiny.”
Ferguson has combined backgrounds in music, dance, short films, and soap operas in her native Sweden to become one of today’s most versatile and compelling screen stars. Her Golden Globe–nominated Elizabeth Woodville in the BBC’s “The White Queen” launched her into a screen career on both sides of the Atlantic: Tom Cruise cast her in the ongoing “Mission Impossible” film franchise as Ilsa Faust, and then came “Despite the Falling Snow,” “Florence Foster Jenkins,” “The Girl on the Train,” “The Greatest Showman,” the award-winning “Doctor Sleep,” and this year, Lisa Joy’s “Reminiscence.”
“As a person, I never stop working,” she says, reflecting on early career days. “I never expect things to come my way.... There are always ebbs and flows, and I still feel it.”
Things are certainly flowing at the moment, with Ferguson’s starring role as Lady Jessica in Denis Villeneuve’s big-screen adaptation of sci-fi epic “Dune,” from Warner Brothers. A concubine to Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) and mother to a son (Timothée Chalamet) destined for greatness, Jessica on the page of author Frank Herbert’s novel gave Ferguson pause—is she just another strong female character, there to complement the story’s men?
Together with Villeneuve, she developed a figure who ends up giving “Dune: Part One” its emotional and dramatic arc. “He said, ‘I’m not interested in you walking like a queen. I want you to walk like an animal. I want you to find a bug inside of you.’ And then I thought, This is amazing. I’ve never had this.”
She’ll next appear in “Mission: Impossible 7” and produce and lead “Wool,” an AppleTV+ series. Like many established actors, she is conscious of typecasting or the notion of “a typical Rebecca Ferguson role,” as she says. Whether it’s sci-fi, straight drama, or even musicals, she’s “at that point where I need to start delivering more, to challenge myself. It’s funny, you have so many stages in life.
“You don’t have to follow the path that was laid before you by people,” she adds. “You can lay your own path and have other people follow you.”
This Is the Reason Denis Villeneuve Keeps Hiring David Dastmalchian Asked for her go-to character-building techniques, Ferguson mentions the crucial relationships with not just the director, but designers and directors of photography, too. “Clothes, feelings, fabric, shapes, silhouette—I love creating silhouettes for a character,” she says, detailing how such an outside-in approach informed Lady Jessica. “I find the cinematographer one of the most important [collaborations] as well, because he’s the one painting the picture.”
Ferguson says that overall, either on set or navigating a life in the arts, the most important quality is always curiosity. “When we stop asking questions, we stop developing. And it could be questions about anything. There really are no silly questions, whether it’s down to costume, and how we feel, or the deep aspects of character. Or success.”
For these and more insights, listen to Ferguson in full at any of the podcast platforms below. And stay tuned for more interviews with this season’s film and TV award contenders!
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