Category: Articles

Interview Magazine (2022)

Apr 24, 2022

Since her breakout role in the 2007 zombie sequel 28 Weeks Later, Imogen Poots has established herself as an omnivorous talent, appearing in festival gems like The Art of Self-Defense, quiet highbrow productions like The Father, a fleet of rom-coms, a pair of music biopics, and some more horror flicks. But of all the roles in her multifaceted body of work, it’s the sinister, eerie roles she prefers, a craving which the 32-year-old actor satisfies in the upcoming Amazon Prime miniseries Outer Range. The show, billed as a “supernatural neo-Western mystery thriller,” features heavyweights like Josh Brolin and Lili Taylor, and follows a Wyoming rancher (Brolin) who discovers an enormous black hole on his land after Autumn, a mysterious drifter played by Poots, darkens his door. The show, which premiered last week, has already generated buzz for its made-for-Reddit premise and chilling interrogation of the American frontier myth. One viewer who can’t get enough is the actor Alia Shawkat. The pair, who met on the set of the cult horror hit Green Room, often watch one another’s work as a way of keeping in touch, but this time, things are different. Shawkat is completely hooked on Outer Range. What’s at the bottom of the enormous black hole? She called up Poots for some answers. [Read more]

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Inside Outer Range: A Trippy Western Thriller Series

Mar 6, 2022

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Articles, Photos, Stills, Television

For a time, Josh Brolin was done with television. He’d deliberately left the small screen in the mid-2000s, following his 2003 NBC flop Mister Sterling; he wanted to make movies, to move from one character to the next. Yet his career had stalled—until the Coen brothers came knocking. “Everybody was confused why I was hired for No Country for Old Men—they were like, ‘Why him? He was supposed to have happened and didn’t,’” Brolin says. But like the Coens, Brolin knew he was right for the role. “It’s a genre that I understand, that’s fascinating to me, that I have personal connection with,” Brolin tells me of the Western, which won the best-picture Oscar in 2008. “When I see a very serious genre hybrid-ed with a hue of absurdity, I get really excited.”

Enter Outer Range: an expansive, mind-bending, extraterrestrial odyssey through the mountains and ranches of Wyoming. Brolin quickly compares the series to No Country for its “weird” factor. Sure enough, the actor was at the top of creator Brian Watkins’s list to lead the show, which launches on Prime Video in April. Here was an icon of the modern Western, with the gravitas and résumé to anchor a tale both embracing and subverting of the genre’s well-worn tropes. Watkins wrote a letter to his dream star, whom he’d never met, to make his pitch. “I talked about how, in not just his performance in No Country for Old Men but so many other films too, he’s shaped the American imagination about the West,” Watkins tells me. “I sent him the script and lo and behold, he fell for it.”

Did he ever. Outer Range marks Brolin’s first TV-series role in about 20 years, not to mention his biggest producing credit yet. (He serves as E.P.) “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Brolin says. “It will continue to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, because the responsibility factor is massive, and when you think you have control, you don’t.” But: “If you like that sort of thing, it’s heaven. And it was heaven for me.

Brolin plays Royal Abbott, an old-school cowboy and patriarch tested by horrors both known and unknown. In the former category: His daughter-in-law has gone missing, and simmering tension with the rival Tillerson family is about to reach a boil. And in the latter: A giant metaphysical void has popped up on the Abbott property, representing…something. An alternate dimension? Aliens? Nightmares? As Royal stumbles upon it, we quickly glean that it’s his—and our—destiny to find out. Eventually.

Imogen Poots on RTE Guide

Apr 16, 2020

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Articles, Photos, Photoshoots, Press Library

Michael Doherty chats with Imogen Poots about her latest film, the sci-fi thriller, Vivarium. Directed by Dubliner Lorcan Finnegan, Vivarium is a dystopian drama in which Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg play a young couple whose search for the perfect suburban home quickly turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare. With echoes of Get Out and Black Mirror, the movie received its Irish premiere at the recent Dublin International Film Festival, where we caught up with the lead actress. Best known for her starring roles in movies such as The Look of Love (2013) and Green Room (2015), and TV series such as Bouquet of Barbed Wire (2010), Imogen is the daughter of Belfast TV producer, Trevor Poots.

You once remarked that you love a sense of the absurd and the uncertain in acting jobs. You certainly got your wish with Vivarium…

Imogen Poots: Oh, yes! I really, really loved it, even if I didn’t totally understand it at first. I was intrigued by it. I met up with Lorcan and he was telling me about movies that would be a good reference for this film. It was all so interesting and I couldn’t wait to get started. It’s always fun when you’re working on a project which, in one sense, is an art experiment; but we had a budget, which is cool!

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Imogen in FX’s TV adaptation of ‘Y: The Last Man’

Aug 3, 2018

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Articles, News

FX’s “Y: The Last Man” pilot has set its main cast. Imogen Poots has signed on to star in the drama series pilot, which is simply titled “Y,” along with Diane Lane, Barry Keoghan, Lashana Lynch, Juliana Canfield and Marin Ireland.

Based on DC Comics’ acclaimed series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, the project traverses a post-apocalyptic world in which a cataclysmic event has decimated every male mammal save for one lone human. The new world order of women will explore gender, race, class and survival.

Poots will play Hero Brown, Yorick’s sister. She is a tough and confident EMT who nurses a deep emotional trauma that often leads her to cross personal and professional lines.

Poots broke out in the film “28 Weeks Later,” and has gone on to star in films like “Green Room,” “Knight of Cups,” and “I Kill Giants.” Her television credits include Showtime’s “Roadies,” BBC’s “Miss Austen Regrets,” and BBC’s “Christopher and His Kind.” She is repped by CAA and Troika.

Keoghan will play Yorick Brown, the main character from the graphic novels on which the show is based. He is described as a young man quick to use humor to deflect from his problems who may be the lone male survivor of a worldwide plague.

Keoghan is known for his roles in films like Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.” Both roles earned him a spot on Variety’s “10 Actors to Watch” for 2017. He is repped by WME, Management 360, and Troika.

‘The Art of Self Defense’ found distributor

Sep 23, 2017

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Articles, Movies

It was confirmed that Bleecker Street has secured the worldwide distribution rights to Riley Stearns’ new dark-comedy “The Art of Self-Defense”. Principal photography on the project began on September 11, 2017, and the film is currently shooting in Kentucky. “The Art of Self-Defense” is produced by End Cue and written and directed by Riley Stearns (FAULTS) and will star Jesse Eisenberg, Imogen Poots and Alessandro Nivola.

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg in Solitary Man (2009).
The film centers on Casey (Jesse Eisenberg), who is attacked at random on the street and enlists in a local dojo led by a charismatic and mysterious Sensei (Alessandro Nivola), in an effort to learn how to defend himself. What he uncovers is a sinister world of fraternity, violence and hypermasculinity and a woman (Imogen Poots) fighting for her place in it. Casey undertakes a journey, both frightening and darkly funny, that will place him squarely in the sights of his enigmatic new mentor.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with an exciting filmmaker like Riley,” said Bleecker Street CEO Andrew Karpen. “Ever since we saw his work at Sundance and SXSW we knew we wanted to be in business with him and we can’t wait to bring his original and hilarious vision to audiences around the world.”

“This is a very personal film that happens to have karate in it. I’m lucky to be surrounded by actors, a crew, producers and a distributor like Bleecker Street who care as deeply about the project as I do,” said Stearns.

The film is produced by Andrew Kortschak, Cody Ryder, Stephanie Whonsetler and Walter Kortschak. Karpen is an Executive Producer on the film.

The deal was negotiated by Kent Sanderson of Bleecker Street and Avy Eschenasy on behalf of Bleecker Street. CAA handled negotiations on behalf of the filmmakers. Bleecker Street did not announce a release date for the film, but more information and a few teasers will be released as the film moves along in production.

Cannes Facetime: Imogen on ‘Mobile Homes’

May 21, 2017

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Articles, Interviews

The British actress Imogen Poots recently seen in “Green Room” and “Roadies” will wrap her theater debut playing Honey in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” before heading to Cannes with her film “Mobile Homes.” Directed by Vladimir de Fontenay, the movie casts Poots as a woman who drifts from place to place with her boyfriend and young son.

Is it true “Virginia Woolf” Is your first play?

Yes, it’s totally nuts! I wanted to do a play but not just do a play for the sake of it. I wanted to do something I was crazy about. This character is my boyfriend, I spend all my time with her.

Read the rest of the interview by Variety here, in our Press Library.

Variety Review: ‘Sweet Virginia’

May 10, 2017

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Articles, Site

Part neo-noir, part latter-day Western, this exceptional indie thriller delivers well-acted character insights amid its shadowy, small-town Alaskan setting.

Right out of the gate, the China brothers’ noir-hearted sensibility was being compared to that of fellow film siblings Joel and Ethan Coen, as critics hailed the Australian writer-director duo’s debut “Crawl” as a modern-day “Blood Simple.” On the surface, their 2012 Black List-selected screenplay for “Sweet Virginia” dives further down that rabbit hole, featuring as it does a wife who hires a guy to bump off her own husband (a gender-flipped twist on the basic “Fargo” plot) and a hit man who’s as cold-blooded as “No Country for Old Men” killer Anton Chigurh.

And yet, going deep is what makes “Sweet Virginia” great — heck, more than great. As translated to screen by director Jamie M. Dagg (whose sure hand and smart changes elevate things considerably), Benjamin and Paul China’s script yields one of the gnarliest and most unsettling movies we’re likely to get this year. Set in a remote corner of Alaska, this small-town, blue-collar thriller is surprisingly cast, exceptionally well acted (male leads Jon Bernthal and Christopher Abbott might have easily switched roles, though it’s far more effective in this arrangement), and executed potently enough to leave a lasting impression, like scar tissue after a serious burn.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Review

Mar 11, 2017

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Articles, Reviews, Theatre

Inveterate guzzlers beware: patrons are being actively discouraged from eating during this production of Edward Albee’s name-making marital-crisis drama of 1962, in order not to put off the actors or distract the audience.

Watching James Macdonald‘s superlative revival (marred only by the cattle-class lack of roaming space at the Harold Pinter theatre), however, you realise that this controversial move is actually a medical necessity. There’s every danger of mid-show scoffers either choking to death as they’re seized by convulsive laughter, or disgorging the contents of their viscerally churned-up stomachs.

“Best Sozzled Acting”: Imogen Poots in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Credit: Johan Persson.

Based on the simple premise of a late-night drinks party that comes to resemble a modern matrimonial equivalent to the flayed-alive horrors of Dante’s Inferno, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the most wickedly entertaining, most viciously nasty, most incrementally harrowing play in the American canon. And I’ve never yet seen an account of it that ticks all those boxes with such pen-breaking vigour. After a sluggish start to the New Year, it’s as if the West End has been dragged out of hibernation by some blood-stained, howling predator.

Imogen talks anger, nudity & new play

Mar 8, 2017

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Articles, Interviews, Press Library

Would you ask a male actor that?” says Imogen Poots, peering at me suspiciously. I’ve just asked when she realised her looks opened up the board for her in terms of roles. I would, I say – Steve Buscemi is a great actor but he didn’t get to play that many romantic leads. “But he works with Jim Jarmusch all the time,” she responds, “and that’s what every actor wants!”

Poots may not have worked with the celebrated indie director yet but she’s certainly been busy over the past few years, since she made a splash as a teenager enjoying a one-night stand with sexagenarian Michael Douglas in Solitary Man (2009) and was the apple of daddy’s eye in the 2010 ITV remake of Bouquet of Barbed Wire. She went on to play porn baron Paul Raymond’s daughter in The Look of Love in 2013 and an endearing would-be suicide in the Nick Hornby adaptation A Long Way Down the folllowing year.

Since then, she’s mixed critically acclaimed films, such as last year’s violent thriller Green Room, with blockbusters like Need for Speed (2014), and worked with another director that every actor would kill to be cast by, Terrence Malick, on his 2015 film Knight of Cups. That was “wonderful but mad”, she says, recalling the day she thought to ask Malick where her character was from. “He said, ‘Oh well, she’s essentially like smoke; she’s from nowhere and, uh, everywhere’, and I said, ‘Right, OK, great…’.” READ MORE

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