Kerry Condon On Finding The Perfect Vehicles In ‘Train Dreams’ And ‘F1: The Movie’: “Timing Is Everything, Isn’t It?”
This year is yet another doozy for Kerry Condon. Having earned her first Oscar nomination for her role in 2023’s The Banshees of Inisherin, this season, Condon is in contention for not one, but two films. In Train Dreams, the Clint Bentley-directed movie based on Denis Johnson’s novella, Condon is Claire Thompson, friend to Robert Grainier, Joel Edgerton’s reclusive railroad worker. Then, in Joseph Kosinski’s F1: The Movie, Condon is Kate McKenna, a racing car engineer who tangles with Brad Pitt’s driver character Sonny Hayes. Here, she digs into how her love of nature drew her to Train Dreams‘ rural setting, and her F1 research process alongside a real-life female Formula One engineer.
DEADLINE: What sold you on Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar’s script for Train Dreams?
KERRY CONDON: It was the nature aspect of the script. The nature is such a big part. It’s like a character in the movie. And I’ve always loved movies with nature being a character. I really respect nature and love nature, and I wanted it to be represented in a movie. So it was that. It was the lines that Bill Macy’s character has, some of those beautiful lines about cutting trees down and how it affects your soul — that made me think, “Oh, this is a beautiful movie.” I just wanted to be in it. I just thought it was beautiful.
Joel Edgerton and Kerry Condon in ‘Train Dreams.’
Netflix
DEADLINE: You have a great speech in the fire tower with Joel where you talk about the power of nature and you help him manage his pain.
CONDON: The way things were phrased and said and were all connected because I suppose I’ve seen grief in other movies and stuff. So this was just so profound, the connection to nature and that was what it was.
DEADLINE: You have a farm yourself and so you’re personally immersed in nature in your own life. How did being on the set in that Washington state environment, which was quite rustic, help you with the character of Claire?
CONDON: Well, it was gas because in the script, she feels like an old friend [to Robert]. So there was something about it that immediately he felt at ease with her.
Joel and I had met when I was 19 on Ned Kelly in Australia. So it was a big time in my life to be on such a big movie. And in that movie, we were both on horses in our first scene. And then on this movie, we’re on the horse and cart in our first scene. It was just wild to me. It just felt very full circle. That stood out to me. I thought, Wow, here we are all those years later and we’re around horses again. And the Pacific Northwest is part of the country that I love and where I have my farm. The fact that I was shooting there again felt very like, this is crazy, I feel like I’m meant to do this movie.
DEADLIINE: This film is full of kismet because of Joel wanting to buy the rights years ago and then suddenly he gets this phone call. “Would you like to play this character in this really obscure novella?” And he’s like, “I can’t believe it.”
CONDON: Timing is everything, isn’t it? And he admitted that had he done it years before, it might not have meant as much to him as it does now, given that he has a family.
DEADLINE: Tell me about working with Clint as a director. Can you describe the kind of set he commands?
CONDON: I remember thinking, “I think he sees the world how I see the world.” And so that was why I wanted to do it. I was like, “I just want to be in this movie. This is so beautiful.” And then he’d done a movie about a jockey. And I was like, OK, I’m already sold. Because I pretend to be a jockey in my free time. I have ex-racehorses and I’m obsessed with race riding and the discipline of being a jockey. In our meeting when we did a Zoom, we both just spoke about racehorses and horse racing and riding horses because his dad is a jockey.
He’s in it for the right reasons is probably the best way to put it. He definitely is in it from an artistic perspective as opposed to, “I want to make big-name movies” — a meaningless reason for wanting to be a director. He really does want to make his art and think about working class people. And there’s a kindness to him in the way that I think he sees the world like that. There’s an empathy to him. But set-wise, he’s very respectful of every department and hires great heads of department, which is usually how you make a great movie. He didn’t take it for granted that I took time out of F1 to come and shoot it. And he was just genuinely very grateful, which was not lost on me. And then he just knew when to hide, which is hard to explain, but because we shot with natural light, Adolpho [Veloso, the cinematographer] would hide somewhere with the camera, so you weren’t really aware of where the camera was. And I didn’t know where Clint was. He was really good at hiding.
DEADLINE: You can tell it’s natural light. That scene on the balcony, it feels so real.
CONDON: That light on our faces is the sun going down. That’s all natural light. It’s really beautiful. And that’s half of it too. If the budget of the movie isn’t big, the lighting has to be good. I mean, the minute the lighting’s not good, it just looks cheap. So that was important. Clint has good taste.
Condon and Edgerton in ‘Train Dreams.’
DEADLINE: For F1, I know you met with real engineers. What was that like and how did that influence you?
CONDON: The first thing they did was send me and the other guys on the pit wall to Barcelona to experience a Formula One race, because I’d never experienced it. And a lot of the heads of department were meeting with other Formula One people and we were just getting the lay of the land. And then I was introduced to a real-life strategist, Bernie Collins is her name. And in the movie, I play a technical director, who’s in charge of building the car, but we take a little artistic license in that. There’s moments where I’m playing the strategist also, but in real life, telling [the team] we’re going to use plan A or plan B, that would be the strategist. So we married the two for the sake of the movie. And in real life, Bernie is a strategist and she is from Ireland. So it was wild. I was like, Oh, my god, she has the same school background — an all-girls Catholic school kind of thing. To me, I was like, this is like girls I went to school with who were really good at physics. I just was not good at physics. I was more biology.
It was crazy how technical it was. She was really good at knowing when to stop. Because at a certain point I was like, “Bernie, what are you talking about?” I would need to go to college [to understand]. So, she would break it down very easy for me. I read a great Adrian Newey book [How to Build a Car]. It was actually really interesting, even though I’m not into physics. Then basically, we went scene by scene, and she explained things to me, particular lines and stuff. But to really master how I would make a Formula One car, I mean, Christ, I’d have to go to college for years.
The technical stuff that I had to say, I knew I had to say it in a way [as if] I say it all the time, but I also had to say it in a way the audience knew what I was saying. I couldn’t alienate a whole audience that didn’t understand Formula One. So it was a balance. I think me not knowing about Formula One was helpful because I remember thinking, “Oh, we want to reach all those people. We don’t just want to sell the movie to people who are fans of Formula One.”
DEADLINE: I was with you the whole time and I understand nothing about physics.
CONDON: OK, great. It worked.
DEADLINE: What was it like to shoot in the real racetrack environment?
CONDON: Oh, it was great. I was given the heads-up before I got the job. Joe was like, “There’s a live aspect to this. We’re going to be filming live at the races. So you’re only going to get two takes, maybe three, so your theater background’s really going to help.” And I don’t know, I’m just great with pressure. I always prefer pressure, and Joe was so prepared and our AD department were unbelievable. So you were very able to say, “This isn’t working for me,” or, “I don’t understand.”
The headset, we really had Damson [Idris] and Brad [Pitt]doing the feedback, but if we wanted particular lines gone that weren’t helpful and impeded the flow, we could get rid of them and they were very accommodating. So, we were really prepared. When it came to shooting on the day of the races, it was more like we were excited because we prepared so much. But I was aware that we were guests of Formula One too. And so I didn’t really hang around when I wasn’t working. I didn’t cause any distractions or go mingle with any particular team. I just kind of laid low and did my job and then scurried back to my trailer to just not be a nuisance.
DEADLINE: You didn’t get a chance to drive?
CONDON: Everyone says that to me and I’m like, “You can’t just drive those cars.” Even Brad can’t drive a Formula One… Well, actually he did.
DEADLINE: I heard that.
CONDON: Of course he did. He could do everything, but one can’t just… They’re not like a car with a gearstick and everything. It’s a whole… You have to work your way up to a Formula One car. There’s buttons and all that. It’s not like a regular car. If I sit in it, I wouldn’t even know what to do. I wouldn’t even know how to turn it on.
DEADLIINE: Also, I imagine you take one tiny wrong turn and that’s $10 million down the toilet.
CONDON: Well, there was a bit of that. There was some accident in Abu Dhabi. I remember I knew I was getting really into my character when I was like, “Well, how much did that cost us?” They were like, “Oh, I think it’s like $150,000.” I was like, “F*ck’s sake, guys.” Then the technical director of Mercedes, Toto Wolff was like, “That’s exactly what you think of when there’s an accident.” Obviously, if the person’s OK, but then you immediately go, “How much money is that?”
DEADLINE: You were in the zone.
CONDON: I know.
Condon and Brad Pitt in ‘F1: The Movie.’
Warner Bros./Everett Collection
DEADLINE: The dynamic between you and Brad, it’s flirty, but your character is also powerful. How did you build that dynamic? And was there a long rehearsal process?
CONDON: We rehearsed all the scenes before we shot them, but they were all shot crazy out of order.
My first big scene with him would’ve been the pub scene. Then we go on strike as actors for like nine months. And then we came back after nine months and the first scene I shoot with him is the last scene in the movie. The goodbye. It was just crazy.
And then we did another break for two months when I went and did another movie. And then my first scene when I came back was the balcony scene in Vegas. I was like, wait, of course. Of course it is.
I knew that they appreciated that I was rolling with it because it was unfortunate. The schedule was the schedule. But that was tricky to try and figure out how flirty to be, or not flirty to be.
If you go to an all-girls school, in my experience, when you leave school, you have no experience with boys except when you’re drunk. And that’s really the only time you talk to a boy is when you’re absolutely plastered, because you just have no experience. And if somebody’s going to college and learning how to be an engineer and get into F1, they have to study like crazy. So I thought, Oh, maybe I’ll play with the idea of she’s super confident at work, but maybe she’s actually kind of shy, and shy around guys. I also wanted that to be represented because I don’t know, there are so many movies where the woman’s very confident and knows exactly what to say.
Read the digital edition of Deadline’s Oscar Preview magazine here.
DEADLINE: The moment in the bar where you get the guys together in order to mend fences is such a great scene.
CONDON: That’s crazy because it’s so funny. When I think about that, every time people talk about that scene, all I think about is it was two days in a very small room with so much smoke to make it look pretty. And then the continuity was tricky because of the cards. So that scene was, dare I say, a bit of a headache.
DEADLINE: These two films are obviously so different. What’s still on the list of things that you’d love to do?
CONDON: It’s wild. It’s like the first time in my life, in the last few years where I’ve been in a position where I can wait and in a position where I’m being offered things. For so long, I was auditioning and then just had to work. I didn’t have the good fortune. It used to annoy me when actors were waiting. I’m like, “Well, I have to pay rent.”
