Breaking Baz: Vanessa Kirby Reunites With ‘The Crown’s Benjamin Caron For Noir-ish Drama ‘The Night Always Comes’ Ahead Of Starring In ‘Fantastic Four’ Reboot

Baz Bamigboye
·3 min read

EXCLUSIVE: Napoleon star Vanessa Kirby will reunite with The Crown’s Benjamin Caron on a movie based on Willy Vlautin’s 2021 novel The Night Always Comes, about a working-class woman in the Pacific Northwest who embarks on a 24-hour quest to call in old debts and raise enough money to keep a roof over her head.

Kirby portrayed Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of The Crown and many of the episodes she appeared in were directed by Caron.

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Caron was also a director of Disney+ series Andor. Last year, he directed Apple Studios’ feature film Sharper starring Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, Justice Smith and Briana Middleton.

The Night Always Comes film is based on a screenplay by Seattle-based screenwriter Sarah Conradt, whose credits include Mothers’ Instinct and 50 States of Fright. Vlautin’s 2010 book Lean on Pete was adapted and directed by Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers) in 2017. His debut tome, The Motel Life, was filmed in 2012.

This new Vlautin screen project is set to shoot on locations in Portland, OR in May ahead of Kirby filming her role as Sue Storm, aka Invisible Woman, in The Fantastic Four reboot to be directed by Matt Shakman later this summer.

Kirby and Caron have waited a long time to work together again since their success on The Crown.

Vlautin’s story focuses on Lynette (Kirby), who rises each morning before sunrise to juggle multiple jobs –not all of them are on the level — while also caring for her mother Doreen and older brother Kenny who’s described in the book as being developmentally disabled. Lynette has been hardened by her hardscrabble life; her bedroom houses the washer-dryer, an oil furnace and a utility sink. There’s little or no money for new clothes or for treats.

Lynette has gone without so she can save cash to purchase the ramshackle home her family has rented for decades in an area where the ‘G’ word — gentrification — has left a bitter taste; the working classes are being pushed outta town. A plan had been in place to raise a mortgage on the property, but when that’s derailed she’s forced to undertake a desperate odyssey in a city of greed. Lynette has to confront dangerous people who owe her money.

Vlautin’s book has a noir-ish flavor and having read it I can see what attracted Kirby. She’s an artist who knows how to disappear into any character. Yes, she’s great in blockbusters. So delicious as The White Widow in the Mission: Impossible movies, but observe the grit she brings to her portraits of women up against it in Pieces of a Woman, a role that garnered her an Oscar nomination, and The World to Come. And her Empress Josephine in Napoleon was the whole point of Ridley Scott’s film.

Also, her performance as Stella opposite Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster in Benedict Andrews’ Young Vic production of A Streetcar Named Desire, which can be found in the NT Live archives, is one to savor.

Gary Levinsohn and Ryan Bartecki from H2L Media Group are producing The Night Always Comes alongside Caron and Jodie Caron, and Kirby and Lauren Dark for Aluna Entertainment.

Other key roles have yet to be cast.

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