Odessa Young Talks ‘My First Film’ and Why She’s Been ‘Weeping Multiple Times a Day’ Since Joining Jeremy Allen White in Bruce Springsteen Biopic
Odessa Young knew right away she wanted to be a part of “My First Film,” director Zia Anger’s retelling about her first feature, 2010’s “Always All Ways, Anne Marie,” failing to be accepted to any film festivals.
Young plays a fictionalized Anger named Vita. The movie follows Vita making a scrappy independent film in her hometown, and her unraveling as she has to cope with a burdensome boyfriend who wants them to become first-time parents.
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Young was first introduced to “My First Film” when Anger toured the story as a performance art piece. “I received an email from [producer] Taylor Shung and there was a script and a very nice letter rom Zia,” Young tells me. “I was already in it at that point because I’d been hearing whispers of the project and that they were interested in me so I was really excited about it.”
A week or two later, Young and Zia had dinner. “I really would have done anything with her at that point,” Young says. “She could have said, ‘I’m making a live action version of the Teletubbies. Do you want to do it?’ and I would have done it.”
Young admits that shooting became a bit chaotic because there was the real crew and then the actors portraying a crew. “We had two versions of ‘action’ and ‘cut’ so the real crew would know when to really roll and cut,” she remembers. “That did get confusing after awhile. If you’re working on any film, at least I do, you start to get a little crazy. You close your eyes and you see cameras and you hear people talking into their walkies as you’re falling asleep. So with this specifically, there was a lot. On top of everything, there was also a crew shooting BTS about the making of a film that is about the making of a film. It was kind of a free-for-all with cameras everywhere.”
Two of Young’s next projects are anything but independent. She stars opposite Jacob Elordi in the upcoming Prime Video series “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” about an Australian doctor taken as a prisoner of war in WWII during the building of the Burma Railway.
Young says her two teenage sisters are rarely interested in her work but Elordi definitely got their attention. “They got to meet him,” Young says. “They played it very, very cool. They were very chill about it. But they were very excited.”
She says Elordi couldn’t have “played it more perfectly” with her siblings: “He was kind of casual, but interested in them. He asked them some questions but didn’t crown them. He let them enjoy their day on set. He was great.”
In November, Young starts shooting “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” the Bruce Springsteen biopic starring Jeremy Allen White as the rocker. Young confirms she’s playing a Springsteen love interest.
“What you have to understand is I’m probably the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan that I know, maybe second only to my dad,” Young says. “I grew up in a Springsteen house. I spent both my 15th and 16th birthdays at Springsteen concert. My dad does an annual Springsteen tribute in the spring for charity, where he gets a bunch of his musician friends together to do covers. So when I heard about the film happening, I called my agent and I said, ‘I don’t care if I’m in the background in one scene. I have to be in this movie. A few months later I got the opportunity to audition for it.”
Young says she’s been “weeping multiple times a day” since director Scott Cooper offered her the role. She has yet to meet Springsteen though. “I really think that it will send me down a path for which there is no return” Young says. “Like I cannot come back from that experience as the same person.”
“My First Film” is available on Mubi.
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