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For her second feature with filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, the casting director had the benefit of a major star already in place. As she tells IndieWire, that only added to the fun of assembling the rest of her cast.
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by Alex Billington
November 6, 2025
Source: YouTube
“We have to lure them out of the woods.” Apple TV has revealed their official trailer for a gripping French thriller series titled The Hunt, also known as Traqués in French, made by famous production company Gaumont in France. Not to be confused with either the Danish film called The Hunt with Mads Mikkelsen or the controversial American film The Hunt from a few years ago. But just as unsettling as those films. Franck and his buddies enjoy going on hunting trips. One day, they encounter another hunting group who strangely targets them. In self-defense, Franck’s group injures one of the attackers. But paranoia sets in as they return home and try to forget the incident – but the start to feel hunted by now vengeful enemies after them. “The most dangerous enemy is the one you can’t see.” Starring Benoît Magimel and Mélanie Laurent, pluds Damien Bonnard, Manuel Guillot, Cédric Appietto, Angelyna Danabe-Mignot, Sarah Pachoud, Yann Goven, Paul Beaurepaire, and Patrick De Vallette. This reminds me of that Netflix series “Beef” where a random occurrence turns into something bigger that destroys everyone’s lives. Looks just as crazy.
Here’s the official trailer (+ poster) for Cédric Anger’s thriller series The Hunt, direct from YouTube:
Franck (Benoît Magimel) and his longtime friends enjoy spending their weekends hunting together, but one Sunday, they come across another group of hunters who start targeting them without explanation. When one of their party is shot, Franck’s friends strike back, sending an attacker to the ground. Barely managing to escape, they keep the event a secret. Franck tries to go back to his life as usual alongside his wife Krystel (Mélanie Laurent), but in the next few days, he starts to feel like he and his friends are being watched, or worse, tracked by hunters who are now hell-bent on revenge. The Hunt, also titled Traqués (meaning Hunted) in French, is a series created & written & directed entirely by French writer / filmmaker Cédric Anger, director of the films The Killer, The Counsel, Next Time I’ll Aim for the Heart, and Paris Pigalle previously. Produced by Isabelle Degeorges; made by the studio Gaumont. Executive produced by Sidonie Dumas, Isabelle Degeorges, Clémentine Vaudaux, and Alexis Barqueiro at Gaumont. Apple releases Anger’s The Hunt series streaming on Apple TV+ starting December 3rd, 2025 coming soon. Interested?
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[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “After the Hunt,” including its ending.]
Over the course of nearly two hours, Julia Roberts’ character in Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” really goes through it. When the film, written by first-time screenwriter Nora Garrett, first opens, Roberts’ Yale philosophy professor Alma Imhoff is mostly concerned with a looming decision regarding her tenure at the Ivy League institution. Everything else in her life? It seems sort of great.
And then. As the film unspools, it simultaneously unravels nearly every element of Alma’s life. After a boozy evening at Alma’s, one of her favorite students (Ayo Edibiri as Maggie) accuses one of Alma’s favorite co-workers (Andrew Garfield as Hank) of a heinous crime. As we learn more about Alma’s own background, we watch her react toward both Maggie and Hank (and even her own husband, played by Michael Stuhlbarg) in increasingly alarming ways. Her health suffers. Her work suffers. She crumbles. And when Maggie, distraught over the ways in which her accusations have been weaponized against her, goes to Rolling Stone for a no-holds-barred interview that puts Alma in the crosshairs.
Well, for a little bit. The immediate aftermath of the publication of the interview sees Alma (who has already been denied her tenure, due to her stealing a fellow professor’s prescription pad to procure pain meds, oopsie) surrounded by angry Yale students, stressing her to the point she collapses. She ends up in the hospital, where she reveals the truth of both her ravaged health and a past love affair to her baffled husband, Frederik.
That would be a fine enough place to end the story, and in Garrett’s original screenplay, the final pages only extended that misery. In the draft of the screenplay she first sold to Imagine Entertainment before it landed on Guadagnino’s desk, Frederik actually leaves Alma, who resigns from Yale and then travels home to Sweden.
There, in the original script, she attempts to reconnect with the mother of her father’s deceased best friend (whom Alma had, by her own telling, a life-altering love affair with when she was just a young teenager). After the affair (or, let’s be clear, the abusive relationship) ended, a heartbroken Alma told everyone the man abused her, and even though she later told people she was lying. It eventually led to his suicide. But Alma has never gotten over the man, and considers him the great love of her life. His mother does not show up.
Alma also visits her aging parents and tearfully tells them about said great love affair. Her mom’s advice? No one ever gets over anything. How’s that for Swedish stoicism? Later, Alma returns home to New Haven, and testifies in support of Maggie. C’est fin.
But in Guadagnino’s final film, none of that happens. Frederik doesn’t leave Alma. She doesn’t resign from Yale. She doesn’t go home to Sweden. And she sure as hell doesn’t testify for Maggie. Instead, after we see Alma in the hospital, the film jumps ahead five years, only to find that Alma, once the subject of mass derision (on campus and on the internet) is now the dean of Yale.
“So, when Luca first attached, he basically said, ‘OK, I love everything about this film except for the last 20 pages,’” Garrett told IndieWire during a recent interview. “And so, it was immediately right out in the open that he wanted the ending to shift. Partially, because when you think about the reality of how life works, Luca is very intentional and also very committed to truth and reality and verisimilitude.”
The way the director saw it, Garrett said, was that someone like Alma would never just give up, give in, roll over, and run away.
“The idea that someone like Alma, who had been searching her whole life for this, clawing her way towards this, making so many internal sacrifices for this thing, would give it up so easily, felt false to Luca,” Garrett said. “It felt like a very constructed character turn, as opposed to a holistic one. Looking at the world that we have … it’s really hard to let go of your identity, and it’s really hard to let go of everything that’s been bulwarking that identity, just because someone else tells you you have to. He felt like Alma was more of a fighter than that. And so, that’s how we began sort of reconstructing the ending of the film.”
It’s not just that Alma has risen to the highest echelons at Yale, but we also catch up with her on a day in which she’s seeing Maggie for the first time in many years. The pair meet for lunch at the same Indian buffet where we earlier saw Alma and Hank having a fraught interaction. Both women have changed — not just in terms of their careers, but their sartorial choices, which used to be very aligned, all natty blazers and button-up shirts — and they seem happy to see each other, if guarded about the whole thing. Maggie is surprised to hear that Alma is still with Frederik, and Alma marvels over Maggie’s giant engagement ring.
Still, Maggie is clear: She spent a long time waiting to see Alma really taken down a peg. And while that ending existed in Garrett’s original screenplay, it’s just not the case in the final film. Some people don’t get punished for their misdeeds, and they certainly don’t learn from their mistakes.
“I think we’re all being careful not to offer some sort of polemic to people,” the writer said. “But I do feel like, to me, that ending scene feels very much like, ‘Ah, right.’ That is sort of what happens sometimes. Maggie says to Alma, ‘I spent so long wishing for you to fail,’ and I think that the truth of life is that these things we think are going to be seismic and dramatic, they can be internally, but sometimes there’s not quite the one-to-one ratio of retribution that we think is going to be there.”
Amazon/MGM releases “After the Hunt” in limited theaters on Friday, October 10 with a wide release to follow on Friday, October 17.
The awards seasons is heating up with high-profile limited releases in Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt, Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut Urchin, and Sundance and Berlin premiering comedy-drama If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. They join Kathryn Bigelow’s A House Of Dyamite on 200 screens and Jennifer Lopez-starring Kiss Of The Spider Woman movie musical in wide release. Documentary The Dating Game from China, a favorite on the festival circuit, is in LA. Neon doc Orwell: 2+2=5 by Raoul Peck expands to 51 theaters.
Amazon MGM Studios begins the rollout Guadagnino’s psychological thriller After The Hunt starring Julia Roberts at six locations in New York (Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn, Angelika, Lincoln Square) and Los Angeles (AMC Burbank, The Grove, Century City), expanding next week. With Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny, it premiered at the Venice (see Deadline review) and was the opening night selection at the New York Film Festival. Roberts is a college professor who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star student levels an accusation against one of her colleagues, and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come into the light. Written by Nora Garrett.
Cannes-premiering Urchin starring Frank Dillane opens in limited release in NY (IFC Center) and LA (AMC Burbank, Century City). At 96% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, Deadline review here. On the streets of London, Mike is hustling to get by. Roadside evangelizers won’t let him sleep in peace, his slippery friend won’t pay up the money he stole, and before long, he finds himself in trouble with the law. As he struggles to reintegrate into society, shuffling between gigs as a line cook and a trash collector, he must balance a newfound sense of community with his own itch for self-destruction. Distributed by 1-2 Special, the new label launched by Jason Hellerstein, a co-founding executive of Sideshow where he worked on acquisitions and marketing of Drive My Car, EO, All That Breathes, All We Imagine as Light and Flow. Expands regionally next week.
A24’s Sundance-premiering If I Had Legs I’d Kick You by Mary Bronstein toplined by Rose Byrne with Conan O’Brien opens on four screens in NY (Lincoln Square, Angelika) and LA (The Grove, Century City). Byrne has been heralded for her performance, winning the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin International Film Festival. Byrne stars a woman with her life crashing down around her attempting to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist (O’Brien). Certified Fresh at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. See Deadline review.
Roadside Attractions is out with Jennifer Lopez-starring film adaptation of 1993 Tony-winning musical Kiss of the Spider Woman on 1,330 screens from. Premiered at Sundance, Deadline review here. Dreamgirls and Beauty and the Beast director Bill Condon returns to the movie musical. Valentín (Diego Luna), a political prisoner, shares a cell with Molina (Tonatiuh), a window dresser convicted of public indecency. The two form an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite silver screen diva, Ingrid Luna (Lopez).
Netflix is giving Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller House Of Dyamite a 200 screen release including the Paris, Angelika and Alamo Drafthouse in NYC, and The Egyptian, iPic Westwood, Alamo Drafthouse, and Los Feliz in LA, ahead of its Oct. 24 streaming debut
Premiered at Venice, Deadline review here. The Oscar-winning director and producer of 2008 Best Picture-winner The Hurt Locker and 2012 Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty is back with with her first feature since Detroit eight years ago. Written by Noah Oppenheim, former journalist and NBC News president. When a sole missile is launched at the United States, a race against time begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond as the clock ticks with less than 20 minutes before it hits its target. Stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson and Gabriel Basso.
The Dating Game, the Sundance documentary by Violet Du Feng that’s received a riotous welcome on the festival circuit, is set in China where eligible men vastly outnumber women. It follows Zhou, Li, and Wu, three bachelors embarking on a seven-day dating camp led by Hao, one of China’s most sought-after dating coaches, in a last-ditch effort to find love. From Fish + Bear Pictures, it starts a series of U.S. screenings with a weeklong run at Laemmle Glendale in LA.
Picturehouse opens Re-Election, written and directed by and starring Adam Saunders, in NYC at Regal Union Square. High school haunts everyone in one way or another. For Jimmy Bauer (Saunders), it was losing the race for class president senior year, 1995, which caused him to drop out. Now a 40-something underdog working in a memorabilia store owned by his dad (Tony Danza), Jimmy heads back to high school for his missing class credits and to finally win the election.
Doppelgänger Releasing, the genre label of Music Box Films, is out with Mr. K limited as of Oct. 8 in New York at the IFC Center, expanding after. Directed by Tallulah H. Schwab. Stars Crispin Glover as a down-on-his luck traveling musician stuck in a maze-like, remote hotel. Glover will appear at the IFC or Q&As this weekend and at the American Cinematheque Los Feliz 3 in LA October 21.
Yoav Potash documentary Among Neighbors from 8 Above opens at the Quad in NYC, expands to LA next week. One of the last living Holocaust survivors from the small Polish town of Gniewoszów, along with an aging eyewitness, break decades of silence about Jews who were murdered there six months after the Nazis were defeated. Their stories are brought to life with hand drawn animated sequences and touches of magical realism.
There Was, There Was Not from Suncatcher Productions and Watermelon Pictures, Emily Mkrtichian’s debut feature documentary, opens at the DCTV Firehouse in NYC for a weeklong run. Follows four Armenian women fighting the erasure and ethnic cleansing of their homeland of Artsakh. At LA’s Laemmle Glendale next week and rolling out with opening Q&A’s in all markets.
The New York Film Festival is wrapping up its first week, which began last Friday with the North American premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s controversial academic thriller “After the Hunt.” The other world premiere that sparked debate was Ronan Day-Lewis’ “Anemone,” which brings his father, Daniel Day-Lewis, out of acting retirement for his first onscreen role since 2017’s “Phantom Thread.”
And speaking of Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another” debuted to $22 million domestic in its first weekend at the box office. On this week’s episode of IndieWire’s “Screen Talk” podcast, co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio preview second-weekend chances for the action thriller, which is screening in a variety of formats from 70mm IMAX to VistaVision around the country. It’s also a major Oscar player, positioning Anderson to potentially win his first Oscar after years of also-ran nominations on films from “Magnolia” to “There Will Be Blood” and “Phantom Thread.” Anne hears good word-of-mouth from Academy voters, who are turning up for “One Battle After Another” with an enthusiastic response.
With Anne now joining Ryan in New York, we discuss receptions to films including “After the Hunt” (which was mixed out of NYFF opening night but has a chance with Golden Globes voters) and “Anemone.” While Ryan liked Ronan Day-Lewis’ dark, surreal two-hander about estranged British brothers (Sean Bean stars opposite Daniel Day-Lewis) with a few secrets dating back to the Troubles of Northern Ireland, Anne had quibbles about some of the film’s artistic choices that we both share in.
Meanwhile, the talk of the town this week was an AI “actor” named Tilly Norwood, a very much not real person created by artificial intelligence talent studio Xicoia. SAG-AFTRA released a statement decrying the AI performer, for whom the studio has been sharing headshots, selfies, and motion graphics via social media. Will the statement make an impact? As Anne explains, the stable has opened, the horses are galloping out of it, and the AI revolution is here. We can’t stop what’s coming.
As a reminder, Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio will host a “Screen Talk” Live at the New York Film Festival on Monday, October 6 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at 4 p.m. at Lincoln Center in Manhattan. Attendance is free, and our special guest is Daniel Battsek, the new president of Film at Lincoln Center, who will join us for a lively discussion with audience questions.
Listen to this week’s “Screen Talk” podcast below.
When Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in late August, it was greeted with some of the most divided reviews of the filmmaker’s career. Critics (candidly, including myself) were impressed by the performances and filmmaking but left bewildered by first-time screenwriter Nora Garrett’s muddled screenplay that tackles post-#MeToo society, privilege, and power in the academic world. Reviews were, generally speaking, mixed to negative, with a few standouts.
A month later, the film arrived as the opening night gala at the New York Film Festival. So how did his topical drama, about a Yale philosophy professor (Julia Roberts) tied up in her Black student’s (Ayo Edebiri) sexual assault accusation against a white colleague (Andrew Garfield), play at NYFF?
It opened the highbrow two-week program, overseen by artistic director and former film critic Dennis Lim and managing director Matt Bolish, last Friday at Alice Tully Hall. Past Guadagnino films to play NYFF include “Queer,” “Bones and All,” and “Call Me by Your Name” — all of which scored better receptions throughout their run than “After the Hunt” has so far.
But can new word-of-mouth — not necessarily good, but at the very least new — boost “After the Hunt” at this point?
A sampling of mostly millennial critics and journalists at Friday night’s “After the Hunt” premiere that I spoke with at the official after-party at Tavern on the Green on the edges of Central Park, were also left cold by the movie. It runs long at just shy of 2 hours and 20 minutes, and one journalist I talked to said that, while the film wasn’t necessarily boring, its length led them to feel the pains of an incoherent narrative. There are plot elements that don’t always add up or seem easily ascribed to recognizable human behavior (such as why Julia Roberts’ character Alma keeps a picture that’s extremely revealing about a past secret taped under her bathroom vanity, rather than in the pied-à-terre she maintains as a private office).
But a colleague I’d spoken to who’d had a look at an earlier draft of the screenplay said that many elements were different in that script — including that very one. So we’re curious to hear from screenwriter Garrett about what changed and why.
The film, however, has its admirers, including another critic who appreciated what they felt was its astute look at how trauma is processed differently across generations. (Alma, it’s implied, is twice Edebiri’s character’s age.) “After the Hunt,” intended as Amazon MGM Studios’ big horse in the Oscar race this year, might not make it all the way to the Academy Awards despite hopes for Julia Roberts returning to the Best Actress category since she won in 2001 for “Erin Brockovich.” (Her last Oscar nomination altogether was for Supporting Actress in 2014 for “August: Osage County.”)
But where the movie could remain a player is the HFPA-dismantled Golden Globes, a handful of whose international spectrum of voters attended a packed press conference during the film’s weekend global junket. There, journalists (both in the room and joining via Zoom) asked engaging questions that Roberts and her cast and creative team praised — she was not having it at the Venice Film Festival, particularly when the first question asked at that Italian presser was, “Why does this movie undermine feminism?”
Roberts is a Globes darling, nominated most recently in 2023 for TV’s similarly on-topic “Gaslit” as Martha Mitchell. She’s won three times from 10 nominations, and the capaciousness of having two categories (Musical/Comedy and Drama) for Best Actress gives her room to play in. “After the Hunt” has a shot at playing better for two core audiences — the international coterie, and the Gen X or boomer audiences who didn’t necessarily come of age with such proximity to the topics investigated in this American film — many of which reflect the makeup of the 300-some Golden Globes body.
Amazon MGM Studios opens “After the Hunt” in select theaters on Friday, October 10 followed by a nationwide release on Friday, October 17. How it plays for non-trade critics will factor into its eventual theatrical business. And when the film eventually reaches Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service, fans of Edebiri, Roberts, Garfield, and Guadagnino can tune in with little risk, and share thoughts and soundbites and viral clips of the movie on social media, where it may well find an entirely new life.
After the Hunt star Julia Roberts has won an Oscar and opened movies that have made billions at the box office.
Yet Friday night’s premiere of the film on opening night of the New York Film Festival, she said, was a top-shelf highlight of her life and career.
“I moved to New York when I was 17 years old, and I’m 57, and this is Top 3 great achievements of my New York life,” she told the crowd at Alice Tully Hall.
Director Luca Guadagnino raved about the filmgoers at NYFF, calling them “the best audience at festivals in the world.” He recalled being an up-and-comer and meeting filmmakers “that I shall not name” who were telling the younger Guadagnino that “cinema is dead. And I was like, ‘Why?’” The New York fest, he continued, “celebrates cinema in a way that makes us know that cinema is actually alive.”
While the 60-second ovation that followed the screening fell short of the 6-minute standing O it received at its world premiere in Venice, the Tully reception was warm and almost all of the audience lingered for a 15-minute Q&A. NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim moderated the discussion with Guadagnino, Roberts, cast members Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri and Michael Stuhlbarg as well as screenwriter Nora Garrett. (Perhaps the most memorable moment was Garfield wincing at the memory of having to act in a sexually aggressive manner toward “National Treasure Julia Roberts” in one scene, which “thank God” was captured in a single take. “It was not, in any way shape or form, pleasant,” he dryly added.)
Amazon MGM Studios will release After the Hunt theatrically in select theaters on October 10, with a wide break the following week.
The 63rd edition of NYFF featured some new personalities delivering introductory remarks. Daniel H. Stern, Chair of the FLC Board of Directors, welcomed the audience. In recent years, the leadoff slot on opening night had been occupied by Lesli Klainberg, president of Lincoln Center, but she departed the organization after last year’s festival.
Stern brought Mariko Stern, who became CEO of Lincoln Center last fall, onstage. Addressing the film community, she thanked “all of you who enthrall us, all of you who lift us, all of you who teach us. It is such a true, deep joy to be here with you.”
In addition to “opening our eyes” to experience new films, she said she would “invite you to also open your ears” because Friday night’s screening was the first at Alice Tully Hall to use Dolby Atmos sound. The new system features 120 speakers spread all over the auditorium. (Guadagnino’s well-tuned ear for his soundtracks, plus a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross helped influence the installation.)
Next, Stern introduced Daniel Battsek, who succeeded Klainberg last April, following executive stints at Miramax Films, Film4 and Buena Vista International. In a field of 100 candidates for the job, from all over the world, “what impressed us was his genuine enthusiasm for our mission and for the future of Film at Lincoln Center, so I think there are great things to come under his leadership,” Stern said.
Battsek kept his portion brief and straightforward, joking that when he has sat in the audience for NYFF premieres as audience member, producer and executive, he has often thought, “When are these damn speeches going to be finished?” Turning more serious, he said this year’s slate of 107 features and shorts from 41 countries “will offer the chance to step into a new world and, I hope, to walk out of the theater inspired, challenged and moved.”
Along with setting the stage for the fest, which runs through October 13, Battsek offered a salute to Robert Redford, who died earlier this month, remembering him as a “fearless champion of independent voices.” Lim also noted that the fest’s printed program features a back page saluting filmmaker David Lynch, who died last January.
by Alex Billington
September 22, 2025
Source: YouTube
“I support whatever you choose…” “I have a right to these spaces.” Amazon MGM Studios has unveiled the second trailer for After the Hunt, a fascinating, complex accusation thriller arriving in theaters starting in October. It just premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and plays next at NYFF this week. The latest film made by acclaimed filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, after Challengers and Queer last year, just as brilliant as anything he has made. A college professor finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil levels an accusation against one of her colleagues and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come to light. What exactly did he do and what is going on? Find out watching in theaters soon. After the Hunt stars Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Chloë Sevigny. “Perspective changes everything.” The truth is out there, if you can handle it… This new trailer is a change from the first one, because it seems to be responding to the criticism lobbed against the film. It leans much more into what is happening in this film – focusing on Julia Roberts & the way her character is responding.
Here’s the second official trailer (+ new posters) for Luca Guadagnino’s film After the Hunt, via YouTube:
You can rewatch the first full trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt film right here for more footage.
“Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable.” A college professor finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil levels an accusation against one of her colleagues and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come to light. After the Hunt is directed by the acclaimed Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, director the films The Protagonists, Melissa P, I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, Call Me By Your Name, Suspiria, Bones and All, Challengers, and Queer previously, as well as a few docs including Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams. The screenplay is written by Nora Garrett. It’s produced by Jeb Brody, Brian Grazer, Allan Mandelbaum, and Luca Guadagnino. This initially premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival (read our review) and will also screen at the New York, Zurich, & London Film Festivals next. Amazon MGM Studios will then debut Guadagnino’s After the Hunt film in US theaters starting on October 10th, 2025 with a wide release throughout the fall (starting October 17th). Look better? Who’s intrigued?
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Julia Roberts was “excited and intimidated” to meet her After the Hunt co-star Chloe Sevigny.
Julia Roberts stars alongside Chloe Sevigny in After the Hunt
The 57-year-old actress features alongside Chloe in the new psychological thriller and has spoken of the emotions she felt during their first meeting.
Julia said in a joint interview with Variety: “I was so excited and intimidated about meeting Chloe.
“And when we were at my house, we’re all sitting around the kitchen table, and (Julia’s daughter) Hazel was making herself some lunch, and we’re talking about the material and rehearsing.
“Allan (Mandelbaum), our producer, he came in, and he goes, ‘Chloe should just be here in a couple minutes.’ And I look up, and Ayo (Edebiri) looks up, and we match eyes.
“Luca (Guadagnino) goes, ‘What?’, And I go, ‘I’m scared.’ And Ayo goes, ‘Me too.’ And Hazel goes, ‘I’m leaving through the garage.’ And truly we were so excited and intimidated.”
However, the pair got on well during the making of the movie – which will be released next month – as Chloe grew to admire the Pretty Woman star.
Chloe said: “Can I say when we left, I needed more Julia. On the plane ride home, I watched, like, three of your movies. I just wanted more! Notting Hill, My Best Friend’s Wedding and I can’t remember the third. But I was like, ‘I just want more Julia!'”
The 50-year-old star added: “I was like, ‘I’m not ready to say goodbye.’ Luckily there’s a whole canon I can go home and keep watching.
“I mean, I felt close to her the first time I met her. But she invited us to her home for rehearsals, and we stayed in her beach house. And she was just very giving and generous.”
After The Hunt sees Julia play a respected college professor who is confronted with her secretive past when one of her colleagues faces a serious accusation and she found the character difficult to portray.
The Erin Brokovich star said: “The hardest part for me was not being sympathetic and empathetic.
“For me as a person, it’s like, ‘Oh, how can I hold her?’ And she was not to be held. This was not the time. I have a very hen-like personality; I want to gather, and I want to feed and care. And she’s just the opposite of every instinct I’ve ever had in my life.”