Diane Lane’s “Anniversary” ensemble cast script just couldn’t be more timely

With university professors on watch lists and comedians on thin cultural ice, Diane Lane’s latest role in director Jan Komasa’s holiday He has never been more prescient.

The Oscar nominee, who leads a star-studded ensemble as matriarch Ellen, admitted to Deadline that she wasn’t prepared for the rhetoric that’s bound to ensue from the political thriller/dystopian family drama, now in theaters.

“Can you prepare for that? No,” she said. “But at the same time, yeah, we’ve been waiting a very long time for this movie to come out, kind of. And as a crew, we’ve been participating in a collective script for a long time, just witnessing things that were happening that are now the history of our country and that we can’t believe have been happening in the meantime since we’ve been filming.”

“So, it’s a collective experience, democracy in our country, and I think Jan Komasa, being a European filmmaker, has his eyes on our country in terms of the experience of democracy, it’s very timely, and I appreciate it as an opportunity,” Lin continued.

Co-written by Kumasa and Laurie Rosen-Gambino, holiday It stars Lynn and Kyle Chandler as college professor Ellen and her husband, Paul, whose children get together to celebrate their wedding anniversary every year. When their son Josh (Dylan O’Brien) brings home his new girlfriend Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), Ellen recognizes her as a radical former student leading the controversial change movement.

“I didn’t realize myself that there were actually watch lists created around professors,” Lin said.

With a cast that includes Zoey Deutch, McKenna Grace and Madeline Brewer, Lean said they relied on “our sense of humor to get us through this difficult time” as the film continues to take darker and eerily realistic turns until its shocking conclusion.

Read on for Diane Lane’s timely role holidaynow playing in theaters.

Delivery time: The movie was incredible. It was dark and timely. Tell me about how you built on-screen friction with Phoebe to flesh out their history.

Diane Lin: Well, I mean, having an off-camera backstory is interesting for both of us to fill in the blanks in our memories, in our memory banks about what it would be like to have a disagreement in a teaching setting. This is very embarrassing, and I didn’t realize myself that there were actually watch lists created around professors. I don’t even know how it really works, but I mean my dad taught critical thinking at CUNY, so I don’t know. It was an interesting time to imagine this woman going back to dating my son after eight years. No one would believe why I would be so paranoid. I’m like, “Oh no, she has an agenda, this.”

Delivery time: Always trust mom. This is a great group of actors. What was it like working with Kyle and your on-screen children to embody these tense family differences?

line: You know, it wasn’t a fun time. It wasn’t, but we needed our sense of humor to get us through this difficult time. So, I don’t know how to explain it because we were in Ireland together. Filming it there, and recreating America in 2023, the best we could in that environment, meant we had to lean in and bring as much of our memory into it as we could, because you can be affected by being in another culture and we didn’t want anything to distract us from our path. Nobody has an Irish accent or anything. That would be scary. So, we’ve created a feeling of discomfort, and that’s helpful. So, it’s a balancing act.

Delivery time: You’ve been arrested for protesting before, and I’m curious what that experience was like and how did your real-life activism impact how you approached this character?

line: I mean, that’s a completely different approach, in the sense of exercising my rights as a citizen to be within the scope of intentional arrest to bring attention to the case. I mean, that was the goal, and it was run by someone who knew exactly what they were doing, which was Jane Fonda, who is extraordinary. It weighs in the scales of justice in terms of the planet, air and water, and that we all need these things. I mean, she’s doing her best, and I support anything we can do to preserve our planet. I’m not interested in Mars, thank you very much.

Delivery time: Amen. Like I said, this movie is obviously very timely, and it’s very scary.

line: For Halloween? We’re just in time for Halloween.

Delivery time: exactly! Are you prepared for the kind of rhetoric this film will provoke?

line: I mean no. Can you prepare for this? No, but at the same time, yeah, we’ve been waiting a very long time for this movie to come out, kind of. As a crew, we had been participating in a group script for a long time, just witnessing the things that were happening that were now the history of our country and that we couldn’t believe had been happening in the meantime since we were filming. So, it’s a collective experiment, democracy in our country, and I think Jan Komasa, being a European filmmaker, has his eyes on our country in terms of the experiment that is democracy, it’s very timely, and I appreciate it as an opportunity.

Delivery time: Yeah, and I was watching the movie at a time when all the Jimmy Kimmel stuff was happening, so the fact that the daughter is this comedian who’s being hounded into hiding…

line: Yeah, then I heard that George Carlin was an AI faker, and that’s all the times we live in. It’s kind of like, who needs drugs? Reality is enough.

Delivery time: There’s also a punk element to your character – what it was like playing a little punk with Laura Dern in Ladies and gentlemen, great spots And seeing the legacy this film has left almost 45 years later?

line: It was so brutal. It aired not too long ago on TCM, and I was very vindicated to see that this movie had the legs that it deserved, and it was great for it to be appreciated by people who went on to have music careers and were encouraged by our story in terms of – that was February of 1980 when we shot that. So, just put that in your pipe and smoke it. I mean it was very real for the times just coming out of the 70s. So, punk was already there and was only getting more. But as a point in history, it’s nice to say that I was a part of it in whatever small way I could be as a 15-year-old girl in the film industry.

DEADLINE: And I don’t know if you’re an online person, but there’s one quote from the movie that just went around my Instagram, which is the one where you say to Billy, “You’re jealous, I’m everything you want to be,” and he calls you the C-word. So, I love that it’s still relevant today.

line: It means something lighter in England, so I think when he says to me[راي]Winston, the leading man, that word, and I say “exactly,” I’m not sure he knew the power that word had in our culture.[Ray}WinstonetheleadingmansaystomethatwordandIsay“exactly”I’mnotsurethatheknewthepowerthatithasinourculture[Ray}WinstonetheleadingmansaystomethatwordandIsay“exactly”I’mnotsurethatheknewthepowerthatithasinourculture

Delivery time: But also this word is now available to younger generations, and it’s very empowering, and that’s why it’s being shared.

line: Oh, feminism, you never know what turn it’s going to take.