Zoe Saldaña Wants to Helm an Action Movie: ‘I’ve Never Seen a Woman Direct James Bond’
Zoe Saldaña might be a self-described “late bloomer.” As an actor whose films have earned $15 billion, she’s hitting her stride at the age of 46. But she’s ready to kick that red-hot career up a notch by moving into directing — and an action film is perhaps most appealing.
“I’ve never seen a woman direct James Bond,” she explained. “I like ‘The Equalizer.’ I watch crime shows, and, so, maybe in the future. I’ve always been drawn to heist themes. ‘Heat’ is a film that I need to watch at least once a year and analyze it, and the way that Michael Mann just pairs it all together, the way that everybody performed it. So, I would love to start with an action-heist sort of thing.”
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The actor, whose operatic crime drama “Emilia Pérez” debuts tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival, spoke about her next career next steps during a conversation with TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey.
“But I never, never box myself in. I can do anything,” she said to big applause. “Just like Ang Lee did ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ correct? I can also do a Jane Austen one day. You never know.”
“Emilia Pérez” enters Toronto with loads of awards-season buzz after conquering Cannes, where Saldaña shared the best actress award with her co-stars Selena Gomez, Karla Sofía Gascón and Adriana Paz. The audacious Spanish-language film from French director Jacques Audiard makes its Canadian premiere tonight at the festival.
During the hour-long sit-down conversation in a packed TIFF theater, the “Avatar” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” star touched on a broad range of topics, including her starring roles in some of the highest-grossing films of all time including James Cameron’s “Avatar” movies as well as the past two “Avengers” movies.
“It’s all the technology that Jim uses [in ‘Avatar’ that] gives way for the performer to take pride and priority over his or her entire performance. We’re not lending our voices. We’re not doing any of that. In 2009, Jim, as usual, was ahead of his time. He’s a scientist at heart, so he’s creating things that people need time to understand. He helped me realize that I should be okay with that. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if people will get it. ‘Avatar’ will live forever, and it will inspire people for generations to come. So that’s his legacy, and I’m a part of that.”
At a time of heightened sensitivities about authentic casting, Saldaña, whose father is Dominican and mother is Puerto Rican, explained her decision to tackle a Mexican character in “Emilia Pérez.” Or Mexican-ish as she noted.
“When I read the script, Jacques told me, ‘I want you to play Rita,’ and I told him, but I’m not Mexican, and I’m very aware of cultural appropriation now more than ever, and I just want things to be right when we are representing people. I want people to feel well represented,” she said.
But as she continued to pore over the script, she began to see her on ramp.
“Rita’s journey was not defined by her being Mexican. It was defined by her being a lawyer, being a woman in a very masculine workplace and feeling completely invisible and powerless,” she said. “So once I felt that these were the overall traits and qualities and arc to Rita, getting her to Mexico was what I needed to work on, and Jacques was completely supportive of it. He goes, ‘I don’t care how Rita gets to Mexico. Just get her to Mexico and make it make sense. As a first-generation Latina that knows Latin American history very, very well, because I was educated in Latin America, and colonialism is very real –the way that we discriminate against ourselves and against each other within our own communities and countries is rampant — and that’s something that we don’t really talk about. I want to normalize that. Rita’s a Black woman in Mexico City, and that is real, and that may not be something that is known here in the United States, but that is very well known.”
Saldaña said discrimination is rampant within the Latino community. And as a Black woman, she certainly faced the overt pecking order.
“It happens every day. You would think that it just happens every now and then. No, no. Look at content in Latin America, go to go to news places [and look at who are the anchors] and watch their telenovelas and the content mechanisms,” she added. “It’s changing, obviously, but it’s very white Latino. So, that was real to me. I also had my version of that experience when I went to my parents’ native country to live in. My sisters and I encountered that in our private school and in our community. So, for me, I knew how Rita was going to get there. She was a Dominican immigrant that came to Mexico to study, and she’s dealing with invisibility on so many levels.”
Netflix landed distribution rights to “Emilia Pérez” on the ground at Cannes and will give the film a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 1 before streaming it Nov. 13.
There’s also three more “Avatar” movies on the way for Saldaña, scheduled for 2025, 2029 and 2031. Still, she wouldn’t mind seeing a very different entry in the mega-franchise.
“‘Avatar: The Musical,'” she answered to a fan’s question about the which of her previous films she’d like to see get the song-and-dance treatment. “I think I would be able to do it. I think we would need Cirque du Soleil actors to do it [too].”
As for the major awards that have thus far eluded her, Saldaña says she’s not above wanting some love.
“I wish I was very confident and told you that ‘I don’t I don’t need your approval. I don’t need your acknowledgement,'” she said. “But the artist does. You know, it’s not the accolades that we need. We just need to share what we do because we can’t do anything else.”
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