Early last year, Victorians were left surprised by regular sightings of Hollywood A-Listers Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan around Melbourne.
The two Irish actors were filming their new sci-fi movie Foe, and Australian director Garth Davis tells 9Honey Celebrity the duo lived like locals and just “slotted into the community”.
“What I loved about Paul and Saoirse, when they came to Melbourne, they really just became locals,” Davis says on the red carpet of the movie’s London Film Festival premiere.
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“They lived in Fitzroy and they had bicycles, they didn’t want any drivers and [were] very self-sufficient people and they really just slotted into the community.
“They loved it – and Aussies love that.”
He quickly added with a laugh: “Paul was a bit of a head-turner, that’s for sure.”
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Ronan was cast first in the movie as Henrietta, with Mescal later signing on as Junior after he happened to be in Sydney at the right time and a meeting was set up.
The Aussie director, who has worked with the likes of Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel on Lion, jokingly labels walking around with big name stars like Patel and Mescal as “exhausting”.
But he describes working with Mescal and Ronan as “a treat”.
“They’re phenomenal actors and just beautiful human beings,” Davis tells 9Honey Celebrity.
“They did some really remarkable work in [the movie] and I also want to do a shout out to Aaron Pierre, [he does] just such a beautiful job with Terrance, he’s such an amazing actor.”
The film, an adaptation of the Iain Reid novel by the same name, show a couple whose marriage is on the brink in the year 2065, as the planet also hits a crucial point.
Davis says Australia became a perfect backdrop for the story.
“It was lovely to really celebrate the landscape,” the 49-year-old tells 9Honey Celebrity.
“I find the land of Australia very powerful and that’s what this story required – the earth was a big character in this movie and it really helped flesh out this kind of dystopian vision of the world.”
For a movie with a plot centering around the affects of climate change on the global population, ironically weather issues threaten to derail filming at one point.
“Where we were filming wasn’t meant to have water but the water was kind of coming in and I was worried we were going to be flooded on one of our sets, so that was definitely a concern for me,” Davis recalls.
But one of the joys of filming in the Victorian capital for the father-of-three was being able to sleep in his own bed.
“It’s my hometown, so it was really nice to go home at night,” he laughs.
The book’s Canadian author, Reid, tells 9Honey Celebrity he didn’t have anyone else in mind for the starring roles and loves how the actors have lifted his words off the page.
“When Saoirse wanted to do it, and Paul and Aaron Pierre as well, it was so thrilling to know that they would be taking it and making it their own,” Reid says.
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“And what they did with this is, to me, very amazing and it heightened the work, the material so much.”
While Ronan, Mescal and Pierre were all missing from the red carpet at the movie’s premiere, Reid says they’re all very “proud” of the picture.
“I really wish the actors could be here too because I know how proud of it they are and I know that they are excited to be able to talk more about it when their strike ends,” he tells 9Honey Celebrity.
Foe is out in Australian cinemas on November 2.