If anyone can be forgiven for conducting a Zoom interview in a sheet mask, it’s Jessica Henwick: ‘Sorry, it’s been a long week…’, she says, laughing as she pops up on the call, her features clad in metallic, rose-gold hydrogel. The past couple of years have proved a busy, travel-heavy period for the Surrey-born actress, who is currently speaking to me from Los Angeles where she recently attended the US premiere for Netflix’s Glass Onion, a murder mystery film starring Daniel Craig, Madelyn Cline, Janelle Monáe and Kathryn Hahn among others. Jessica plays Peg, the assistant to Kate Hudson’s character Birdie Jay – a former supermodel turned fashion designer. ‘Netflix has been good to me,’ she muses humbly during our interview; Jessica also starred in The Gray Man, an action-thriller Netflix original with Ryan Gosling at the helm, which came out in July this year.
More recently, Jessica co-starred in The Royal Hotel, an independent film from director Kitty Green that was filmed in the Australian outback. The narrative centres around two female backpackers and best friends – Jessica plays the character of Liv, while Inventing Anna’s Julia Garner is her best friend, Hanna – who find themselves working at a pub which has a mysteriously high turnover of female staff. Despite the film’s shoestring budget (especially compared to The Gray Man, which was Netflix’s highest-budget original film yet), Jessica describes it as her favourite project yet – for reason we get into during our interview. But first, if you’re wondering – the sheet mask? It’s 111Skin’s Rose Gold Brightening Facial Treatment (I had to ask). At £113 for a pack of 5, it’s expensive – but I will admit that Jessica Henwick looked radiant as she peeled it off towards the end of the call.
Hi Jessica! You recently attended the premiere of Glass Onion, where you were reunited with many of your cast members. Who was your favourite fellow actor to work with on the film?
Maddie [Madelyn Cline] and I definitely became closest. But Kate Hudson is such a joy to work with and I feel really lucky I got to share so many scenes with her. She's phenomenal.
How was the dynamic playing her character’s assistant? Did you guys ‘method act’ off-screen at all?
No, I don't do method acting, it's not for me. But I do find that when I'm playing a role, I absorb some of their qualities. And so definitely at times I felt like Peg [the name of Jessica’s assistant character] amid this group of legitimate acting heavyweights and celebrities. I was like, what am I doing here? Like, I should not be here. Which was a combination of me, as Jessica, feeling that, but then also absorbing Peg’s mindset.
Shine bright like a diamond!
I can imagine it’s overwhelming. This has been such a huge breakout couple of years for your career, and you’ve been working alongside these established A-list celebrities from the older generations whom you probably grew up watching and being inspired by. Did it feel like Imposter Syndrome?
It was total imposter syndrome. I was talking to my brother about this the other day. Like, wow, I'm working with all these 90s and early Noughties action stars as well. I've obviously worked with Keanu [Reeves, in 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections] and I just worked with Edward [Norton] on this. I’m like, who's next? I need to work with Nicholas Cage!
The Glass Onion is a murder mystery film. What role would you be most likely to play in an actual murder mystery? For instance, would you be the one who solved the crime, the one who did it… or the one who got killed?
I think I'd be the one to solve the mystery, because I'm obsessed with puzzles. Every Christmas my family gets a 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and it really triggers me to see it incomplete. So once it's started, I have to just finish it, or else I get angry. It's a weird OCD thing for me. We do it every year, and it drives us crazy so we're always like, never again – this is the last year. Then someone, usually me, will buy one.
Have you bought one for this coming Christmas?
My brother has. I've already seen it at the house. It's a 3/000 piece this time, so he really hates us.
That's gonna be a fun Christmas for all involved. I'll be thinking of you. You recently returned from filming The Royal Hotel in Australia, was it lonely being in a different time zone to your family back home in the UK?
It definitely gets lonely. I’m torn between two places right now. A lot of my friends are in LA, and my team in LA are my support system. But then obviously my family, and some of my other friends, are in London. So it’s hard to never be around and to always feel like you're missing their big life changes, but you learn to prioritise. I'll do however many jobs in a row, but right now I’ve just said, OK, I’ll take the rest of the year off. I’ll do press, then I'll spend the rest of the time with my family.
How have you found the past few years, which has been a break-through time for your career?
It's definitely been an intense few years. I've had a good run. Netflix has been very good to me. But you never lose that sense of: this is it, it's going to end now. It’s going back to that imposter syndrome. I always feel like I'm treading water, just trying to get to the next pit stop.
With the list rapidly filling up, what's been your favourite acting part so far?
Honestly, The Royal Hotel. It was so fulfilling and exactly what I needed. It was, it was really like getting back to basics, doing a low budget indie film. It was such a communal experience: Julia & I lived together above a pub in the Australian outback, just like the characters did. We would have dinner there, and as we were falling asleep we could hear the punters going through the night. It's probably the closest I've ever got to method acting. I felt like we were really on that journey – life imitating art. It was one of those moments, as an actor, where you go: that’s why I do this job. To tell this kind of story.
Are you and Julia Garner still in touch?
Yeah, I think I'm going to see her this Monday! We really got along. They sat us on the same flight from Los Angeles to Australia, and I remember thinking, That’s a long time to be sat next to someone you don’t know… are we going to hate each other? But, within a minute, it felt like we'd known each other for years.
While it’s yet to come out [the release date is expected to be some time in 2023], The Royal Hotel has themes of sexual harassment. How did you do your character research for that role?
Well, it's actually based on a documentary called Hotel Coolguardie. So I watched that a bunch of times and I talked to Kitty about it. Julia & I did a couple of shifts working at a student bar in Adelaide so we could experience it and get used to pouring beers at speed and making cocktails. That was quite interesting. We joked that it was the poor version of Tom Cruise’s film, Cocktail – because in it he’s making the fanciest pina coladas and we were just making, like, rum & coke.
What kind of knowledge did you pick up?
Well, I learnt how to change a beer keg. But the most important thing is how you interact with customers. Having this air of looking busy, even when it's not busy – you’re encouraged to always look like you’re doing something, rather than being on your phone.
I read that you were the first East Asian actress to play a leading role in a British TV series, when you played the main character Bo in the BBC’s 2009 children's adventure series Spirit Warriors. Is it important to you to become a representative for on screen diversity?
It's not important to me that I become anything. But it's important to me that we keep pushing forward and it's shocking to me that I was the first, considering it was 2009 and how long British television has existed. When I was growing up, I would've loved to have seen someone who looked like me on screen. All I got was stunning English roses. So I absorbed that and thought that was the ideal way to look. When I was a kid, I totally wanted to look like that. I was like, why can't I be blonde and have really pink cheeks and have curly hair? It would've been healthy for my self-image if I had been able to look at someone else and think, I could also look like me. So it’s definitely important. But it’s also just more interesting. I'm bored of seeing the same story told over and over again. I want to hear from new creators, something that I've never seen before. There are woman rejuvenating the industry by sharing their own stories: Michaela Coel, Phoebe Waller Bridge, Brit Marling. These are the women who inspire me and, uh, who I would love to be like one day when I grow up.
I'd love to hear more about your writing, as I know you've been working on some projects with Amazon and HBO.
Writing was my first love. I always wanted to be a storyteller: even when I was a kid and I’d write little bits of fan fiction. I was also in dance class and acting class, and I saw it as different strings to the same bow. So, as an adult, it’s nice now that I’ve come full circle – hopefully I can announce some of my shows soon.
Here's everything we know.
FInally, you wrote and directed a short film, Bus Girl, shot entirely on a Xiaomi Mi11 phone which is kind of amazing. Congratulations! Tell me more about that.
Yes! I literally just heard a couple days ago that I got into London Shorts Film Festival. I'm really happy that it's getting so much love. I definitely want to do more directing, but having experienced it on a small scale – the shoots were less than a week, with a month of pre-production and a couple months of post-production – I can see that it does derail your life and you give yourself over to it. So, having done the short, I do want to do it again, but I know I need to carve out six months, where nothing else is happening, so I can just devote it to making a film.
I anticipate this being a bit like your Christmas jigsaw puzzle.
I do struggle to do things by halves…
