Rebecca Ferguson is currently promoting A House of Dynamite, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and streaming on Netflix. It’s about what happens in the Situation Room during a nuclear attack, and Idris Elba plays the “unnamed president.” Rebecca recently chatted with the Times of London about the film, and they asked her about Tom Cruise (she worked closely with Tom in the Mission: Impossible movies) and about the “blind item.” Last year, Rebecca spoke out about a costar who was exceptionally rude to her on-set, to the point where she fought back, went to producers and demanded to not work in the same scenes with him. She never identified the guy, but she has named the actors we can exclude. Well, she has a bit more to say about that. Some highlights:

A House of Dynamite isn’t a reflection of the Trump White House: “No, it’s not. In the Situation Room they are not allowed opinions. Their job is to be the highest form of switchboard. They know who the president needs to speak to at a certain point, a vice-president or the head of Russia or China.” The film is “not about criticising who’s in charge — it’s questioning the fact that we have such a stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world and we don’t talk about it. Nine countries have active nuclear weapons but only three are part of Nato. What does that mean? What does it mean that one human being can start a nuclear war?”

Her blind item about an “absolute idiot of a co-star”: Ferguson has confirmed that the bully was neither Tom Cruise nor Hugh Jackman, her co-star in The Greatest Showman, nor Ryan Reynolds, with whom she worked on the sci-fi movie Life. The person has not been in touch, she says. Does she think they know she was talking about them? “I don’t care,” she says, while noting that “other people who have worked with this person also had a sh-tty time”. It was a complex situation in which she was not blameless, she says. “I will shove someone under a bus in front of an entire crew to make a point. I don’t applaud my own behaviour in that. It’s a really tricky world. We put a lot of blame on bullies and when we get older we can understand that people are insecure. When you start standing up for yourself, it’s really tricky. They’ll fire you and give the job to someone else.”

She loves Dune & Denis Villeneuve: Dune is “one of those universes that come once in a blue moon — like the original Star Wars. It’s because Denis [Villeneuve, the director] had this dream since he was a little boy. He f***ing loved Dune.”

Whether she’s lobbying Villeneuve to appear in the new James Bond film: “No — I would have been pushing to play the baddie. We haven’t had a female Bond villain.” This is not quite true — Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Enough springs to mind — but we could do with more. “I already said that to Denis — ‘female Bond villain, bitch!’ He was like, ‘Oh là là.’ I love the Bonds, most of them, but I often found that they weren’t very good at writing for women.”

On the Mission: Impossible franchise. “You don’t have scripts and have no idea where it’s going to go, which is annoying and tedious and glorious. You train for a stunt scene for months and all of a sudden they cut it.” Cruise is “a man-child in a good way. I often joke that there’s someone with a tranquilliser gun and a net looking for him. It’s frustrating because you’re ready to shoot and the sun’s going down. Tom goes, ‘What are we waiting for?’ and I go, ‘You!’ And he laughs and goes, ‘F***, I’m sorry.’”

[From The Times]

Rebecca has always had a lot of affection for Tom Cruise, do with that what you will. The feeling is mutual – Tom is one of her biggest fans and he compares her beauty to Ingrid Bergman’s. I do think she means “man-child in a good way” as a compliment, as in, Tom brings a childlike excitement to filmmaking, stunts, acting. As for the blind-item guy… Jake Gyllenhaal? That’s who I settled on when she told this story initially, and I still sort of think it’s him. She’s right though – even if the whole production knew that this guy is a bully, she still could have been fired for standing up to him.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.