Kirsten Dunst has worked with her husband Jesse Plemons two times already, but their time filming the politically charged new thriller, Civil War, was a new experience.
Writer-director Alex Garland, known for 28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go, helmed the upcoming film, which takes place amid the chaos and conflict of a second American Civil War.
Dunst, 41, plays Lee, a photojournalist who is traversing the embattled country from which California and Texas have seceded and united to form the “Western Forces” in an attempt to overthrow the established government. While documenting the inhumane horrors of American infighting and the reality of citizens becoming refugees in their own country, she seeks to tell the truth, a mission that feels inexplicably controversial even amid the real-life divisive state of U.S. politics.
Plemons, 36, plays a soldier who has an intense interaction with Dunst that she describes as “one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.”
When asked about working with her husband for the third time, Dunst tells ET’s Kevin Frazier that Plemons normally “wouldn’t play a part like this.”
“He did a favor for us because that is a really disturbing role to play, so it’s not like he was jumping at the chance to play the role,” she adds. “Even reading the script, it’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen. When we rolled up to set, it was just very, very tense and emotional for everybody filming that scene.”
A snippet of the memorable scene in question is featured in the trailer, in which Plemons’ character holds a gun while confronting Dunst and her crew. When a member of Dunst’s team says that there’s “a misunderstanding” and they’re American, Plemons, dressed in camouflage, asks, “Ok, what kind of American are you?”
Dunst recalls filming the “chilling” moment opposite her husband. “That particular scene — just reading it from the script, it’s such a, you know, chilling moment. It’s really the turning point of the whole film,” she shares with ET.
“We shot it for two days straight. Wagner [Moura], Cailee [Spaeny] and Stephen [McKinley Henderson] were off shooting a scene, and me and Jesse were doing some improvisation while they were filming their scenes. So it was very intense,” Dunst explains. “The way that Alex directed it was so intelligent because the cameras were never in our faces; he sort of did it in a nontraditional way to make sure that he wasn’t breaking up the momentum, and he didn’t do traditional close-ups where you had crews stepping in. So it almost felt really immersive. The whole movie [does] but [especially] that scene in particular.”
Moura, who plays Lee’s colleague and fellow journalist Joel, adds that the scene “affected” him on “a very personal level.”
“I always think that the energy stays with us for a while,” he says of the film. “It’s not like intellectually, it’s not in your mind. It’s in your body… I was pretty destroyed, it was very tough.”
Dunst reiterates that Garland’s method of filming aimed to make the project feel “as authentic to our relationships” as possible. “We were just in the car with Wagner driving, you know? There wasn’t a bunch of people around us, so it it felt very intimate,” she explains.
Spaeny, who plays Jessie, an aspiring young photographer who is saved by Lee during a deadly riot that ends up accompanying Lee and Joel on their journey, adds, “It almost felt like play on the road. He’s really an actor’s director in a way that he sets up the worlds that we’re in.”
“I mean, a lot of the time, it didn’t feel like we were really acting, especially in the third act,” she continues. “It almost felt like our survival instincts just kicked in ’cause the level of noise you hear in the third act, all the gunfire going on, that’s really what we were hearing. So it was a real gift to us as actors, I think.”
The film has been courting some controversy since its South by Southwest premiere in March 2024. While undeniably a political film, Civil War does its best to mask any partisan bias. Garland avoids detailing exactly how the nation split in two, and the California-Texas-Florida alliance leaves the door open to any blue-state vs. red-state messaging.
“The film does such a good job of not polarizing its audience,” Dunst insists. “It really allows you to bring your own political beliefs to your experience watching this film. And I think that it is an anti-war film at the end of the day, and it’s very much a [look at] humanity in [questioning] what happens when people stop talking to each other and really listening to each other. It’s a very provocative way of storytelling which is what Alex Garland does.”
Civil War premieres in theaters on April 12.
RELATED CONTENT:
