As a general rule of thumb, you have to be very careful who you trust in the world of Mission: Impossible. But that’s especially true when it comes to the White Widow, aka Alanna Mitsopolis, a ‘broker’ who arranges illegal arms deals and other shady operations, but never likes to get too involved with anyone she works with. Sometimes an ally of Ethan Hunt and other times an enemy, she’ll take whatever position is most advantageous to her in any given moment.
The White Widow is played by British actress Vanessa Kirby. Kirby already had an impressive body of work in film, television, and theatre when she received international acclaim for her BAFTA-winning role as Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of The Crown. Her career has since gone from strength to strength across world-conquering blockbusters and critically acclaimed independent movies, including Pieces of a Woman, for which she received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. The mercurial quality she once again brings to the White Widow makes her one of Mission: Impossible’s most intriguing, enigmatic characters.
What’s it like coming back to Mission: Impossible?
“I love coming back to Mission: Impossible because it really is like a family. It has such a history to it, and I’ve found the White Widow a very complex and unusual character to play. You always [when returning to roles] come back feeling more comfortable, more familiar, more at ease with who you’re playing. With the White Widow, my process was to imagine the pressures of running the kind of dark operation that she does – what those pressures would inevitably do to your psyche. I thought about the burdens that have been imposed upon her from all different sides and how she had been managing them until this point.”
What’s her dynamic with Ethan Hunt in this movie? In the last one, she kissed him…
“The kiss was a power move rather than anything sexual. McQ [Christopher McQuarrie] always makes sure that the women in these movies are never about trading sexuality. There have been those kind of roles in the spy genre before, but in Mission you’re never playing ‘sexy’. I think the White Widow doesn’t have a huge amount of love in her life, so deep down she’s probably looking for some kind of connection but is trapped in a life of crime there is no way out from.”
What was it like having Hayley Atwell join the cast as Grace?
“Amazing. She is such a force of nature. McQ and Tom [Cruise] are big champions of actresses. Mission really requires you to go with the flow because everything is so immediate and in the moment. When new things get thrown at you, you use them to improvise, and she was brilliant. We trained together and that was incredibly bonding. She has a huge part and she’s fantastic in it. The same with all the women in this, like Rebecca [Ferguson] and Pom [Klementieff]. It felt rare to have powerful female characters in a movie like this. And all of them are really different, playing completely different energies and bringing something unique. I think that was the coolest thing.”
Those characters are all together in a nightclub scene at the Doge’s Palace, Venice. What was it like to shoot?
“Well, undeniably, the White Widow loves a party! I remember when they showed me the early storyboards for that scene. There were all these dancers in the darkness, slinking around – very strange and eerie. McQ wanted the atmosphere to be sinister. A lot of agendas are revealed, because the characters are all there and they all have very different intentions. We loved those days together – it was really surreal for all of us because we’re rarely in the same scene as a whole cast.”
The White Widow had very shifting alliances in the last film. Has she changed at all?
“I’m not sure she’ll ever really ally with anybody. Most of the time she’s double-crossing someone. I remember that sense of duplicity from Vanessa Redgrave [who played the White Widow’s mother, Max, in the first film]. She’s always been the main inspiration. The White Widow is like her mother. You never really know whether she’s being sincere or not. And that’s always quite disconcerting. I think there’s more mystery in this one. This film has a real classic Hollywood film noir energy. There are a lot more twists and turns in it too. People are double-dealing everyone. The stakes are definitely higher.”
What makes the working relationship between Tom and McQ so special?
“They’re magic together. They both seem to know what the other one is thinking and feeling. And they’re so passionate about what they do. They’re both obsessed with character over plot, which is rare. They see it like a tapestry. On set it’s so fun to sit back sometimes and watch them, to see how they create a scene and tell a story. They’ve collaborated for a long time now, so there’s a real ease. They always know exactly what the movie needs. When you’re working with them you really discover things in the moment. It allows for a lot of fluidity, creativity and a lot of collaboration. Mission is fundamentally about a team and they have very much made one too.”
What can audiences expect from Dead Reckoning Part One?
“It’s just immense. The scale of it is bigger than any of the other Mission: Impossible films so far. It’s a pure film for cinema. There are unbelievable stunts. I think you have to see Tom jump off a cliff on a motorbike on a big screen. You can’t watch that on a laptop, right?”
