We Called Thomasin Mckenzie to Chat Everything “Last Night in Soho”

There may have been some mild fangirling over Matt Smith.

If you’re a massive fan of The Queen’s Gambit’s Anna Taylor-Joy and Doctor Who’s Matt Smith, you’ve probably been hanging out to see them in their new flick Last Night in Soho with rising star Thomasin Mckenzie.

Following the intriguing story of aspiring fashion designer Ellie, we enter a sparkling world back in the ‘60s where Ellie discovers the dazzling life of aspiring singer Sandy and follows her down a wondrous path.

However, soon Ellie discovers that Sandy’s life isn’t all the glitz and glamour that it was made out to be from the start, and Sandy’s dreams of the past start to bleed into Ellie’s reality before she can discover the truth.

(Image: Universal)

To get a little bit deeper into the mind of Ellie, we spoke to Thomasin herself and found out exactly what it was like working on the set of Last Night in Soho.

Thomasin describes how she took sewing classes, dance classes, attended a fashion school, and even visited the locations where Ellie’s life began to really get into her character’s mindset.

“I did a lot of work on learning how to sew and learning how to do design sketches and all those kinds of things, and kind of like touring fashion schools and seeing what it’s like to be a student at one of those. Luckily, I’ve heard from the students that it’s not quite as horror-filled as Ellie’s journey was,” says Thomasin.

“Also, just like lots of dance classes, lots of research into Mary Quant, she’s an iconic fashion designer from the ‘60s, and travelling to Cornwall, to Redruth where my character Ellie is from, just kind of really trying to get an idea of the world that she inhabited.

“I was really helped by learning the accent and also by the hair and makeup and the costume as well, all of that whole look really reflected where Ellie was at that point in time in the film.”

(Image: Universal)

Not usually a fan of horror films herself, Thomasin explained that to prepare herself for the horror themes, she just surrounded herself with super supportive people.

“I don’t usually gravitate towards horror films, I watch them when my friends force me to but in my own time, I’d probably watch things that are not so likely to give me nightmares,” she quips.

“I think a part of the preparation is just making sure I’m surrounded by people that are an amazing support force. I have my team supporting me and my parents supporting me, and also I tend to always become very close with the makeup team or the wardrobe team, so I always know that there’s someone in one of those teams that I can go to if I need a little bit of uplifting I suppose, but also just not putting too much—making sure to just research things that Ellie is passionate about rather than just putting all the weight on the darker things, putting time into things that she actually enjoyed.

“I think filming a horror film is very different to just watching one and going in blind ‘cos in filming Last Night in Soho, I knew where every single jump scare was, I knew what went into making it, I knew that the blood was fake so that definitely helped.”

(Image: Universal)

You've probably heard of Thomasin from her roles as Tom in Leave No Trace and Elsa in Jojo Rabbit, but as she describes, Last Night in Soho was the next role for the actress after she had read the script.

“We got the script in 2018, filmed in 2019, did reshoots in 2020, and now it’s finally being released in 2021, so it was a long journey, but I got the script, I read it, I auditioned, I got to talk to Edgar in person a couple times and then it went from there,” she says.

Written and directed by Edgar Wright and shot by Chung-hoon Chung, the film is the perfect modern-day horror story with a tasty twist at the end that few audiences could guess.

As Thomasin explains, Edgar was a pleasure to work with, as he puts his all into everything he creates.

“Something I admire about Edgar is how passionate he is about his craft, he spent such a long time researching the film and music and he puts his all into every project he approaches and also I think it’s so admirable how much he’s put into not only filming Last Night In Soho but the promoting it as well, he’s been just kind of going really hard to get this film out there and to get people back into cinemas again, so yeah I really loved working with him,” she says.

“They just did such a beautiful job at creating that world and Chung-hoon the cinematographer did a wonderful job at capturing it."

(Image: Universal)

On top of working with Edgar and Chung-hoon, Thomasin worked alongside Anna and Matt for their roles as Sandy and Jack and described their time working together as a load of fun.

“I love the both of them. We just had a really good time together, I remember at one point we were researching our spirit animals or something and I think Matt’s was an Octopus, mine was—I think I was a killer whale or something or maybe Anna was a killer whale, I don’t know we just had a good time with each other in between takes, lots of laughs,” explained Thomasin.

“I watched [Doctor Who] with my best friend Kiki, she was a huge fan and she kind of drew me in. I loved it, I feel like I have to revisit it again.”

You can catch the whole flick Last Night in Soho with Thomasin in cinemas on 18 November 2021.