{"id":3055,"date":"2026-06-06T21:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T21:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/06\/06\/victoria-pedretti-went-deep-dark-and-dangerous-for-her-biggest-film-role-to-date\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T21:12:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T21:12:00","slug":"victoria-pedretti-went-deep-dark-and-dangerous-for-her-biggest-film-role-to-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/06\/06\/victoria-pedretti-went-deep-dark-and-dangerous-for-her-biggest-film-role-to-date\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Pedretti Went Deep, Dark and \u201cDangerous\u201d for Her Biggest Film Role to Date"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tThe Last Day <\/em>reimagines Virginia Woolf\u2019s masterpiece Mrs Dalloway<\/em> in a few ways. The directorial debut of decorated visual artist Rachel Rose, the stark drama (which premieres Saturday night at Tribeca<\/a> Festival) is set in modern-day New York and reimagines the protagonist, Clarissa, as Julia (Alicia Vikander<\/a>), a writer feeling drained of creativity and purpose while navigating motherhood. Rose was inspired by her own experiences with postpartum depression: After she came out of that period, she revisited Mrs Dalloway <\/em>on the advice of a friend and drafted the script months later.\u00a0 \t<\/p>\n

\tThe film\u2019s more ambitious gambit, though, is what it does with the other half of its story. It beefs up \u2014 and gender-swaps \u2014 the role of Septimus, a traumatized veteran losing sight of reality, to operate in parallel with Julia. \u201cWhen I reread Mrs Dalloway<\/em>, I was so moved and blown away by Septimus, a character that I hadn\u2019t absorbed before, that I now was absorbing through my own experience, in his manic mental anguish and pain.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tHere, the role is reimagined as Taylor, a younger mother of three who, as the film opens, has a passing encounter with Julia before trying to go on with her own day. She\u2019s portrayed by Victoria Pedretti<\/a> \u2014 who broke out on Netflix\u2019s You<\/a> <\/em>before starring opposite Jeremy Strong on Broadway in An Enemy of the People<\/em> \u2014 in a devastating performance befitting Woolf\u2019s bruising, spare and subtle characterization. \u201cVictoria is so primal, and she brings that to how she experiences space and her body,\u201d Rose says.<\/p>\n

\tWhat initially plays more like Julia\u2019s story, as would be expected of a Mrs Dalloway <\/em>interpretation, gradually shifts toward something darker and more complex: As Julia rediscovers herself, Taylor loses her grip entirely \u2014 leading to a tragic conclusion that Pedretti portrays with intricate, heartbreaking emotional insight. She spoke to The Hollywood Reporter <\/em>about how she pulled it off.\u00a0 \t<\/p>\n

\tYou read the script for <\/strong>The Last Day<\/em><\/strong> while on Broadway for <\/strong>An Enemy of the People<\/em><\/strong>, which was obviously an intensive experience. How did it strike you in that context?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tIt\u2019s interesting. At that point, we were a few months into doing the play, so it was a bit revitalizing to feel stimulated and inspired by reading something new. I am sure I drew inspiration from reading that, that came back to the play, especially when you\u2019re doing the same story every night. It\u2019s important to find different ways of continuing to connect to it and keep it fresh. Not that the story is very much like Enemy of the People<\/em> at all, but anything that can just lay seeds for new ideas as you approach the same story every night is great.<\/p>\n

\tYou have to go to some deep, dark places here. What did you connect to in the role?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tThe feeling when I finished the script was an overpowering love for the character. I felt like I had an enormous amount of love and a protective instinct about Taylor and wanting to take on and protect her story. There were definitely conversations in the meeting of just \u2014 well, I feel like there is a large emphasis on people playing things that they themselves have experienced, and I\u2019m not somebody who has had children. I haven\u2019t gone through the hormonal shifts of pregnancy and postpartum. There\u2019s no point in hiding that fact. I considered the fact that it might take me out of the running to play Taylor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tBut our conversation ended up being so much about women and mothers generally, and how people in their lives create these illusions of normalcy and these illusions of perfection based on superficial stuff. A lot of how people don\u2019t recognize what\u2019s going on in Taylor. We were talking about how through a lot of her life, she probably was very exceptional and in many ways had a very normal life and somebody who was admired by a lot of the people around her for just seeming to be able to handle everything and how that doesn\u2019t really truly exist for anyone. It\u2019s always an illusion and it\u2019s an enormous amount of pressure. \t<\/p>\n

\tSo what was it like to live in that skin? Was it difficult to shake off?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tI shot this film for maybe a little over a month, but it involved me shooting for a few days and then having a large break in the middle where they shot all of Alicia\u2019s work. Then it came back to me. It was incredibly sad. I found it amazing that, when I tried to take my mind to the places that she was at, I found it very easy to access. I found myself wanting to hold it but not swim in it for fear of drowning.<\/p>\n

\tWhich can be difficult.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tYeah, it\u2019s dangerous. I\u2019m trying to become more comfortable with talking about what can feel like an embarrassing aspect of the work, which is that I\u2019m involving myself in my imagination and it does have a lot of power.<\/p>\n

\tThese weeks of waiting between the beginning and the end, I found myself really just wandering the streets, listening to music and holding it and just waiting. I felt like I was really in this holding pattern. Even in production, they say, you\u2019re \u201con hold,\u201d and there\u2019ll be an H next to your name when the call sheet goes out. So I really held it, but I felt more as if I was standing on a cliffside and using an enormous amount of strength to stand there with one toe over the edge and just kind of look down at what is an inch away. It\u2019s very much right there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tIt\u2019s not like I\u2019m living day-to-day suicidal, whether that\u2019s information that people need to know or not \u2014 but in the context of this, I guess it\u2019s relevant. I don\u2019t know what that goes to show because everybody\u2019s an individual, but for me, it really emphasized the strength that we\u2019re all using every day to just not look over the cliff, or on some days, to just hold it. The strength that it takes to keep walking and wandering and holding it when it\u2019s just not time yet to put it down. I feel like I\u2019m speaking a bit abstractly, but it is all very abstract. \t<\/p>\n

\tIt is. I would imagine that you would feel some degree of responsibility, in that you\u2019re really telling a story about suicidal ideation. Is that fair to say?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tYes, incredibly. It was quite shocking. I knew that the story was slightly based on something that [Rose] had read, but then when I actually went to look into it, there was an enormous amount of responsibility that I found, in that there were many<\/em> cases within that year when we shot the film. There were reports and news about women who had killed themselves and their children, and that was over the course of that year. I had those names written on Post-it notes in my house. I kept looking at it. I didn\u2019t want to turn away from it. It\u2019s uncomfortable, so I can understand the instinct to want to put it down or not delve all the way into it, but the reality is that these things are happening and women are going unnoticed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tThe question is how does it get to that point without anybody helping or anybody intervening \u2014 how do we still not have enough research about women and what they need in support during postpartum, how much hormonal fluctuations can drive us mad? There are reports of suicide from all of these enormous hormonal fluctuations, and yet women are left in the dark and misinformed about what to expect. We\u2019re so good at making things seem OK because we do have a built-in enormous tolerance for pain and discomfort. We\u2019re not invincible, and so yes, there was a lot of heaviness being carried around representing these stories. \t<\/p>\n

\tYou\u2019re describing a lot of research in understanding Taylor\u2019s world and circumstances. Was it eye-opening for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tYes. I\u2019m not surprised by the way in which women are let down by the medical industry a lot of the time. There had been four different murder-suicides in the year, and I hadn\u2019t heard anything about it; that was absolutely eye-opening. You hear stories about postpartum. I\u2019ve heard about it from my own mother. It\u2019s very common, but to that extent, I was like, \u201cHow are we walking around day to day, not trying to contend with this, not trying to actively do something about it and put it into discussions just for the sake of alleviating any taboo?\u201d Of course, suicide \u2014 there\u2019s a lot of taboo around it already, but in this case specifically, it was shocking to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tWere you familiar with <\/strong>Mrs Dalloway<\/em><\/strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tNo, I hadn\u2019t read Mrs Dalloway<\/em> when I read the script. I\u2019m not, honestly, the most well-read. (Laughs<\/em>.) Fair enough. But I knew a bit about Virginia Woolf\u2019s voice and her unique way of writing, and I don\u2019t think you have to know anything about Mrs Dalloway<\/em> to appreciate the script for the film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tThis movie mirrors your and Alicia\u2019s work throughout, even though you only have a small bit of screen time. Were you aware of each other\u2019s experiences or process?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tI have no idea what her process was. We didn\u2019t speak very much. There\u2019s one scene where we interact, where she kind of passed the baton over to me and we started working on my stuff. Even with coverage you are, most of the time, shooting separately. It\u2019s incredible how much illusion can be created. Luckily, none of these things actually happened to anybody on set. We were able to tell this story and we did manage to still have some fun, some real fun and play and enjoyment. I am a deep believer in that. \t<\/p>\n

\tEven though it\u2019s uncomfortable, I don\u2019t like to harp on how it is hard because at the end of the day, it was pretend. It has an effect, but I think it is really important to try to stay buoyant in it and have some fun with it as well. I hope it\u2019s not uncomfortable to say that. I get annoyed with all these actors where I\u2019m like, \u201cAre we supposed to just kvetch about how it\u2019s hard??\u201d It\u2019s like, \u201cDuh, it\u2019s art.\u201d It\u2019s hard to bring something from your mind into the world, but it\u2019s such a privilege. This was a lucky get, playing Taylor.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Last Day reimagines Virginia Woolf\u2019s masterpiece Mrs Dalloway in a few ways. The directorial debut of decorated visual artist Rachel Rose, the stark drama (which premieres Saturday night at Tribeca Festival) is set in modern-day New York and reimagines the protagonist, Clarissa, as Julia (Alicia Vikander), a writer feeling drained of creativity and purpose while navigating motherhood. Rose was inspired by her own experiences with postpartum depression: After she came out of that period, she revisited Mrs Dalloway on the advice of a friend and drafted the script months later.\u00a0 The film\u2019s more ambitious gambit, though, is what it does with the other half of its story. It beefs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1813,2,164,60,1322,1814,806],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alicia-vikander","category-hollywood","category-movie-features","category-movies","category-tribeca","category-victoria-pedretti","category-you"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}