For her directorial debut, Scarlett Johansson chose a project that reminded her of her grandmother — in spirit if not in story — and her own Jewish roots.
A tender buddy comedy centered on a nonagenarian fabulist and an earnest young woman, “Eleanor the Great” stars June Squibb, 95, as Eleanor, an ex-New Yorker who returns to live with her daughter after decades in Florida. At a community center, she mistakenly wanders into a group for Holocaust survivors — then spins a tale as if she’s one of them. It attracts the attention of Nina, a journalism student played by the British newcomer Erin Kellyman, 26, and they strike up a cross-generational friendship.
Squibb, an Oscar nominee in 2014 for Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska,” and an unexpected box-office topper with last year’s “Thelma,” signed on even before Johansson, attracted by the script by Tory Kamen. Eleanor is the spiky sort of grandma: “You cut your hair,” she observes to her daughter. “I liked it better when it was longer.”
But Eleanor also has a sweet side, especially for her best friend, Bessie, played by the Israeli actress and Holocaust survivor Rita Zohar. Johansson, 40, a native Manhattanite, learned in 2017 that a great-uncle and his sons had perished in the Warsaw ghetto. She worked with the USC Shoah Foundation, casting real-life survivors and lingering on their faces and histories.
The film — in theaters Sept. 26 — is dedicated to her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Sloan, a teacher who died in 2014 at 91; the star grew emotional talking about her.
But there was also plenty of laughter as, over tea and cookies at a hotel in Manhattan, Johansson, Squibb and Kellyman discussed working together, their friendships and the animating power of gossip. These are excerpts from the conversation.
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