Quite literally off to the races, Simone Ashley previewed her “amazing” and “adrenaline”-filled experience shooting F1, the high-octane racing drama from Top Gun: Maverick helmer Joseph Kosinski.
Speaking to Who What Wear for a cover story, the Bridgerton actress, who will appear opposite Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem and others in the Brad Pitt vehicle, said the rush came from filming and touring alongside real Grand Prix races for limited minutes at a time.
“Obviously, with the strikes and delays, we finally wrapped in Abu Dhabi in December,” she said of the project, due in theaters June 27. “It’s been a long time, and you know, it’s Damson and Brad’s movie. I’m just so grateful that I can be part of it, and yeah, we’ve toured with the Grand Prix. We were filming at the real races.”
Watch on Deadline
Adding of the logistics, the Picture This star said, “You had to work as a team. Sometimes, we literally had one take for certain shots. Like, you’d see on the call sheet eight minutes to get this one thing because we were shooting alongside the races.”
“It was amazing, the adrenaline,” Ashley continued. “It was kind of like theater. It felt so live … You hear the crowd and the fireworks and the cars. Everything’s just so fast-paced and noisy, and we’re all together as a little unit. It was just one of the craziest things I think I’ve ever been part of.”
Of working alongside Pitt, she said, “Really great, really lovely. Just grateful I got to be part of it. I mean, it’s a Brad Pitt movie. [It’s] kind of awesome.”
Apple TV+ recently released a trailer for the action-packed flick, which features Pitt as has-been (bordering on never-was) racer Sonny Hayes, who aims to stage a comeback after his promising career was derailed by a track accident, finding that his biggest competition may be his young, irreverent upstart teammate Joshua Pearce (Idris).
As Kosinksi said in an exclusive interview with Deadline, the project was made in partnership with Formula 1 and its 10 teams, calling those behind the pic “the eleventh team.”
The post Simone Ashley On Shooting ‘F1’ Alongside Real Grand Prix Races: “One Of The Craziest Things I Think I’ve Ever Been Part Of” appeared first on Deadline.
