To the left of her large desk, the film director Nadia Conners has filled a cork wall with ephemera.
“Don’t call it a mood board — it’s an inspiration wall,” she said on a recent tour of her old stone house.
Among clippings and handwritten notes, a portrait of her American father mingles with sketches and hieroglyphs — a nod to her mother’s family and her childhood summers spent in Egypt. A few of her unfinished oil paintings lean against the wall. Opposite her desk hangs a grid of vivid Polaroids she took in Los Angeles, where she grew up and lived before moving to upstate New York in 2021.
Every room of the house has a patina, imbued with intention and charm, which Conners also exudes. When she speaks — especially about an idea that excites her — the sun catches the many gold rings on her animated hands.
Images on the wall are swapped in and out, but one picture stays put: a curling snapshot of Conners taken in 1992, as she’s finishing her degree in philosophy at the American University in Paris, a reminder of her early ambitions.
She has since co-directed a documentary “The 11th Hour” about climate change, written over a dozen scripts, a few unfinished novels and worked on a smattering of TV series. And now, at 55, she’s just released her first feature, “The Uninvited.” After a limited theatrical run the movie will be available on demand starting May 16.
“When I decided at 25 that I wanted to be a filmmaker, I had no idea it was going to take me 30 years!” Conners lamented with a mix of joy and irony. “I did other things, of course, but life got in the way.”
Indeed, her life is quite full, as evidenced by the tapestried home she shares with her husband, the actor Walton Goggins, 53; their 14-year-old son, Augustus; and her 84-year-old mother, Sumaya. Friends make frequent use of the many guest bedrooms. Lucy, the family’s velvety mutt, near at all times, nestles on one of the sheepskins that warm the wooden floors.
Cycles of Life
On the surface, “The Uninvited” appears to be a dramedy about Hollywood narcissists. The plot unfurls when an old woman named Helen (played by Lois Smith, 94) shows up, unwell and disoriented, just before a party commences.
The guest list for the gathering includes Lucien (Pedro Pascal), a movie star and the former flame of the lead character, Rose (Elizabeth Reaser), who’s married to Sammy (Walton Goggins), a Hollywood agent trying to save his career by holding onto his client, another movie star named Gerald (Rufus Sewell). A young actress named Delia (Eva De Dominici) also arrives unannounced.
“In the film, we spend most of our time indoors, with people that, at various times, don’t belong at the party,” Conners said. A moment later, with a smile, she added, “You know, maybe nobody belongs at the party.”
Smith, who has been acting in movies and plays since the 1950s, and in 2021 became the oldest performer ever to win a Tony Award, said she was struck by how Conners used the house in such a theatrical manner. “I was especially aware of Nadia’s visual sensitivity — how she framed the shots. It’s one of the great strengths of the film,” Smith said.
Rose’s feelings about marriage and motherhood are complicated. To combat her cultural-spiritual vacuum, she invents a magical bedtime story for her son — a hero’s journey with a happy ending. By contrast, Rose’s night is packed with unwelcome revelations.
Elizabeth Reaser said playing Rose was borderline meta. “I’m an actress who’s 49 years old, watching how the world changes for women, and how it doesn’t change for men,” she said. “It was all there on the page.”
Goggins said that while the film is about many things, it’s really “a reminder to live your life more beautifully.”
Inspired by Real Events
In 2014, a lost old woman showed up at the home of Conners and Goggins, just before they were set to throw a party. Unlike the plot of her film, in real life Conners ended up having to call the police. “Right before they took her away, she held my hand and said, ‘Thank you for being so lovely,’” Conners recalled.
The moment stuck with her for years, ripe as it was with metaphorical potential, though Conners is quick to note that “The Uninvited” is not an autobiographical story. “Walton and I couldn’t be further from these people,” she said. Still, she stuffed the script with real-life feelings.
“There is a line, where Rose says, ‘I didn’t quit. They stopped hiring me,’” Conners said, before recounting her own rocky professional experience after becoming a mother. “I was attached to direct a movie when I was pregnant, and then about nine months later, I went into my agent’s office to say that I couldn’t do it because I have an infant.” Conners wanted some time to adjust. Instead, she said, her agent never called again.
So, she said: “I took sort of a back seat, willingly, because I could. But I didn’t realize what I was really doing.”
Conners kept working on her own, turning to trusted collaborators and friends for intellectual stimulation. Matthew Specktor, a writer and longtime friend of Conners, used words like “forceful” to describe her. When they met in the late ’90s, before she was married, Specktor said they would go out after work with their partners and talk about books and movies. “She was an incredibly complete, culturally and cinematically literate person,” he said. “She has a kind of beautiful willfulness,” he added.
Family Matters
Originally Conners wanted Billy Crudup to play Sammy, but he declined. After finishing the casting process, the pivotal role remained unfilled. Goggins and Conners have been together 21 years. He is often the first reader of her work, she said, and he read the part to help her better hear the lines as she was writing.
“I had imagined Sammy a bit softer, but when Walton read it, he played it so sharp and strong,” she said. That energy helped evolve how she had imagined the dynamic of the on-screen marriage.
“I certainly wasn’t auditioning for the role when I was reading it with Nadia,” Goggins said. “I just did that because, you know, she’s my best friend and she needed help. My interpretation of it made her laugh — I think my manic side, my insecurity, my anxiety, makes her laugh.”
Goggins arranged a break from shooting his series “Fallout” to shoot “The Uninvited.” That was two years before he rocketed to paparazzi fodder with his role as Rick Hatchett in season 3 of “The White Lotus.” Now, Conners jokes, she may not be able to afford him.
Conners said that she enjoyed working with her husband and that the two remain creative co-conspirators. “I would love to develop an idea for him that I don’t direct,” Conners said of Goggins. For now, she is content to “watch him do his thing.”
Recently, Goggins has been on a press blitz, attending the Met Gala, appearing on the cover of Cultured Magazine and in tabloids that have speculated about drama between him and his “White Lotus” co-star Aimee Lou Wood. On May 10, he will host “Saturday Night Live.” Conners knows that her husband (as well as Pedro Pascal’s) recent mega-fame might draw attention to the movie — an irony for a film centered on women — but she is also happy to see it out in the world. Now she’s focused on making more work.
After wrapping “The Uninvited,” Conners got a tattoo on her left forearm. The faint script reads: There you are. She wanted a message that would commemorate what she described as “finding herself again after many years.” But of course it also calls to mind the somewhat more existential new-age adage: Wherever you go, there you are.
When Conners reads it aloud her voice drops to a near whisper and she wipes away tears. The tattoo was an indelible addition to her proverbial inspiration wall. As Conners put it, when she sees it she thinks: “You can just be you. Out in the world. It’s not about who you’re married to or who you’re the mother of. It’s just you.”
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