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[Editor’s note: The interview was originally published on October 7, 2025.]
You have to see Kathryn Bigelow’s riveting, harrowing, and all other manner of -ing adjectives “A House of Dynamite” to believe it. As our own Ryan Lattanzio best described the nuclear war drama in his glowing Venice review, “Bigelow’s explosively entertaining real-time thriller, told from multiple perspectives at various levels of government from situation room deputies to POTUS … does not mince on hopelessness.” And for a film that essentially says “we’re fucked,” it’s about as entertaining as it gets.
Even its stars — and there are many of them, as the film tracks 18 minutes of real-time freak-out in three timelines across all sectors of the government and military, which means lots of people are involved — were riveted by what they saw when they first took in the finished film. That includes Rebecca Ferguson, who anchors the first segment of the film as Captain Olivia Walker, a senior officer in the White House Situation Room, the sort of no-fuss, let’s-get-it-done person you’d love to have on hand during an emergency.
“It wasn’t until I saw the film that it hit me, the gravitas and the importance of it,” Ferguson said during a recent interview with IndieWire in New York City. “It was a screening in London and I remember us all, after the film ended, we all just sat completely silent. We [usually] don’t really sit and look at the credits and the people involved, you kind of stand up and start talking. But there were no words. There was nothing to be said.”
The first thing Ferguson does remember being said? “My [18-year-old] son turned to me and he said, ‘It’s the first role, mum, that you’ve played where I have seen my mum.’ And I thought that is probably the best compliment that I’ve ever had because I think that’s what we were trying to do, that sort of authentic nature of a human being.”
‘A House of Dynamite’Eros Hoagland/NetflixFerguson makes off with arguably the most emotional and centered of the film’s performances, turning her minimal before-work time, her quick commute, and her 18 minutes in hell into one of the most compelling turns of the year. In a film that counts stars like Idris Elba, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Greta Lee, and Jason Clarke among its biggest names, that’s no small feat. But Ferguson, from “Mission: Impossible” to “Dune” is always riveting, and she’s always trying to find the heart of her parts.
But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a bit scared about the possibilities of the Netflix film. For Ferguson, the jitters started early, when she was told that Bigelow, one of her favorite filmmakers, wanted to chat with her about a potential role. Thrilling and scary.
“The first thing was the phone call saying that Kathryn Bigelow wants to Zoom. That was sort of, I didn’t really know what to say, we say these things, ‘I’ve always wanted to work with…,’ but to be honest, Kathryn has been on my top bucket list,” the actress said. “And then being on a Zoom, listening to her, she didn’t really give away the story. I think she was feeling out the vibe, and we vibed very quickly. And then I got to read Noah’s script and then I realized what I was in for.”
So, what’s it like when Rebecca Ferguson vibes with someone like Kathryn Bigelow?
“It’s just a click,” she said. “I had such an enormous respect for her [already]. When you don’t have to prove yourself, when there’s not a feeling of a competition and there’s someone sitting in front of you very raw, very open about certain things and ‘I wish to work with you, cards are on the table,’ it becomes some form of a friendship. What can I bring? What could I do to help tell this story? I like her as a human being. I think she is beyond intelligent. She is kind. She’s soft. Internally, she is super-focused, but she doesn’t shove her opinion down your throat. And I think there’s an enormous power in people who can balance that act.”
Ferguson said she’s experienced this sort of “luxury” before, namely with her “Dune” filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. “It’s not to criticize anyone else, but it’s because they’re the most active ones I’ve worked with, and it’s phenomenal and I wish more people would work that way,” she added.
Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica in ‘Dune’Warner Bros.(For the fellow “Dune” fans out there: Ferguson said she’s already filmed her part in the upcoming third film. “I don’t have a big part in this one, [she’s] just barely in the book. I’m not sure I was supposed to be in it and Denis had a little idea,” she said. “The script is phenomenal. It’s really hard to create a film, it’s such a dense book. There’s so much to tell. [Denis] does dip in and out and he does try and he does want to have certain connections and tentacles to the book. Whatever Denis touches I think is phenomenal.”)
When Ferguson finally got her hands on Noah Oppenheim’s script, she had a little of the same jolt audience members might feel when the movie starts and a nuke suddenly appears, heading straight for the middle of America. Who is that and what does that mean and where are we? But there was something liberating about the combination of maximum detail and minimum time.
“There are so many abbreviations and so much Army language and intelligence language, that I had to dissect and stop and really understand it. But in general, from A to B or A to Z, it’s a very clear film, it’s a very clear message,” she said. “What I liked about it is, you only have those 18 minutes, including maybe another five minutes for me in the beginning at home to create a character for her. And that was challenging. … It’s so perfectly orchestrated, the emotional arc that we need to go through as the viewers, but it’s only 18 minutes.”
Because of the structure of the film, we really only spend one-third of it with Ferguson’s Olivia. But the actress is meticulous with her character-building, and she said she did a lot of preparation to ground herself in the role, to really find the person underneath the military jabber.
“I definitely need to do a character breakdown for myself,” she said. “I liked the idea that she was quite messy, and the way that she interacted with her child and husband, she was a bit floopy. In my head, she was the one who, when she cooks, everything is everywhere and her husband is constantly cleaning up after her. I love the contrast of her putting her [high heel] shoes on after walking in her extremely ugly but comfortable gym shoes to work. Listening to a podcast in her headphones, she doesn’t like the ear pods because they are uncomfortable, so I had these strings that constantly would get wrapped up in things in my bag. I like the contrast of coming into a character that is so specific and detailed and accurate and who runs the situation, but these are things no one else really sees.”
Ferguson, it seems, is often putting that pressure on herself. Bigelow was eager to take away some of those stresses and worries. She knew the drama was built-in, it didn’t need much extra.
“The ego of an actor, it’s like, ‘What can I do? I want to have nuts in my pocket! Brad Pitt always eats and talks. I want to be that person,’” Ferguson said with a laugh. “You’re trying to push ideas. And Kathryn was kind of just listening and kind of just taking it all back and going, ‘We have a set-up and the humanity is going to come when we’re in the scenes. Those cracks are going to appear and the cameras are going to be there and you don’t have to know where they are as long as you know your job.’ And that’s what happened.”
Ferguson also spent significant time meeting with the sort of people who would be in the very situation room where Olivia works. Like people who see the film, she’s in awe of both the deep preparation that goes into planning for the sort of event we see dramatized in the film and terrified by what happens when those plans run out.
“They are so highly trained, they train 400 times a year, it’s twice a day when it comes to nuclear threat, any form of national threat, so they have a procedure,” she said. “The problem is when you get to a point [that the] president, who has never been briefed ever on what to do if there’s a nuclear threat, is the person who just sits with his finger on the button, when everyone else around him are so trained to actually make a decision. But it also comes down to the humanity aspect of it, what kind of decision do you make?”
Ferguson worked closely with intelligence expert Larry Pfeiffer, who served as the Senior Director of the president’s round-the-clock operations and intelligence center from 2011 through 2013. He’s basically the guy Jason Clarke is playing in the film. Ferguson said Pfeiffer was invaluable, answering her questions on everything from nuclear threats to desktop decor.
“I’m curious as a person. I love learning about other people’s specialties and interests, and the moment that I was given this role, within a couple of weeks, I was in contact with Larry and I was texting him the most silly questions,” she said. “Like, ‘Am I allowed anything of my own personal items?’ ‘No, you can have your thermos, you have your coffee, but you have no pictures, you have nothing personal.’ And that kind of explains a lot of what we do in the work. We are not people with opinions. We are not people with political agendas. We are there as a switchboard to connect and to think 10 steps ahead.”
Ferguson said that Pfieffer was also quick to note some of the less thrilling aspects of the job. “He said, ‘We’re quite boring. Nothing really happens. We make sure the president has real-time information if needed. And other than that, we talk about our families and it’s very chill,’” she recalled. “The fact that you get to experience something like this is very, very rare. I think, even them at high pressure, that’s when the cracks happen. What do you do when you have four minutes left?”
During the course of the film, we often see Olivia running the situation room, as Clarke’s Admiral Mark Miller dips in and out. When Clarke arrived on set, the actress said, she’d be doing a little life-imitating-art to prepare.
“Jason Clarke came in a little bit later with his role, and [before he arrived], I took it upon myself to run the room. On set, I felt comfortable to delegate, to send information, to ask people to do certain things. I think I did it also to get into that role, because it’s quite uncomfortable to hold a room,” she said. “And the moment that Jason walked in, it was quite apparent to me that he was my boss. Jason walks and he around the entire room and he stands in front of the screens and just addresses the entire room. I remember looking at him thinking, ‘I’ve met my match. That’s my boss right there. Good to know.’”
Ferguson is a wonderful conversationalist, quick-witted and funny and always listening. When I asked her how she found her American accent for the film — literally, how she discovered and worked at it — she quickly asked me back, “How did you find my American accent?” Like, what did I think of it? (I had no problem with it.)
“I find American hard, but I find [all] accents claustrophobic because you don’t have the freedom,” Ferguson said. “People always comment on it and criticize it, but to be honest, it’s a job. I’m asked to do a role. Kathryn Bigelow asked me to do a film. It’s an American accent. You just fucking do it. And it’s tricky and it’s difficult and it doesn’t come natural to me. I work very hard, but you’re constantly locked [to the accent], you don’t really have the freedom of thought. I try! And I try and always convince my director that I don’t have to have an accent, but I didn’t win on this one.”
Asked what she remembered from the freneticism of filming, she laughed. “It’s like giving birth. I kind of don’t really remember,” Ferguson said. “What I do remember is, we shot it sequentially, so we didn’t jump, which was everything. You got to go through the emotional arc of everything. We also had it set up with what we call The Brady Bunch: on my computer screen, I could see the grid of everyone, the vice president, the president, every single character in the film, including Gabriel [Basso], who’s running around, which was hilarious. All of those people were filming at the same time, so we had cameras on the computers, we had cameras in the room, and on action, everyone had their cue. I’ve never been on stage, but I can imagine that it was some form of a documentarian stage film, and it made it so accurate, so quickly and so present.”
Even now, so many months on from actually making the film, Ferguson is still buzzing over the many questions it asks. She doesn’t pretend to have the answers, but the questioning remains imperative to her. That’s what the film is about. That’s what the film does.
“I think the greater question is, how do we live in a world where nuclear threat and nuclear protection is the one to go to? Why is that an option at all?,” Ferguson said. “How do we not de-escalate the nuclear weapons that are around in the world? It’s mind-blowing. It’s also a conversation that has been going on. The fact that we’ve made a film? It’s not that something has changed radically right now, … but my understanding is we do not communicate about it [the way we did after the Cold War]. And this is what Kathryn’s doing: She’s bringing a topic to the table, to every household, to say, ‘Look at this. Look at where we’re living. We are living in a house of dynamite. Should we? Is this what we voted for? Is this what we should have?’”
Netflix will release “A House of Dynamite” in select theaters on Friday, October 10 and on its streaming platform on Friday, October 24.
English (US) ·