Summer is traditionally blockbuster season, but audiences have something fresh with the introduction of 2024’s action hero: a 90-something scooter-driving grandmother on a revenge mission in Thelma.
For her first – and long overdue – lead role, Oscar nominee June Squibb, 94, has been given a part that allows comparisons to Tom Cruise, as well as the chance for stunts and to perform the mega movie cliché of walking away from an explosion in slow motion.
And it’s something prolific character actress Squibb, who has worked with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Julianne Moore and Al Pacino, takes in her still-sprightly stride.
For Thelma, written and directed by Josh Margolin after his real-life grandmother was almost scammed out of $10,000 (£7,750), Squibb embraced the challenge of doing her own stunt work.
‘I sort of always go into it with the attitude of I can do anything,’ she tells me with a smile over Zoom, in a chat with Margolin and actor Fred Hechinger, who plays her onscreen grandson Danny.
‘A lot of it like the scooter was great fun to do, to ride around with [co-star] Richard [Roundtree] behind me all the time. It was wonderful! And the other stunts were fun.’
It sounds like Squibb wasn’t fazed at all by the challenge of wrangling a motorised scooter – and often at great speed – as well as the, quite frankly, bad-ass stand-off at the climax of the movie.
Up Next
‘For me, I started out as a dancer and so physicality is a part of what I’ve always done in the theatre, so it just seemed right to do it all,’ she shrugs.
It’s always a privilege to be granted someone’s time for an interview, but it feels particularly special to get the chance to talk with Squibb.
Squibb is a true industry veteran, having been acting since the 1950s, where she performed in regional theatre ahead of making her Broadway debut in the original 1959 production of Gypsy with Ethel Merman.
She made her big screen debut in Woody Allen’s 1990 film Alice appearing in the likes of Scent of a Woman, The Age of Innocence, Meet Joe Black and About Schmidt.
The star has been truly prolific in the past 20 years or so, racking up credits in TV shows including Curb Your Enthusiasm, Glee, The Big Bang Theory, Shameless and Grey’s Anatomy, as well as earning her first Academy Award nod for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska in 2014 and joining Disney’s roster of voice talent.
As well as the positive reception Thelma has been getting – it’s currently on a remarkable score of 99% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes – Squibb also has a scene-stealing cameo in box office champion Inside Out 2 as Nostalgia.
So how it feel having her moment, and being lauded as the action star of the summer?
‘We’re all just so giddy with what’s happened to the film, that people are loving it so. And I think that the action [hero label] is so funny because it is an action film and we’re very proud of that – and that’s what you should see in the summer.’
‘So it’s all very perfect for us, really,’ she observes, laughing when I point her competition .
For Thelma, Squibb and Hechinger – soon to be seen in Gladiator II – are joined by a starry supporting cast including late Shaft actor Richard Roundtree, Malcolm McDowell, Parker Posey and Clark Gregg.
In the movie, Thelma and grandson Danny share a close bond, with the rather lost 20-something tasked with keeping an eye on his independent grandmother by his anxious parents as he struggles to decide what to do with his life.
‘I don’t feel young,’ complains Danny at one point, to which Thelma quips: ‘Well I don’t feel old.’
When a scammer calls, posing as Danny and telling her he’s been arrested and needs money, she falls for the con and posts thousands of dollars to a PO box across the city.
Will you be going to watch this iconic nonagenarian this summer?Comment Now
However, hell hath no fury like a pensioner scorned, for when she’s told that nothing can be done by the FBI, Thelma sets off on her own mission ‘possible’ – inspired by Tom Cruise – to recover the cash, wrangling transport, an accomplice and a gun along the way.
There’s also a truly genius line of communication set up between Roundtree’s Ben and Thelma thanks to phone apps connected to their hearing aids.
Hechinger reveals that he has a tough critic in his own grandmother, who inspired his love of movies in childhood and he thought of while making Thelma.
‘She always wants to be invited to every movie that we go see but some of them, she’s like, “I love movies, but I don’t like this one”.
‘I definitely wanted to make something that I feel that she would love and that I could watch with her as well.’
I can’t resist mining Hechinger for any information I can get from him about Gladiator II, where he plays Emperor Caracalla alongside brother and co-ruler Geta (Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn).
It turns out that’s very little, but he does concede that he’s ‘a real different fella, for sure’ to the lovable and slightly passive Danny.
As I suggest that Caracalla is unlikely to be thinking such nice thoughts about his grandmother, Hechinger jokes: ‘You know, I think I can spoil it here. Caracalla’s grandmother, unfortunately, does not appear in Gladiator II.’
‘They’re very, very different characters,’ he adds. ‘But I think that’s the great joy, is playing people who are completely different. That’s the goal. When you play someone, you want to do it so fully that then the next time you could play an opposite person and do that fully.’
I ask Hechinger and Margolin what they learned from working with someone as experienced (and delightful) as Squibb on Thelma.
‘It’s funny, I find it’s hard to put into words because it’s this kind of practical ingenuity and focus and magic,’ Hechinger says. ‘Just collaborating and being in the presence of that is something that was very deeply inspiring. I gained so much insight into acting and also into life by doing this film.’
‘It is hard to put into words sometimes,’ agrees Margolin, adding that he ‘felt like I learned so much but it was all incepted into my brain very subtly’.
However, Squibb is a ‘consummate pro’ in his eyes, who dazzled him with her impressive preparation.
‘She studied everything so meticulously and came to set so even and calm and focused, and still herself, lovely to be around, and then also really zeroed in when we were working in a way where I could watch her put her energies into what needed energy and not put her energy into what didn’t need energy.’
Margolin observes that that comes with the territory of ‘honing a craft’ over years of experience and a lengthy career like Squibb’s.
‘You’re looking to find that balance of discipline and focus and also authenticity and ease. And she makes that look easy, which is a very impressive feat and something I think about often,’ he shares.
For Squibb, every role and set is still a learning experience for her, too.
‘I always feel that when I’m going into a job that I hopefully will come out of it a better actor, a better person maybe even – and God knows I did that with this!’ she laughs.
She calls Thelma’s script ‘one of the best I’ve ever worked on’, which coming from someone who’s acted for over 70 years is high praise indeed, as well as describing the film as ‘a joy to make’.
Squibb agrees that there’s also been a change in terms of more parts being available for older actors in recent years.
‘I think it’s sort of in our whole culture – I think there’s more of an interest in ageing, and I think it’s shifting to the films,’ she comments, before pointing that she’s just wrapped ‘another film [playing a] 90-year-old’.
This is Scarlett Johansson’s feature directorial debut Eleanor the Great about a 90-year-old Floridian woman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 19-year-old student in New York City. It will be her second lead role.
She also namechecks Ellen Burstyn, 91, as being booked and busy after last year’s The Exorcist: Believer and with other projects on the horizon.
‘So I mean, it’s there, it’s happening,’ Squibb adds of the ‘kind of wonderful’ fact that these sorts of parts are being written now.
For Margolin, the filmmaker explains it was a pretty eye-opening movie to pitch because it was hard ‘in some ways’ but also ‘kind of the easiest pitch I’ve ever dealt with’.
‘It cut through things quickly in terms of if people were on board, they were really on board, and if people were not on board, they were quickly not on board,’ he reveals.
‘I think because there aren’t that many movies made with actors at the helm who are in their 80s and 90s – and especially ones with kind of an action tilt – it just kind of cut through the BS pretty quickly, to put it simply.’
Squibb admits she never really considered in the past if she’d still be working at her age – but it’s the quality of what she’s being offered that keeps her saying yes.
‘It’s truly just the scripts that I receive that [decide] if I want to do it.’
‘People keep saying, “Well, how long are you going to do this?” I have no idea, I have no idea at all. I guess as long as a script comes along and looks interesting and I can do it on my knees, I’ll be saying to say yes to it!’ she laughs.
Before we part, I ponder with Squibb who else in Hollywood might still be working in their 90s like her in the future.
Seeing as he pops up in Thelma, I suggest Tom Cruise as someone with a similar drive to her.
‘That’s true! I think he would try it anyway.’
Thelma is in cinemas from Friday, July 19.
Got a story?
If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.
MORE : Cheng Pei-pei, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star, dies of rare disease aged 78
MORE : More Hollywood stars come forward confirming ‘we don’t wear deodorant’
MORE : Bianca Censori forgets trousers and flashes bum at posh dinner with Kanye West
