Daisy Ridley on playing dead in ‘I Think I’m Dying,’ being an introvert: ‘I’m like a grandma’
Daisy Ridley’s lifeless body is shown a few times in her new film “Sometimes I Think About Dying,” and no one’s more weirded out about that than her mom.
In the dramedy that premiered Thursday at Sundance Film Festival, the British actress plays a quiet office worker whose daydreams showcase creepy crawlies, snakes and sometimes her prone body lying corpse-like. While filming in chilly Oregon weather, “the main thing was like, ‘Oh, my God, how long can I keep my eyes open and not shiver?’ ” Ridley says. “It’s obviously quite haunting and when my mom watched the film, she was very emotional about it. I think to see one’s loved ones in that way onscreen is very, very strange.”
However, Ridley adds, her character Fran doesn’t want to die – and in fact finds a reason to exist when she meets a new co-worker. Instead, her freaky fantasies are “just a meditative being in a place she escapes to and she’s desperately trying to live. So it’s not painful. It’s peaceful in a way, and that was my experience of doing it, aside from trying to stay warm.”
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In addition to being the film’s star and resident “bug whisperer” – a bunch of insects that squirm all over Ridley in one scene “did behave very well around me” – the 30-year-old “Star Wars” alum is a producer on “Dying” as well as on the upcoming “fun, twisty and turny” psychological thriller “Magpie.” Ridley hatched the story idea for that film – about a mom of a child star pushed to her limits when an actress infiltrates her family – and her husband/fellow producer Tom Bateman wrote the screenplay. It’s “really the first time I’ve been truly on the ground from the beginning,” she says.
Before Ridley and Bateman start work on “Magpie” Monday, she checked in with USA TODAY on her way out of Park City, Utah, to talk “Dying,” her social life and being a better cinephile.
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Question: Have you ever struggled with Fran’s same social issues?
Answer: I don’t have the sort of depth of despair that Fran exhibits, but I know what it is to be in social situations and find it a little difficult. Or say something and think, “What the hell? I didn’t mean it like that. It came out wrong,” and lie in bed because I’m so worried about if other people think I was ill-intentioned.
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Are you back to your pre-pandemic social life of, say, when “The Rise of Skywalker” came out in late 2019?
It’s interesting because around that time I was only going out for work and then the January following, I didn’t see anyone. In general, it’s not like I was doing less than I actually usually would. It was just that sense of worldwide inability and despair that everyone felt. So much of my identity had been being at work and that is a really big social thing for me, to be around people who share in the process of making something together. It’s lovely to be back having that social outlet, but otherwise I’m not going out there much. I’m like a grandma. I’m not even joking, I have a crossword book that’s called “Grandma’s Book of Puzzles.” (Laughs.)
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Was “Magpie” a pandemic project for you and your husband?
He’s actually written a number of things and he’s a really good writer. He’s a big cinephile. The way he sees story and structure and everything is amazing. I’m hoping that people have a little appetite for what we are making.
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