Johansson received the script with Squibb attached. “I read it initially, because I was very interested to know what June Squibb wanted to star in, and what she was committing this time to,” Johansson says. “And I was so surprised by the script - it was tender and funny and also really moving, and it felt familiar to me.”
The story takes some surprising turns. Squibb’s Eleanor Morgenstein is a convert to Judaism who is first seen in the movie living in Florida with her best friend, Bessie, who is a Holocaust survivor.
June Squibb as Eleanor in Eleanor the Great. (Sony/TriStar Pictures)[Missing Credit]
When Bessie dies, Eleanor moves back to New York to live with her family. There, she encounters a Holocaust survivors’ group in a Jewish community centre. Before she knows what’s happening, she shares Bessie’s story as if it were her own.
“Eleanor does this almost unforgivable thing,” says Johansson, who is an Ashkenazi Jew with roots in Poland and Russia. “She tells the worst of lies. But by the end of the film, I hope you have empathy for her and are able to forgive, because you see that what she did came from a place of love and grief and loneliness.”
While the screenwriter was inspired by her own Jewish grandmother, Squibb’s own background mirrors that of Eleanor’s. She got married in her twenties and, in 1953, converted to Judaism. Her husband’s family didn’t expect this of her, but it felt meaningful for her. The marriage fell apart after seven years, but she remained a committed Jew, even during her second marriage to acting teacher Charles Kakatsakis, who was not Jewish. As Squibb recently told one newspaper, “I’m very pleased and proud to be able to say I’m Jewish.”
Where her and Eleanor’s history divides, of course, is when her character pretends to be a Holocaust survivor.
It gets worse when Eleanor’s fabricated story, and her intention to get a late-life bat mitzvah, draws the attention of Nina (Kellyman), a sprightly media student who wants to interview Eleanor. Coping with her own grief after the loss of her mother, Nina invests a great deal in Eleanor, despite their significant age gap.
Kellyman had her work cut out. “I didn’t grow up Jewish, so I had to learn a lot,” she says. Among others, she spoke to Nicole Brown, the president of the American film production company TriStar Pictures. “She’s black and Jewish, and she was really open to talking about her experiences.”
She also devoured documentaries: “One was about a very traditional Jewish family, but they were so open to their children asking questions about their religion… I’ve not come across that in other faiths that I’ve either researched or grown up with. It was very special.”
June Squibb and Erin Kellyman in Eleanor the Great. (Sony/TriStar Pictures)[Missing Credit]
For Johansson, the film’s “message of forgiveness” is its most abiding.
“Of course there are other themes: Jewish identity, and the distinction between truth and reality, the importance of holding the Holocaust stories and passing them on. But I think the message of forgiveness is the most important and also the most useful.”
Johansson has worked with some remarkable film-makers in her time, including the Coen Brothers (The Man Who Wasn’t There), Jonathan Glazer (Under The Skin) and Christopher Nolan (The Prestige). This may account for why she chose the esteemed French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, whose work includes such award-winners as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter and Sarah Gavron’s Rocks, to shoot hers.
“I’ve never asked a cinematographer to work on anything before,” says Johansson. “I didn’t know what the conversation was supposed to be, exactly. What do you say? ‘I love you. Please do this for $0!’
“It was crazy. [Louvart] was in Israel, and it was October… the attacks had just happened, and she was there prepping a film, and everything was obviously completely chaotic, and she was trying to figure out what was going to happen,” Johansson says.
As they talked on the phone, with Louvart taking shelter in her hotel room, it turned out to be a vital conversation for Johansson, as she realised Eleanor’s story resonated.
“Of course, she knew she had to get back to Paris. She was like, ‘Well, if I get out, I would love to do the film.’ And she connected so deeply with the Eleanor character, because it reminded her of her mom so much,” Johansson says. “And it was like, ‘Oh, this movie translates.’”
It also made Johansson think about a now-lost era of indie movie-making.
“What I loved about this project is that it had these elements of independent films from the Nineties into the early Noughties that were very New York-centric… these very character-driven stories,” she says. “I think inadvertently, in my film, there are probably some pieces of Crossing Delancey, Living Out Loud, or certain Woody Allen movies.” (Johansson worked with Allen three times, on Match Point, Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona).
Scarlett Johansson at the 2019 premier of Jojo Rabbit. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)Getty Images
Of course, Johansson was always taking a risk with a story that plays light with its subject matter. The Guardian called the film “misjudged and naive about the implications of its Holocaust theme”, although others will surely disagree.
In the past, Johansson has taken similar risks that paid off, starring in Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, a comedy about a German boy in the Hitler Youth. Johansson played his mother, who is hiding a Jewish girl in the family home. While that was a project that could’ve upset some, the role won Johansson the first of her two Oscar nominations of her career (the second came for the blistering, brilliant Marriage Story).
The 41-year-old – who made her film acting debut over three decades ago in the 1994 comedy North – evidently sees humour, however bleak the subject, as a tonic. In the case of Eleanor the Great, “even some of the terrible parts of it are also funny. June has insane comedic timing.”
Squibb, who even learnt a portion of the Torah for her role, admits she is surprised by this late-life spotlight that Eleanor the Great has given her. After receiving an Oscar nomination for 2013’s Alexander Payne movie Nebraska, in which she played the wife to Bruce Dern’s ageing father, Squibb found a lead, finally, in the 2024 action-comedy Thelma, playing a Jewish grandma who goes on a revenge mission after being scammed.
Following this with Eleanor the Great has left her surprised. “It’s nothing that I expected,” she says. “I thought, my God, two films about a 90-year-old. So it was very exciting to feel that I was a part of this, that this was going to happen. And I think it’s amazing.
“Before this film, I never thought about the implications of having a leading role, even though every role I ever played was the leading one of that film. But with this film I now see now the importance and the responsibility that comes with that,” says Squibb.
Rita Zohar, left, and June Squibb in Eleanor the Great. (Sony/TriStar)[Missing Credit]
Johansson – who is married to Saturday Night Live co-head writer Colin Jost, with whom has two young children – also feels more at ease in her new role, one she has carved out for herself.
“I don’t think I would have felt comfortable asking people for any money to direct something ten years ago. But now I felt capable of handling the responsibility of directing film. So the film is, in a way, very much a representation of where I am in my life now.”
There is talk of her returning to the comic-book world, with the trade press reporting that she is currently eyeing up a juicy role in the forthcoming Caped Crusader adventure The Batman: Part II, alongside Robert Pattinson. Does she harbour dreams of directing a blockbuster one day?
“They all come with their own challenges,” she says, deflecting the question. If she does, it would be a major step up. But Scarlett the Great looks more than up to the task.
Eleanor the Great is in cinemas from December 12
