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| The Uninvited |
Nadia Conners' comedic drama, The Uninvited, revolves around Rose (Elizabeth Reaser), a former actress and stay-at-home mom, and her husband Sammy (Walton Goggins), a talent agent. The film opens amid preparations for the party they are hosting in their Hollywood Hills home, where the couple, who are getting ready upstairs, exchange humorous and snide quips. When the elderly Helen (Lois Smith) turns up on their doorstep claiming she lives there, Rose triples her duties. She tries to play hostess, find out who Helen is and return her home safely, while trying to get her son to stay put in bed. Meanwhile, the arrival of the guests, including Gerald (Rufus Sewell) and Lucien (Pedro Pascal), brings with them enough drama to fill the night.
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| The Uninvited |
The Univited is produced by Rosie Fellner, founder of independent production company Rosebud Pictures. She is a co-executive producer on Bryn Chainley's Welsh set horror, Rabbit Trap (2025), and produced the short film Leni. Leni. (2016), in which the infamous Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl journeys inward to confront her own darkness while preparing for a television interview. Fellner's onscreen credits include the BBC comedy sketch series, The Fast Show (1994-2014), political drama The Alan Clarke Diaries (2004), and the period miniseries A Small Light (2023), about Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who courageously sheltered Anne Frank and her family.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Fellner discussed the rise of short-form content and its impact, keeping the ensemble cast of The Univited on their toes, and why she believes storytelling endures.
Paul Risker: It's not only independent films that are struggling nowadays. The tough times have caught up with mainstream cinema. From your producer's point-of-view, what are the causes of these struggles?
Rosie Fellner: It's an amalgamation of so many things and I think it's almost impossible to make movies. But loads of things have happened, and it's all hit this point that hit the music industry a decade ago, when they had to find a new way of existing.
One thing is that the streamers were ordering a lot of content because it was all a new thing, then suddenly they had all this data, and they knew what they needed, and they didn't actually need to make as much. So, that's one source of revenue that is gone. Also, our brains have been addled over the last ten years — it's a whole generation of short-form content because that's the way we consume things now. We don't have as much desire to sit and watch full-length movies. Then, the state of finance and funding. Also, the number of different platforms and ways there are to watch movies, and the size of our screens at home. And the fact that we can watch anything whenever we want, there's no urgency to go and watch something whilst it's at the cinema. And you know, we're always… [imitates messaging and browsing on the phone].
There are so many factors that have all hit and crunched the ability to make independent movies or even bigger movies. There's just less money, and so, you're going to have to make the same quality of films on smaller budgets and that's just what always happens. It's always smaller, smaller, smaller. So, everybody is paid less to the point where it's like a hobby, not a job.
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| The Uninvited |
But on a positive note, being an independent producer is always about being tenacious and finding that route and finding the crack to go through. So, if all the big movies are being pulled out of here and have to go back to Hollywood, then we can make little movies. There'll be that opportunity and it's about finding those opportunities. Now, I'm prepping a movie that I'll be shooting in Sunderland, with the University and using the local community, which helps with the budget for the locations and accommodation. And it also helps bring production to the area. So, there are ways. You've just got to find them and think outside the box.
PR: I find myself feeling the effects of short content on my concentration span and try to detox from platforms such as YouTube to counter these effects. With the increase in streaming services and the amount of content being produced by platforms such as YouTube, it's not surprising that films are now being called 'content'. It is, however, our responsibility to nurture the value of any art form and take responsibility for our consumption habits.
RF: I'm always an optimist. I've got to be, otherwise I couldn't continue. I'm hoping that it's going to be interesting again for us, because it will not be the norm. So, hopefully the next generation are going to discover that love for themselves, where watching a full movie will be like something new.
But it's hard not to be disheartened when you're making movies, and you go to the cinema, and it's empty. Or you look at your life, and you think, how often is it possible for me to get to the cinema and watch somebody else's movie? And it's expensive for people too, and if you're parents, you've got to pay a babysitter.
I get that it's tough, and when there is an opportunity to watch films in other ways, it's hard not to. But I hope that it's gonna become a thing that's admired again, where you will be able to digest and explore a film, and be more learned again by the whole experience.
And I find myself being dragged down into it all, where I'll realise that I've eaten up 40 minutes by picking up my phone and looking for something on Instagram. I feel like I've just eaten junk food — I feel awful about myself, and my time has been lost. But I cannot stop myself from doing it — it's a weird place that we find ourselves in as a society.
PR: Bringing the conversation around to The Uninvited, how did you become involved in this project, and what compelled you to want to tell this story?
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| The Uninvited |
RF: Well, Nadia Conners, the writer, director, and I are friends. We nearly got another movie that she wrote up, a western, and then, as they do, it didn't happen. Then she pitched me this idea based on something that happened to her. She was having a party and this old lady turned up at the house thinking that she lived there.
Nadia decided to write it as a play, and we did a lot of readings. Of course, it spoke to me hugely because I was living in LA. I was an actress, I had just turned 40, and I'd just had a baby. The script was very meta for me, and anyway, it was going to go on as a play in London and then the pandemic hit. We thought it was the end of the world and theatre would never be revived. So, we developed it into a film and then, after the pandemic, we just decided we were gonna do this, by hook or by crook. We put a sort of stake in the ground, and we said we were gonna shoot it in June. And as they say, if you give a job to a mother, they'll get it done.
PR: It's interesting that The Uninvited started out as a play because throughout it had the feel of a staged production. There are similarities and differences between the two forms, which would undoubtedly have presented challenges in changing tact.
RF: The challenge was to cut the monologues, because in a play you have a lot more of them. There was this very juicy, witty dialogue that was so delicious, but it just doesn't work on film, and still, even as a film, it's very talky. But I like that because I like to be able to watch something over and over again and each time get more out of it and catch the bits that I missed.
It is mostly shot in one location, which is something we didn't need to change because that's what it's about. There's what's going on in the outside world, but you're stuck inside. And that's interesting to explore, because what you imagine is always better, and so, I love that in a film.
PR: From the outset, the quick-fire back-and-forth banter grabs our attention and as the story unfolds with a frenetic pacing, it feels as if we're swept up in the chaos of this party.
RF: I hope so, and I'm glad you say that because, yes, that's definitely what Nadia wanted to achieve. It's like being at that party and there are these narcissistic, nutty characters and then these three women at the heart of it, as well as three different generations.
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| The Uninvited |
PR: The film tries to genuinely capture the messiness of relationships and encounters and put them into a tidier narrative structure. The danger of this tightrope walk is the consistency of the film's tone.
RF: It's true, and it is difficult, and that's why the upbeat comedic music in the beginning was important to say you're allowed to laugh – that this is fun as well. But then there are parts when it's a real punch in the stomach, and it's really heart-wrenching and sad. The space you play between genres is where the magic happens, and this film also has this mythical and magical side to it. And life can also be like that.
We can all be in the same place experiencing the same thing, but on totally different levels. If you're somebody who believes in magic and experiences something mythical, then that's what you're gonna take from it. And if you're somebody superficial who wants to talk about the weather, you'll do the same thing. So, for me, the film articulates that it's about what you want to experience.
PR: You've assembled an impressive ensemble cast, and Walton Goggins, off the back of season three of Mike White's The White Lotus, has become, to borrow a phrase from the publicity, 'super famous'. I find this odd when Goggins has proven himself time and again to be one of the best actors for well over a decade. I'd be remiss not to ask you about the film's casting.
RF: Yes, it's interesting, especially when you're on a tight schedule. We shot it in 15 days, and we didn't have the luxury of rehearsal time. They did some phone calls and zooms, and Nadia worked with them in that way, but there was no in-person work. But saying that Elizabeth Reaser has done a lot of theatre, and she has worked with and has known Pedro for many years. Goggins, as you say, is just an incredible actor. But they all knew each other, and so, they had relationships to bounce off of and find that spark. And Nadia wrote this script with a picture of Lois on her wall. So, when Lois said she would do it, it was just a dream — talk about movie magic. And Rufus, he's just brilliant.
We knew that we had all these brilliant characters and these talented actors, and a juicy script. I feel like we got really darn lucky and just watching them make it all come to life and find that spark was amazing. And sometimes that lack of time is a good thing because it keeps everybody on their toes. It is almost like doing a play where you don't have a chance to get it wrong – everybody was word-perfect.
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| The Uninvited |
Rufus' wife picked him up from the airport and dropped him off on set. We put him in a suit and off he went. The schedules were really tight; everybody was in demand, and we had only a certain number of days with each person. So, we had to jigsaw puzzle that together and throw them all in the deep end. And yeah, what an ensemble.
PR: Going back to my earlier point about how the audience is swept up in the chaos, I question whether you're likely to be more attentive to the themes and ideas in hindsight.
RF; I think you're right. A lot of people that have watched it have said to me, you digest it and the next day you end up really thinking about it. And that's important for a film, especially if you have gone to the cinema. It's not only about having a great popcorn experience but having something to turn over in your mind.
I've watched the film a lot of times, obviously [laughs]. I'm always surprised that I can watch it, and I can see it as somebody else's story. I think it's definitely Lois' story, and then I'll think it's Rose's or Sammy's story. So, you can find the character that you most relate to or the situation that fits where you are in your life and follow that through. I think that's one of the lovely things here, and I often think about how, when you go to watch a film, it's all about expectation and mood. You could love a film one day and hate a film the next day, because it's about where you're at personally when you're watching it. The experience is so subjective.
PR: There are always gaps in our memory, as you say, because a film stimulates us, which means our mind will inevitably wander off to other places. But also, we go back and forth between a suspension of disbelief and a critical point of view. The way we engage with cinema makes it a fascinating medium.
RF: Yeah, the actual medium of watching a movie is really interesting. And that's why I have hope that it will revive because at the end of the day speech was invented so that we wouldn't feel alone and we could gossip over the garden fence. And actually, it really was. We didn't need speech for survival; we needed speech for entertainment. So, it's just the human condition that we want to share experience, and we want to share stories. And that's why I'm a great believer that we will continue watching movies.
The Uninvited was released in UK cinemas on May 9th. You can find more information here.
