ANTONIA DESPLAT ON “MODI,” WORKING WITH JOHNNY DEPP AND AL PACINO, AND HER CREATIVE JOURNEY
Antonia Desplat brings fierce emotional intelligence to her latest role as feminist writer and poet Beatrice Hastings in Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness, Johnny Depp’s first directorial project in two decades, co-starring Hollywood legend Al Pacino. The film, which premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival, follows three turbulent days in the life of painter Amedeo Modigliani and his circle of artists and muses in early 20th-century Paris.
Raised in France in a highly creative household — her father is Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat, and her mother a violinist and conductor — Antonia grew up immersed in music before pursuing acting in the UK. Fluent in both French and English amongst a number of other languages, she’s carving out a singular space for herself in film and television internationally as an actress and producer, with credits ranging from Wes Anderson’s films to BBC dramas, Apple TV’s Shantaram, and upcoming projects on Netflix and Canal+.
In this exclusive conversation with UNTITLED’s Indira Cesarine, she opens up about her upbringing, her wide-ranging career, the feminist legacy of Beatrice Hastings, and what it was like working with Johnny Depp and Al Pacino on Modi, as well as what’s next for her creatively.
You can listen to the full conversation now on The UNTITLED Podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major streaming platforms.
Read on for the interview below, with portraits of Antonia Desplat by Jemima Marriot, photographed in London, UK, for The Untitled Magazine.
Indira Cesarine: I would love to get a little bit of insight into your upbringing. You’ve had quite an international background. You were born in France and you studied in England. Tell me a little bit about what life was like at home. I know your father, the acclaimed composer Alexandre Desplat, has worked on countless award-winning film productions and has received two Academy Awards, three Césars, as well as two Grammys. What was life like at home as a child in such a creative environment?
Antonia Desplat: It was very crafty and arty, and we had a very detailed, intense musical upbringing. I studied music theory at the Conservatoire. I did ballet at the Conservatoire, guitar, violin, piano, singing — both chorus and solo singing. I even went to a school where I would attend regular classes in the morning and then go to music school in the afternoon.
I think that shaped the way I work for sure, and how thorough I try to be when approaching any type of work. For me, rehearsals are something I really value — which I think any musician values immensely. And I was very lucky to have parents who allowed me to express myself in whatever way felt right. They encouraged me to just be the crazy performing child that I wanted to be.
Indira Cesarine: What inspired you to pursue acting in the UK? I know that you studied at the Drama Centre in London and East 15 Acting School. What brought you to England instead of staying in France to study your craft?
Antonia Desplat: Well, I really love Shakespeare, and I love British cinema. I think British actors are trained incredibly well and incredibly thoroughly. Looking into drama schools in the UK, I saw a very similar way of approaching work to classical conservatory training, and I was really enticed by that.
But I didn’t speak very good English, so I asked my parents if they could somehow find a way to send me to the UK to finish my baccalaureate, my final two years of school. It took them a while to be okay with the idea, but after a year, they sent me off when I was just about to turn 16. I finished school there, learned English as much as I could, and then did the drama school auditions. I got into the ones I wanted and worked really, really hard for four years. I’m so glad — it was the best decision I could have ever made.
Indira Cesarine: I understand you also studied music as a child before pursuing acting. Did you ever imagine following in your father’s footsteps, being that he’s such a celebrated composer? Or was acting always your true love?
Antonia Desplat: No, never. My mom is also a classical violin player and an orchestra conductor. Never. If anything, I ran away as far as I could. The second I went to England, I stopped touching music for a few years because it had been so military and regimented, and I just thought, give me a break! Music was everything that I was fed for so many years, and I think I just needed to break free from that.
Then, during COVID, I found my love for playing and singing again. But I needed that distance from the rigidity of it all. So no, I definitely did not want to be a musician. If anything, maybe a singer — a jazz singer — but definitely not a musician.
Indira Cesarine: I could see that. It’s interesting because your father was a composer, and he worked with a lot of notable directors like Wes Anderson, etc. You were probably influenced by being around that environment. I understand you knew Wes Anderson since you were a child, and then you later were featured in two of his productions. Tell me a little bit about some of these film roles that you initially got involved with. I understand you’ve done everything from historical dramas to horror films to Wes Anderson’s very unique and cinematically dramatic productions – his work is so unique!
Antonia Desplat: I think for me, as long as there’s something new in every role that I do, that’s what really excites me. If it’s an interesting emotional journey and an interesting arc to the character, that’s what draws me, which is why I’ve done such different types of work, including the horror thing.
With the horror role, for example, I was like, okay, I’m going to spend four or five hours in prosthetics every day. My face is going to change, my demeanor is going to change, and I’m going to be a witch — which is really fun. I never wanted to be boxed into the cage of either being the French girl, the Italian girl, or the Mediterranean girl that steals the husband.
So for me, to be able to play a witch who’s been completely disfigured, raped by a bishop for being a witch, and then comes back for her revenge — I thought, yeah, that feels great, that feels fun to play. In France, I’ve also played a very strict fashion boss of a massive company like Hermès, where she’s very severe, she’s the mistress, she’s destroyed a marriage. She’s the “bad person” who turns out good in the end.
I just try to find characters that are different. In Modi I play a British woman, which I’ve never done before. She’s a muse, a writer, a poet, and a journalist. She’s interested in so many things, she’s a chameleon, a sort of mysterious, enigmatic woman — a femme fatale you never quite grasp.
I’m also about to play a mom who loses her child. I wrote a film about a mother who loses her child to stillbirth. These are stories that feel challenging and interesting to play. I like a challenge!
Indira Cesarine: Yeah, that is an actress’s dream — to have a film that’s a challenge, where she’s not just playing a pretty face but actually has something to work with.
Talk a little bit about Modi, which is obviously Johnny Depp’s passion project and his first directorial film in two decades. I understand he was originally going to star in the movie, which Al Pacino was set to direct. I was reading a bit about the background of this film and how long it took to bring it to production. It’s really a fascinating story. And you played the famed feminist writer and poet Beatrice Hastings, who was quite a fabulous woman.
Antonia Desplat: Yes, she was.
Indira Cesarine: She was very interesting. Tell me about your role in the film and give us an overview of what the movie’s about.
Antonia Desplat: Modigliani: Three Days on the Wing of Madness is an anti-biopic covering 72 hours in the life of Modigliani — the painter — but also Soutine, Utrillo, and Beatrice Hastings. It’s a peek into the everyday life of this man. It’s not trying to cover his entire life story.
The film tries to catch the essence of what it was like to live in that time, to be a rejected, tortured artist surrounded by war, incredibly sick, and suffering hallucinations due to a very specific type of tuberculosis. I think it’s very interesting to make a film about a particular artist, but not do a traditional biopic — instead, to capture the human essence of these people. And I think the film does that incredibly well.
Indira Cesarine: Tell me a little bit about your role and how that evolved with regard to the relationship with the main character. I understand the real Beatrice Hastings was painted many times by Modi, which was the artist’s nickname, and was his muse, and they had quite a passionate relationship.
Antonia Desplat: Yeah, very fiery, definitely. She’s a fascinating woman, to be honest. She was very ahead of her time — very avant-garde, educated, and she traveled all around the world, which was quite surprising for women at that time.
She was a feminist. She was very anti women being used as breeders in society, and she wanted to fight for the intellectual positioning of women. She wrote for a journal called The New Age, which was based in London. She was sent to Paris to write about the great artists there, and she also became somewhat of a war correspondent.
Because she couldn’t always find her place in society, she created many aliases for her writing so that her pieces could be placed in certain contexts where, if people knew it was her, they wouldn’t have been published. For me, she’s incredible — a chameleon who kept trying to adapt and change herself in order to find her place, and she kept getting rejected. She didn’t get the recognition she deserved.
What’s even more tragic is that to this day, she still doesn’t really have the recognition she should. Modigliani, even though he died early and was rejected throughout his career, at least now his paintings are worth 147 million in some cases.
Modigliani ended up not seeing the recognition that he deserved during his lifetime, but it did eventually come. Whereas Beatrice Hastings — nobody knows who she is. She wrote a book called Women’s Worst Enemy, Woman, which was basically along the lines of Virginia Woolf or The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. It’s so sad to know she never got recognized. I managed to find some of her writings in a book I bought on eBay from South Africa — it included diaries, articles, and poems. She’s a fascinating writer and so talented.
Indira Cesarine: I was actually trying to buy one of her books — the one you just mentioned, Women’s Worst Enemy, Woman — and it’s only available in Italian. I couldn’t believe there isn’t an English translation of such an important work of feminist literature, especially as it was written well before many of the great titles. In any case, she was definitely a pioneer.
Antonia Desplat: Yeah.
Indira Cesarine: So what was it like working with Johnny Depp as a director? Tell me a little bit about what it was like on set with him.
Antonia Desplat: He’s wonderful! It can be intimidating to work with one of the most famous and talented actors of your century — he’s one of my biggest idols. But he never made me feel uncomfortable or positioned himself above anyone. He treated everybody equally, from the crew to the makeup team to his actors. That says so much about his personality, especially when you’re Johnny Depp.
Sometimes when you meet your idol, you can be disappointed if they’re self-absorbed. But Johnny is nothing like that. He’s generous, sensitive, and supportive of everyone around him. It was like having a cheerleader on set, always wanting you to have fun, to feel comfortable, to feel welcome, to feel wanted. He treated me a bit like his daughter, in a really caring way; he calls me “kiddo.” He knew how much this meant to me. I cried when he offered me the part. Honestly, it was such a dream come true to work with him.
I call this project an “artistic blast” because he listened to everything — whether it was research I brought in or an idea for a scene that wasn’t on the page. He would take it all in, and the next day he’d show up with a new draft incorporating those elements. We could still add things, ad-lib, improvise, and take the scene in new directions. For me, that’s the true definition of a wonderful artistic collaboration.
Indira Cesarine: What was the casting process like? I understand he was quite impressed by your English accent.
Antonia Desplat: I don’t even think it was my British accent. He said that one day someone wheeled in a screen while he was painting, and he heard my voice and said, “Put it back.” I think it was more the tone of my voice. I tried to capture the essence of Beatrice in the tape.
They wanted me to send a video of an old tape with a British accent, which I didn’t really want to do, so I taped the film scenes instead. A week later, I got an email saying, “You have a Zoom with Mr. Depp.” And when you see on your phone “Zoom: Depp, Desplat” — I was like, sorry, what? The Zoom lasted nearly two hours, and we really got on.
And so many things got me so excited about this part. I’m from Montparnasse — I grew up in that world in the ’90s. I grew up in Brancusi’s studio, which Modigliani would’ve frequented because he was one of his disciples. Modigliani had even written a letter to Brancusi at our address — we’ve always had a copy of it in our house.
Through research, I found out that Beatrice was living one number away from my childhood home when she was in Paris. In her diary, she mentions Brancusi living right beneath her flat. I told all of this to Johnny — for me it felt like “underground rivers” aligning, everything connecting to bring us to this project.
Johnny also had the rights to Shantaram for many years, and I did Shantaram with Apple TV, so we had a lot to talk about. After that first Zoom, I did a screen test, then another Zoom with him, where he offered me the part himself. My team already knew, but nobody told me — I was dying for three weeks, not sleeping, just dying to get this part! And then, after a night shoot, I had another Zoom with Johnny where he officially gave me the role. I was like — what?!
Indira Cesarine: It’s amazing — so many personal connections to the role. It feels like a synergy, like it was meant to happen. I understand the film takes place over an intense 72-hour timeframe in Modi’s life. Johnny has said the film is really about the madness of genius. Tell me a little bit about the intensity of being on set, the energy you were tapping into. Was it quite a magical experience? The film has such a unique way of presenting the story — it really draws you in, being in that time, with the mix of black-and-white footage, and there’s a playfulness to it as well.
Antonia Desplat: Yeah, and I think he wanted it to be funny. In every dark side, there are always people who manage to turn it into comedy, and I think he really wanted that to come through. The Chaplin-esque vignettes are wonderful — they capture exactly what he envisioned for the film.
It was just a joy being on set. Everyone involved was A-class in their field. Penny Rose, our costume designer, is an absolute genius — the clothes helped me step right into the attitude of the character. Dave Warren, our set designer, created these beautiful sets and chose timeless locations that felt perfect for the story. And then Dariusz Wolski shot everything like a painting, one frame after another. When you’re surrounded by that level of artistry, you step into the world and it just comes alive around you.
That’s why all these people are such an important part of our performances too — and I don’t think they’re credited enough in the film world. On top of that, being on set was the funniest experience ever. We laughed so much!
I would go to set every day, whether I was working or not, for three months. Maybe not every single night shoot, but most days I was there. I’d sit by the producers and by Johnny, watching him shape a scene from the beginning to the final take, watching him redirect things, and just laughing. It was such a joyful experience. I’ve made wonderful friends and I hope to work many, many more times with this production company — this gang that I adore. It was truly a blast. There was so much respect, joy, and passion from every single department, which is rare. No egos, no bad behavior.
Indira Cesarine: What was it like working with Al Pacino? He had a relatively short time on screen, but an important role in the film.
Antonia Desplat: His part rounds up the entire message of the film — the whole movie, really. Just to have my name on paper in the same project as Al Pacino is another pinch-me moment. He didn’t shoot in Budapest; he shot in LA. That restaurant scene was filmed there.
But I met him last summer, and now every time I’m in LA, we try to meet once a week for dinner if I’m there for a few weeks. It’s wonderful, because once again, one of your idols is right opposite you and they don’t disappoint. You just want to exchange and hear their stories. That’s what’s incredible with these people — Johnny worked with Marlon Brando so much and was very good friends with him, and hearing all those stories, and then listening to Al Pacino’s stories of starting out in New York, struggling in theater, not getting roles… and then reading his book, which is fantastic. If you haven’t read it, it’s amazing. He was The Godfather — and apparently nobody wanted him apart from the director, and he almost got kicked out of the film because they didn’t think he had “it.” For me, all of this is a dream. My inner child is screaming in those moments, and then I have to remind myself: okay, adult Antonia, keep it cool.
Indira Cesarine: Yeah, he’s pretty incredible. I had the opportunity to meet him in London years ago. He was such an interesting, cool guy. He’s actually very much like how he is in his films — quite dramatic.
Antonia Desplat: I think he’s quite humble, actually.
Indira Cesarine: But his personality resonates through — he has that internal power.
In any case, Modi is currently playing in cinemas in the UK and it’s slated for release in the US. You also have a lot of other productions coming out, including The Sandman on Netflix, The Sandman 2, and The Gold on the BBC. Can you share details about some of your upcoming projects that haven’t released yet?
Antonia Desplat: They’re all coming out this month. In France, there was a TV show called Plaine Orientale for Canal+, which is about the Corsican mafia. It explores the differences between Corsicans and Arabs, with neither finding their place and fighting over territories — something that resonates a lot with what’s happening in the world right now.
And then there’s The Gold, season two of this wonderful true story about a gold heist in England. Tom Cullen is the lead, and I play his mistress who ruins his marriage — though I’m not the only reason his marriage falls apart. It’s a really great show with an amazing cast on the BBC.
Then in The Sandman I only have a small cameo. I play Persephone, and as a Greek person I thought, okay, this is my calling. I’ll sit on a massive throne for two days and be Persephone — why not? That was fun.
I’ve also got the horror film I mentioned earlier coming out in theaters in the US in August — Witchboard, a remake of the original Witchboard. Chuck Russell, who directed The Mask, directed it. It was a lot of fun because I’ve never played a mean witch coming back for revenge before.
And now I’m going back to set in September for some very exciting stuff, which I’m really happy about.
Indira Cesarine: That’s cool — you’re on a roll! Quite a lot of productions coming out in one year, back to back, and it’s quite varied. You’re not pigeonholing yourself into just historical dramas or one genre. It really shows your range.
Antonia Desplat: Yeah, and I speak so many different languages. My main wish for my career was always to be able to work in as many territories as possible. For Shantaram, I even learned Hindi — I spent six months on it and had monologues in Hindi. A lot of people thought I might actually be Indian, and I thought, wow, that’s the best compliment I could possibly get.
My next project is in Italian, in Italy, which is really exciting. I speak French, Italian, and Spanish, so the next one has to be in Spanish or Greek. For years I thought I needed to sound British or American to get roles, and I worked on my accent every week with a coach for 15 years. But now I’ve realized my strength is in my languages — and the moment I stopped pushing to “sound British,” that’s when I started getting British roles. The moment I stopped pushing for it, they came, which is nice because it means the 15 years I spent in England working on my accent with my coach is now finally paying off!
Indira Cesarine: Oh, that’s great. I also know you’re a producer, which is interesting — and you even won an award for a film you produced and starred in, Held For a Moment, right? Are you planning on producing future projects, or are you more focused on acting right now?
Antonia Desplat: There are a couple of feature films I’m producing. I love it because you get to pick the stories you want to tell and the people you want to work with. You get to work with nice people who are passionate and who help you bring a story to life. And I love putting people together — matchmaking, so to speak. You put people together where you think, okay, these people are going to work nicely together. It’s a different challenge — but in a good way. It keeps me busy when I’m not acting. At least I know I’ll still have a relationship with an on-set experience, whether it’s in prep, shooting, or post-production. I don’t like not being busy, so I keep myself busy.
Indira Cesarine: Yeah, I can see that. You’ve got such an engaging energy — and that smile, I wish people could see it because it’s incredible!
Antonia Desplat: Thank you so much. That’s very sweet.
Indira Cesarine: Tell me a little bit about what’s coming up next? I know you mentioned you’ve been producing a few things. What’s on the horizon for you creatively? Any new projects slated for release aside from the ones we’ve already chatted about?
Antonia Desplat: There’s an Italian show and potentially a British show. Next year, there’s the second season of the Canal+ show I just shot, and potentially two, maybe three films. There are great things coming, and I’m very excited about this year. I’m taking the summer to enjoy holidays with my friends and my family — and then in September it’s back to work, and I’m so excited!
Indira Cesarine: That view is stunning. Where are you exactly?
Antonia Desplat: I’m in Croatia.
Indira Cesarine: Oh, nice. Croatia is gorgeous. The islands there are stunning.
Antonia Desplat: It’s so beautiful.
Indira Cesarine: You should enjoy it. Most Europeans take the whole month of August off.
Antonia Desplat: I wasn’t going to take a holiday, but then I booked these jobs and thought, okay, fine — I guess now I can. I usually feel guilty going on holiday if I don’t feel like I “need” it.
Indira Cesarine: Yes, it’s good to take a break. You’ll come back with incredible energy for all of these films, series, and projects coming out. Save your energy for that and enjoy your summer.
Well, thank you so much for joining me today!
Antonia Desplat: Thank you, Indira.
Indira Cesarine: It’s been wonderful to hear more about your story, your journey, and some insight into Modi, which is coming out soon in the US. I was able to see a screener, and it’s such a beautifully produced and shot film. Your role is fascinating and extremely well-played — congratulations.
Antonia Desplat: Thank you so much!
Indira Cesarine: Enjoy Croatia!
You can listen to the full interview with Antonia Desplat now on The UNTITLED Podcast, hosted by Indira Cesarine. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major streaming platforms.
Photography by Jemima Marriot @jemimashoots For The Untitled Magazine
Stylist: Prue Fisher @pruefisher
Makeup: Lucy Wearing @lucywearing_makeup at @forwardartists
Hair: Earl Simms @earlsimms2 at @carenagency
Photographer’s Assistant: Lee Furnival
