‘The Uninvited’ Trailer: Pedro Pascal and Walton Goggins Are Part of a Party Run Afoul in L.A. Satire
Writer/director Nadia Conners is shining a light on the dark side of being a woman in Los Angeles amid the Hollywood elite — and what better way to satirize your surroundings than by including them in a meta film?
Conners makes her narrative feature debut with buzzy film “The Uninvited,” which premiered at SXSW 2024. “The White Lotus” Season 3 star Walton Goggins, who is married to Conners in real life, leads the film alongside Elisabeth Reaser, who plays Conners’ semi surrogate. The onscreen couple host a dinner party for their actor pals, only to have the evening interrupted by a past lover (played by none other than Pedro Pascal), a former client, and a confused elderly woman who incites a group existential crisis. To note, both Goggins and Pascal are lead stars of HBO series: Goggins appears in “The White Lotus” and Pascal will return for “The Last of Us,” which will debut its second season later this year.
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The official synopsis for “The Uninvited” reads: “Rose (Reaser) and her agent husband Sammy (Goggins) host a glamorous dinner to impress their big-shot client Gerald (Rufus Sewell), but the night derails when an elderly stranger (Lois Smith) and Rose’s ex, Hollywood charmer Lucien (Pascal), crash the scene. As drinks flow and secrets spill, ambition and identity clash in a sharp, unhinged look at a world obsessed with youth and fame.” Eva De Dominici also stars.
As the IndieWire review included, “The Uninvited” is a comedic drama that takes place over the course of one night in the Hollywood Hills. The dynamic forces the partygoers to “confront their insecurities and the loneliness of a deteriorating marriage, as the film humorously critiques Hollywood’s beauty standards while celebrating the complexities of womanhood and explores the themes of motherhood and self-discovery.”
“The Uninvited” was filmed in 15 days on location. Conners made it clear, though, that “The Uninvited” is in no way a biography of sorts. However, the film was still a form of “therapy” for the filmmaker.
“This is not my marriage,” Conners, who previously co-directed Leonardo DiCaprio’s environmental documentary “The 11th Hour,” said in a press statement. “I am not this woman [Rose]. The character that Walt plays is not what he’s like as my husband. But making this film allowed me to explore certain resentments I had felt as a wife and a mother. It became an expensive sort of therapy.”
She continued, “I became a mother at 40, and I felt this internal war, where I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my child, but I also wondered if this version of myself and my career that I had cultivated for 20 years had vanished. Who was this domestic person I had become?”
“The Uninvited” premieres in theaters starting in NYC at IFC Center on April 11, and will debut in L.A. on April 18 at Laemmle and April 18 at Miami Coral Gables. It also opens in the U.K. on May 9. The film is released by Foton Distribution. Check out the trailer below.
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