Sienna Miller and Scarlett Johansson to star as sisters in Kristin Scott Thomas’s directorial debut
The Oscar-nominated actress Kristin Scott Thomas has already proven herself in the field of cinema, famous for appearances in films such as The English Patient, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gosford Park and Darkest Hour. Now, the star is taking her talents behind the camera, with her directorial debut My Mother’s Wedding.
At the centre of the film’s cast are Sienna Miller, Scarlett Johansson and Emily Beecham, who play the daughters of Scott Thomas’s character, Diana. This is not the first time Scott Thomas has appeared as Johansson’s mother on screen, the actress also took the role in 1998’s The Horse Whisperer and 2008’s The Other Boleyn Girl, in which she played Anne Boleyn’s mother Elizabeth while Johansson appeared as her older sister, Mary.
The women are brought together to celebrate the wedding of their mother to her third husband, who is played by her Four Weddings co-star James Fleet. In the first look from the set of the film, the actresses are pictured leaning over a dinner table, with half-drunk glasses of red wine and empty plates scattered across its top. The film is reported to have drawn its inspiration from Chekhov’s 1900 play Three Sisters and is billed as ‘a compelling family drama about three romantically dysfunctional sisters’. In early June, the cast were pictured filming scenes of the fictional nuptials in a Hampshire churchyard, dressed in wedding finery.
Neither confirmed as a comedy or tragedy, a brief summary of the film reads: ‘Three sisters return to their childhood home for a momentous weekend; the third wedding of their twice-widowed mother, Diana (Scott Thomas). The three daughters are from very different walks of life: Georgina (Beecham), a palliative nurse; Victoria (Miller), a Hollywood star; and Katherine (Johansson), a captain in the Royal Navy. Over the weekend, the family gathers to celebrate a new marriage, but mother and daughters alike are forced to revisit the past and confront the future, with help from a colourful group of unexpected wedding guests.’
Scott Thomas has suggested she drew inspiration for the project using her own life experience, stating, ‘I have wanted to direct for a long time and it was thrilling to create this fictional family using my own childhood memories as a springboard.’
Other members of the cast include Miller’s Anatomy of a Scandal co-star Joshua McGuire, Game of Thrones’s Mark Stanley, Call My Agent!’s Thibault de Montalembert, and Sex Education’s Sindhu Vee.
