{"id":678954,"date":"2026-09-08T18:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/678954\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T18:10:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:10:18","slug":"cody-fern-wrote-a-deeply-personal-film-then-he-cast-three-powerhouses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/678954\/","title":{"rendered":"Cody Fern Wrote a Deeply Personal Film. Then He Cast Three Powerhouses"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCody Fern knows he needs to rip the Band-Aid off. \u201cI guess I\u2019m going to have to talk about it at some point,\u201d he says. The Australian actor and filmmaker, preparing to premiere his feature directorial debut Closing Night at the Toronto International Film Festival<\/a> on Saturday night, is sitting for his first interview about the project, which he describes as \u201cemotionally autobiographical, but narratively fictional.\u201d Those memoiristic strands remain intensely exposing all the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, seeking distribution, took initial inspiration from a key moment in Fern\u2019s upbringing, in the tiny town of Southern Cross in western Australia. When he was young, his \u201cwayward\u201d aunt dropped a bomb on him. \u201cShe revealed to me that my mom had been denied an abortion while she was pregnant with me,\u201d Fern says. \u201cThat was strange information to learn so young.\u201d He then grew up with his mother as well as his stepmother \u2014 \u201ctwo remarkable women who raised me,\u201d he says, whom he yearned to understand better in adulthood. So he started writing a script: \u201cWhen I wrote it, it was a very strange little bird \u2014 it was a very personal piece and I didn\u2019t know how to feel about it. It was quite raw and sensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSame goes for the finished product, even though, through several rounds of revisions with Fern\u2019s longtime co-writer Devon Bostick, Closing Night took on a life entirely of its own. This movie marks a striking introduction behind the camera for Fern, who broke out as an actor in Ryan Murphy franchises like American Crime Story and American Horror Story before most recently starring in the third season of Foundation. He helmed his first short, Pisces, about a decade ago, and had intended to pursue filmmaking before his acting career took off. Now, he\u2019s come full circle.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven his personal admission, from early in our interview, signals that Fern approaches his art with a transparent vulnerability. In Closing Night, this makes for visceral family drama. The movie centers on the relationship between 30-ish Theo (Toby Wallace<\/a>), his troubled mother April (Naomi Watts<\/a>) who comes to visit him in New York, and her estranged sister, Sandra (Sarah Paulson<\/a>), a decorated actress in the midst of a demanding Broadway run of Mother Courage. Trust that Fern\u2019s personal confession makes its way, in some fictionalized form, into the film \u2014 as does what happened after Fern started writing it: His mother informed him of a frightening diagnosis after a long period of no contact between them. This, too, gets reimagined.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo say much more would be to give away the script\u2019s many twists and turns, or its surprisingly clear-eyed denouement. Fern proves himself as a true actor\u2019s director, offering plum roles to Paulson, Watts and two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest<\/a> as their chaotic and domineering mother. \u201cThe filmmaker who is always at the center of my mind is Mike Nichols,\u201d says Fern, who has watched Postcards From the Edge \u201cseveral thousand times\u201d going back to childhood. \u201cI knew we needed to build a family and a safe place and a zone where everybody could push themselves and go deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe makes these characters dynamic, interesting, funny, hopeful, tragic \u2014 all those things at once, but beautiful humans in the process,\u201d says Watts. \u201cThat\u2019s how he spoke about his family \u2014 flawed and flamboyant and wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNaomi Watts and Sarah Paulson in Closing Night.<\/p>\n

\n\t**<\/p>\n

\n\tSarah Paulson has won lead-actress Emmy and Tony Awards, but she\u2019s never been given the chance to play a role like Sandra on the big screen. \u201cThat was not lost on me,\u201d says Fern. \u201cI was like, \u2018Why is Sarah Paulson not a bona fide movie star? Why is she not given these roles?\u2019 At a certain point in time it was like, \u2018Well, give her one, Cody. Write something for her.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSure enough: Sandra, whose abrupt diagnosis (which we won\u2019t spoil here) tenuously reunites the family that\u2019s been separated for decades, emerges as the film\u2019s wounded and volatile heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFern met Paulson on the set of American Horror Story: Apocalypse, and they bonded instantly. \u201cWe would sit down and talk about Gena Rowlands and Kim Stanley, think about Stella Adler versus Uta Hagen \u2014 we were just acting nerds,\u201d Fern says. (Turns out, Postcards From the Edge was also Paulson\u2019s favorite movie.) Fern wrote Sandra for her without telling her and, despite having been friends for a number of years by this point, sent the script to her agent to keep matters formal and respectful. Paulson cried when she read it. Then she felt terrorized by the demands of the part \u2014 of pulling off a towering Mother Courage as Sandra does, of tracing the effects of a debilitating disease, of throwing herself into damn ugly family outbursts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYet Closing Night also presented the opportunity that Paulson, who\u2019s about to have a big fall on TV with new installments of American Horror Story and Monster, had long been waiting for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTotally transparently, I didn\u2019t ever think it was going to happen just because I\u2019ve been down the road so many times with people I love and admire, scripts that have moved me and they just don\u2019t get made,\u201d she says. \u201cI haven\u2019t been provided as many opportunities to do something like this as I\u2019d like in the film space. That is also why I didn\u2019t think it would ever happen. I was like, \u2018Nobody lets me do this. Why are they going to let me do this now? They\u2019re not going to let me do this. Cate Blanchett wants to do this part, I\u2019m sure.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPaulson and Dianne Wiest in Closing Night.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet the project hurtled forward, with Watts cast on Paulson\u2019s recommendation \u2014 they\u2019d just starred together in All\u2019s Fair \u2014 and Fern\u2019s Aussie buddy Wallace joining the company alongside rising star Odessa A\u2019zion<\/a> (Marty Supreme) as his girlfriend. This only made Paulson panic more. \u201cI was like, \u2018It\u2019s going to fall apart. It\u2019s going to fall apart!\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThis gives you more insight into my psychology than you need, but I just was like: \u2018I\u2019m not going to get to do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut she and the rest of her ensemble did. Fern built the independent shoot around supporting his actors. \u201cI remember working a scene with Sarah and looking over at Cody and he was bawling \u2014 you could tell he was obviously, fully invested,\u201d says Watts. Despite the tight budget restrictions of the production, Fern set aside an entire day for an explosive scene between Paulson and Wiest, to let them play around. He set aside two days for a pivotal turning point involving the core ensemble. \u201cHe really created time,\u201d Paulson says. \u201cHe was very smart about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s really what I wanted to do: allow these actors to breathe and not pull away from a moment because it was convenient for a cut,\u201d Fern explains. \u201cEach of the five actors playing the core family members have totally different processes. They\u2019re wildly different. Getting them in a room together was like wrestling mythological beasts. All of them are capable of giving great performances, but it was about: What can we draw out of each other?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPaulson brought movement and performance coach Julia Crockett to set to help build Sandra\u2019s delicate arc, and found something special in that process. Her Sandra is a study in contradictions \u2014 imposing and fragile, brilliant and naive, independent and isolated. \u201cI probably will never see the movie \u2014 I did this with [The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story] too, where I never watched it, because my experience making it was so special that I didn\u2019t want to ruin it by taking it apart with my own critical brain,\u201d she says. \u201cIt sounds so corny, but I really feel like no matter what, I got to do this \u2014 and nobody can take that away from me. That was because of Cody.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWatts and Wiest in Closing Night.<\/p>\n

\n\t**<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Closing Night, Fern was surrounded by his icons. Watts, to him, is \u201cthe burning light on the horizon when you grow up in Australia.\u201d He went to therapy because of Wiest\u2019s Emmy-winning turn in In Treatment and counts Hannah and Her Sisters as an all-time favorite. He wanted to write them roles befitting their imprint on his own artistic identity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI have three women of a certain age in the film, and even as I worked with them, the stories and experiences that they would share with one another and the things that I would hear and learn \u2014 that\u2019s really what I\u2019ll take away,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn early drafts, Theo \u2014 something of a stand-in for Fern \u2014 was much more of the protagonist. But Fern found even deeper, more painful truth in letting that go, allowing this relatively original story centered on complicated sisters and their very complicated mother to take flight. \u201cI wanted to look at the ways in which my mom\u2019s life had been warped or stolen or taken away from her at the same time as examining this amazing life that I had,\u201d he says. \u201cThis big choice that she was denied had affected her and her dreams, even as I was pursuing my own.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie progresses in ambitious, even political directions \u2014 Closing Night is no ordinary, outrageous family drama. In many ways, this becomes a movie about death \u2014 how we think about it individually, within families, societally. Paulson, particularly, fearlessly embodies that inquiry in her characterization. Fern very intentionally, and again very personally, brings the subject to the fore.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think a day goes by in my life where I don\u2019t think about death \u2014 to the point where my partner is uncomfortable,\u201d Fern says. \u201cI\u2019m constantly looking at our dog who is seven, like, \u2018He\u2019s only going to be around for seven more years\u2026\u2019 I\u2019m not sure why that is. I guess it\u2019s just a part of my makeup, but life and death have walked hand in hand for me.\u201d In the process of making Closing Night, he didn\u2019t come to answers, exactly, about these preoccupations, or about his past, but says he did learn: \u201cLet go of the past. Choose love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the course of her 40 years onscreen, two-time Oscar-nominated Watts has had the chance to make meals of legendary roles like Mulholland Drive\u2019s Betty\/Diane. But she echoes Paulson in noting how unusual the opportunity of this movie felt at this stage in her career. Indeed, it\u2019s in that fact that she hopes Closing Night marks a new beginning for Fern \u2014 behind the camera, taking the unexpected route.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not always the case that you find three delicious female roles, for women at this age, and in one story \u2014 it\u2019s wonderful,\u201d Watts says. \u201cMore of that, please. Keep writing, Cody.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cody Fern knows he needs to rip the Band-Aid off. \u201cI guess I\u2019m going to have to talk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,281634,18,117,4500,19,17,10993,223902,14466,11523,205270,261948,9445],"class_list":["post-678954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-dianne-wiest","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-exclusive","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-naomi-watts","tag-odessa-au2019zion","tag-sarah-paulson","tag-tiff","tag-toby-wallace","tag-toronto-2026","tag-toronto-international-film-festival"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117236770032016483","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}