Carlson Young and Archie Renaux Talk Upgraded, Women Empowerment, and That Director Cameo!
In Upgraded, Camila Mendes plays an art gallery intern who is invited on a last-minute work trip to London with her demanding boss. On the flight, she meets handsome stranger Will and goes on an adventure full of art, romance, and lies. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with director Carlson Young and actor Archie Renaux about the new rom-com.
Carlson Young made her directorial debut with the dark and twisted The Blazing World before tackling Upgraded. “I was up for the challenge. Did I think that rom-com would necessarily be my my next move? No, but I am so happy that I that I did it because I learned so much,” she told me. “I was really drawn to Ana. I was drawn to […] her tenacity and just like her strength and her fight in the impossible, pretentious world of the art space.”
Young is a detailed director who creates energy maps with each project to set the stage. “I did energy maps with this one as well. Every character has their own and then just a story energy map,” she shared. “My process as a director is just to prepare and prepare and prepare and then throw it all to the wind hopefully by the time you get to to set. […] I started the groundwork for it on Blazing World but Upgraded was really about communicating that energy map with other actors, which is another piece of the puzzle.”
While Renaux is used to the “very intense” and high stakes energy of projects like Shadow & Bone, he enjoys the “bouncy” energy on rom-coms and being able to be “giddy” and “silly” at times. “It really felt pretty natural with Cami,” he said about working opposite his co-star,” he shared. “Even Carlson kept it light and fun and got everyone comfortable. That's, I just think, the best environment to work in is when everyone's comfortable with each other. You can talk about ideas and there's no scrutiny if you come up with a bit of a weird idea. It's all good.”
When it comes to favorite moments in the film, Renaux had a blast with the British football scenes. “I really enjoyed the football scene with the kids. The kids are really funny. They were bullying Cami a little bit for her American accent,” he shared. “In a sense it was full circle. When I was a kid I played football and I had coaches like that. That were a little bit excited, maybe too enthusiastic, but from a place of love. I got to play that. I'd had those kind of characters in my life when I was that sort of age.”
While the romance was key in Upgraded, there was another story that was equally as important in the film. “The romance between Ana and Will was just in there and I think Archie and Cami had just like such rich and natural chemistry that I didn't need to do anything with that, but, for me, the story was always about the three women,” Young said. “It was about Catherine and Claire and Ana. It felt like this trinity of women. I worked really tirelessly to keep that the beating heart of the film because I think that to me resonated the deepest.”
Young continued: “The way that Catherine (Lena Olin) is so generous with Ana and playful with her, it could make me cry thinking about it. It's such a beautiful aspect of being a woman and having an older woman looking out for you. Then with Marisa [Tomei]'s character Claire, she's a woman who's all about respect. When she clocks that not only can she respect Anna for her intellect, but when she realizes that Ana — who's a young intern who she's just screwed over — still has her back and still sees her and acknowledges her for her incredible intelligence and tenacity in this like male-dominated industry, I think that's when it switches for Claire. They see each other. So there's this theme of women seeing each other and I just thought that was beautiful.”
Not only does Young direct the film, but she makes a cameo that sets the film into motion. “She is the inciting incident, if you will. The bedraggled girl on the subway spills on Ana and gets her the stain,” she shared. “We had a close-up of the shot. It didn't really work. If you look very closely, I'm holding coffee and I spill it on her. It sort of offsets the whole movie, so don't sleep on the bedraggled girl.”
Upgraded is streaming on Prime Video.
