The latest chapter in Rian Johnson’s high-stakes whodunnit franchise – Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery – takes us to a sleepy town upstate, where the death of a monsignor sets off a chain of secrets and sleuthing, all to be unravelled by Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc. As aspiring politician Cy Draven, Daryl McCormack is as under-scrutiny as his cast mates: Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, and Cailee Spaeny. It’s the next instalment in McCormack’s filmography, as diverse as it is deliberate.

Whether playing an empathetic sex worker in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a broken-
hearted insurance agent in Bad Sisters, or an aspiring novelist in noir thriller The Lesson, McCormack distils each role with quiet brilliance. Romance is next, taking on the early 19th-century gentry in Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s perennial love story, Pride and Prejudice. In the midst of filming, McCormack reunites with Spaeny, whose career-defining performance in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla caught the Irish actor’s attention long before they shared the screen.

Cailee Spaeny: Tell me what this past month has been like. What have you been up to? I know you’re filming something right now.
Daryl McCormack: I’m filming Pride and Prejudice for Netflix.

CS: Did you know the story?
DM: I will admit, I hadn’t read Pride and Prejudice before I received the offer for the role, then that was the first thing I did. Of course, two other iterations of Pride and Prejudice are very deeply beloved, the TV show and the film with Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightley. Neither of which I’ve seen, but I think it served me. Particularly because it was so close to shooting, I was like, “I just can’t watch these iconic versions.” I wanted mine to be authentic. There’s already been two versions of Mr Bingley, so I have to bring my version now.

CS: So, you’re riding horses.
DM: Riding horses through small villages in England, in Rye in the countryside. It’s really nice, and honestly, it’s a great group of people.

CS: And the great text you’re working with.
DM: The text is great, Dolly Alderton penned it and it’s amazing. I think it’s always the people, though, it’s the people you work with.

CS: That’s the best part. I genuinely don’t love a camera in front of my face, it’s not my favourite thing in the world.
DM: No, yet you’re so good when it happens! Isn’t that ironic? [laughs]

CS: Thank you. [laughs] My favourite part of the job is just the people, the circus of it all, the different lives all ending up in this funny little world.
DM: We’re obviously going to be biased, but the more I work, the more I actually love
our community. I love actors. I really think part of acting is the ability to empathise with
multiple people and stories and be able to bring that to life. I’ve met the most interesting
and genuine people.

CS: Glenn Close calls it her ‘alien nation,’ and she only feels comfortable with
her people.
DM: We’re usually a little bit shy and kind of introverted. [both laugh] There is
such beautiful duality and I think what’s so beautiful about what we do, is that it’s always
a shared experience. It’s never a one-man show, even when it is a one-man show.

CS: Even when you have Rian Johnson, who’s the genius behind it. What makes him so special is that he knows that the cast is such a major part of why these films work. He gets everyone involved. 
DM: Yeah, it’s the collaboration.

CS: You might find this a boring question but don’t you find time management fascinating? [laughs] Like, what do other people do in their days? Especially in this job, when routine is constantly being flipped on its head, what do you do with your time? When you wake up in the morning, do you have a routine?
DM: I try to put a bit of structure in place, but it is so true, we are in different locations or countries, or we’re shooting nights, or we’re shooting in the morning. Or we’re not working, or we have full days where we barely speak to anyone other than the people that we’re working with. So, it’s never-ending trying to control a bull in a china shop.

CS: It’s a total rollercoaster.
DM: It’s so rare to just have a regular, steady rhythm in what we do. The only thing I can think of is when you’re rehearsing a play, because usually you might have Monday to Friday nine to five and that’s a very steady rhythm, and then it flips when you actually do
the play because you then have a whole free day and a schedule of six to ten in the evening when you’re doing the play. Those times are heaven because you actually get to feel normal.

CS: I think one of the reasons we connected so much is that you prioritise life
outside of work, it’s a really important thing. You want to make sure the pie is all equal. Have you always been like that? Or is that something you’ve found along the way as you’ve gotten older?
DM: I think it’s that thing of, as you get older and as you work a bit more, realising
that no one thing can sustain the entirety of yourself. No one thing can be that source of stability.

CS: Did you learn that the hard way?
DM: I had people literally advise me on these things.

CS: Who?
DM: Natalie Portman was one of them.

CS: That’s pretty good.
DM: I met her at the Cannes Film Festival – [in 2023, Naomi Ackie and Daryl
McCormack jointly received the Trophée Chopard]. An actor hands those awards down and that year, it was Natalie Portman – we asked her, “What would be your one piece of advice?” and she said, “Look after your personal life, because the irony is that it is the thing that feeds your artistic life.” I’m probably more and more in the season of just tending to that as much as I can.

“Part of acting is the ability to empathise with multiple people and stories and be able to bring that to life.”

CS: What does that look like?
DM: It means making time for my friends and family, going on trips and not being worried about missing out on acting. And wanting to learn how to do DIY, which is random.

CS: [gasps] Excuse me? DIY what?
DM: There’s an amazing place in London called The Goodlife Centre and you can go and do workshops in woodwork or tiling.

CS: Can I come?
DM: You can, we can do one if you want.

CS: Is it a classroom?
DM: Literally, there’s a workshop place by the Thames, you can do a day workshop, you can do furniture making…

CS: Which ones have you done?
DM: I’ve done electrics. [laughs]

CS: That’s so good.
DM: So I would know how to maybe change a… I don’t know, maybe fix something. [both laugh]

CS: Change a lightbulb?
DM: Yeah, I can change a lightbulb.

CS: I really want to know how to do things like change a tyre or build a birdhouse. I would love to figure out how to knit. Josh O’Connor, he’s so good at that…
DM: What does he do with the little circle things? Embroidery.

CS: Embroidery! He made like 30 of them for his friend’s wedding.
DM: He loves pottery and gardening.

CS: Can you talk about the moment you realised that you were going to be an
actor? I don’t know if I know that story.
DM: I was always interested in acting.

CS: What does that mean? Were you always watching movies in the house?
DM: Yeah, we had a bunch of DVDs at home that I watched quite a lot of, some of them on repeat because we didn’t actually have a great deal. It’s kind of a heavy film, but I
repeatedly watched Midnight Express. Have you seen that movie?

CS: I haven’t.
DM: It’s a great film, but it’s kind of heavy.

CS: You’d watch that on repeat?
DM: Well, that was one of the movies. The Elephant Man is another one, which is also quite heavy. And, David Fincher’s Panic Room.

CS: Wow, intense. It’s a masterclass just staring at the screen watching those films over and over.
DM: Intense movies. [laughs] Why wasn’t I watching anything lighter? I’m an only child and I think cinema and movies were something that became a comfort for me. My mum and I used to go to the cinema a lot.

CS: Do you remember any of those films that you saw together?
DM: Yeah, a bunch. One random one was The Host with Saoirse Ronan, it was a big American film. I remember Imagine Dragons’ Radioactive was one of the theme songs. [laughs] I saw a play in Manchester with my grandfather when I was seventeen, and that was really pivotal. It was the year before I needed to decide what I wanted to do in college, so it was a crucial time. I saw a scene with an actress called Starletta DuPois, who’s a good friend of my grandfather and she was playing the mother in A Raisin in the Sun alongside a British actor called Ray Fearon, who’s playing the son. There’s a scene
between them where he’s lost this big sum of money that would have really changed the family’s trajectory, and it’s a very intense, argumentative scene – it’s full of sadness and what could have been. It really touched my grandfather because he had lost his mum a
few months prior. For me, it was so pivotal because it was the first time I realised the depth of what storytelling can do.

CS: It was in front of your eyes, you watched it change someone.
DM: I remember it so clearly. We were sitting in the Royal Exchange, I’m looking at the play and mind you, it was one of the first few professional plays I’d seen as well. My grandmother Alice is to my right, and then my grandfather is next to her, he was just so
shook by this scene and emotionally moved. I remember my grandmother placed a hand on his lap and then afterwards, he approached Starletta and was like, “Thank you so much.” I think it was just the fact that this scene brought back memories for him and his own relationship with his mother – it brought back part of her in those moments. It’s almost like an artistic doctor in some sense, we can tell stories that, at their core, can really help people be seen or have perspective on things.

CS: And your grandfather was very supportive of it, right?
DM: Yes, because he’s always been an actor. He’s been in a scene with Al Pacino!

CS: Oh, yes, I remember! So, you had this in your mind since you were young that it was an option.
DM: Yes, and he supported it.

CS: What was his experience of being an actor? Did he look on it positively?
DM: He did. He was going into studios in the 70s, passing a canteen and seeing Sidney Poitier. He was talented and he still is, he’s a beautiful actor and he was on his way. Just as he was beginning, he started a family quite young, and he then felt like he needed to go into a more sustainable career. So he went and got his doctorate, and he went into education. He got a doctorate from Johns Hopkins [University], he specialises in education, the craft of educating people on things.

CS: Have you brought him along to things? Has he watched your work?
DM: Yeah, he was at the BAFTAs with me in 2023.

CS: So sweet. How rewarding and special is that?
DM: That was incredible.

CS: He must be so proud.
DM: He is. I think, for him, he got to live vicariously through it. To have that moment with him was really special.

CS: It’s so cool that he got to watch you pursue that and be successful.
DM: That year Viola Davis was also at the BAFTAs, and he’s been such a fan for a long time. I think for him it must have been a bit surreal.

CS: What’s his name?
DM: Percy.

CS: Great name.
DM: But if you actually search Percy Thomas, you’ll get a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine photos because there’s also a train called Percy in Thomas the Tank Engine. He’s not easy to find. [laughs] He was in a film called The Hitter, he’s in the opening scene shining
shoes – it’s an amazing scene.

CS: So he was sort of a role model for you? Did he ever give you any advice?
DM: He was the first person who really told me it was possible. Very American of him, he was like, [in an American accent] “Daryl, you’re gonna be box office!” He was so encouraging.

CS: Which is almost the exact opposite of what you hear from a lot of actors’ stories where the people in their lives are telling them, “Please don’t do this.”
DM: Exactly. Also, my Irish family is so supportive, but they didn’t really have a scope
that this could be possible. I come from a small town in Ireland. They were so supportive but I think underneath they were like, “Wow, this feels like a shot in the dark.” For the most part, when you’re trying to pursue a career in acting, it does feel like that.

“I learned so much from the struggle of trying to get work, trying to have some element of consistency, or just trying to break through in whatever way that means.”

CS: It wasn’t a straightforward path, though, because weren’t you flipping burgers right before this?
DM: Oh yeah, waiting tables.

CS: So it was, go do a little bit of acting, come back, try to make some money.
DM: Was it like that for you? Did you have that?

CS: This is always how the story goes, I met some guy who said, “I was almost signed to a record label in Los Angeles” and that he had some contacts out there. He saw me singing at a fall festival when I was probably about fifteen.
DM: In Missouri? This is so sweet.

CS: Yeah, in my hometown.
DM: He’s like, [in an American accent] “This girl is gonna be box office.”

CS: If you hear something like, “I know people in LA who work in entertainment,” you’re like, “Done, that’s all I need.” My first trip out there, I was fifteen turning sixteen. I met with some people who were in the music business who knew a business manager who knew an agent who knew a manager. I went and sat with them and on my first trip I signed with an agency and I signed with a manager, which I wouldn’t recommend anyone to do. It could have gone really wrong, but they ended up being OK. Then I sent in self tapes from Missouri for about four years, also really weird self-tapes. I’m in a tree in one. I didn’t know how to do a self-tape. [both laugh] The one that ended up getting me a call back in Los Angeles was one where I rubbed dirt in my face, I went full Rambo. [laughs] I turned the AC off and I was sweating. I threw myself on the ground and did my own stunts in the scene.
DM: Wow. [laughs]

CS: That was the thing I ended up booking.
DM: What was that?

CS: It’s called Pacific Rim Uprising.
DM: Was that your first? That was a big film.

CS: It was big if you have nothing on your résumé and you’ve been working at a theme park for years, to then be the female lead in this franchise movie – it was so odd.
DM: That’s insane. So, you were really thrust in. For me, it was the opposite. There’s a story that gets around where I was very close to being in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. There’s a glimmer of truth to it that I got quite far in the process, but I wouldn’t say I was close by any means. But, it’s that interesting thing of witnessing where your trajectory would go, because if that had happened, I don’t know if I would prefer that. I learned so much from the struggle of trying to get work, trying to have some element of consistency, or just trying to break through in whatever way that means. Having to go back to waiting tables again or making coffee, then going back into doing a Fringe play, then you’re doing a short film…

CS: Did you think that was what life was going to be, and you were OK with it?
DM: No, I think I always wanted to become a full-fledged actor that works and can sustain a life off doing theatre and film.

CS: It is interesting though, when you see those sliding doors and you’re like, “Oh, that could have been my path.” When you get rejected so many times in this line of work, you really have to sit with that, and I’ve genuinely felt like I wouldn’t want any path other than my own.
DM: Without being too divine about it, I do really believe that what’s for you won’t
pass you by. It’s the timing of things.

CS: Yeah, so much doesn’t feel like it’s in our control.
DM: I think my favourite thing is not knowing what you’re going to be doing next.
I saw you in Priscilla – you were absolutely incredible. Then you were doing a Q&A at the Soho Hotel and I remember thinking, “Ah man, she was so good in that film, I want to
say hello.” I was rushing off and couldn’t stay for the Q&A. I passed you in the hallway but I was nervous – I still get shy around people I admire – I was like, “I can’t go up and say hello, I’ll just say well done from a distance.” Then, it’s that thing where you’re like, “Damn, here we are sitting together promoting a film together.”

CS: This entire cast is like that. Being small and watching Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil or in The Big Chill, or Mila Kunis on That ‘70s Show. Can you imagine being little us watching those amazing, talented people on TV – then this happened?!
DM: It’s wild.

Interview originally published in The HERO Winter Annual 2025.

GROOMING FRANCESCA DANIELLA;
PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT BRUNO McGUFFIE