Kate Winslet Talks Special Collab With Son on Directorial Debut Goodbye June | Interview
ComingSoon spoke with Kate Winslet about making her directorial debut with her new Netflix movie, Goodbye June. Winslet discussed adapting a screenplay written by her son Joe Anders and getting such a vulnerable performance from star Helen Mirren. Starring a talented cast that also features Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, and Timothy Spall, it is out on December 24, 2025.
“It’s nearly Christmas when an unexpected turn in their mother’s health thrusts four adult siblings, and their exasperating father, into chaos as they navigate messy family dynamics in the face of potential loss. But their quick-witted mother, June, orchestrates her decline on her own terms – with biting humor, blunt honesty, and a lot of love,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Kate, I really enjoyed Goodbye June. I teared up several times watching it. I thought it was quite beautiful. Helen Mirren just gives such a raw and touching performance. What did it mean for you to get such trust from one of our great onscreen legends in your directorial debut?
Kate Winslet: Well, thank you for saying all of that. I’m very heart-warmed to hear that the film resonated with you. Which is only, you know, something I could have hoped for of audiences. It meant the world to have Helen, honestly. Everybody else had been cast. I’d had meaningful conversations with all of those actors before they read the script.
When I approached Helen, I knew that I wanted to just be I wanted to be honest about the story. I wanted to tell her how it would mean the world to have her. But I also wanted to tell her who would be supporting her by way of the cast, because they’re brilliant actors, of course, but they’re also wonderful, wonderful people. And that matters a huge deal when you are building a family. You can’t have a bad egg in that box.
Luckily for us, these were all decent, kind people. Helen, I think she just felt she wanted to support me, which she said. It wasn’t easy for her playing that part. She definitely had days where she’d say, “I don’t really like any of it. Actually, I don’t like the hair. I don’t like getting in the bed. And I don’t like… okay, that’s fine. All right, I’ve said it now, tell me what to do.”
And she really appreciated a sort of practical approach, so she could just get on with it. And that’s very much who she is. She’s a real mensch, so supportive, a lot of fun. She was always the first one to giggle when you’re not supposed to be giggling in the middle of a scene. Helen is an absolutely terrible giggler.
So there’ll be a lot of like, “Okay, everybody, let’s start while Helen gets her giggles out of the way, and let’s start again.” But actually, it was so wonderful because all of those little things made for this kind of messy, very real environment that I wanted for everybody to feel they could be immersed in. It was particularly important for our children as well, our child actors, to feel included in this sort of insane joy, in spite of the tragedy that we as adult actors were all playing out as our characters. But it was honestly an amazing experience. I just loved all of it
I was amazed when I found out that your son wrote this screenplay. Because it seems so wise, and it’s like somebody looking back on their life with all these lessons. So you’re clearly doing something right as a mom. How special was it that you’re both making a first here in this collab, where this is his first screenplay and this is your first film?
Kate Winslet: It was unbelievably special. We both have moments of feeling extremely nervous. And it was great because we were colleagues, side by side, holding hands. He’d say to me on set, “How are you doing any of this? How’s this all happening?” And I’d say, “Let’s just keep going. Let’s just keep going.”
It was wonderful to see him learn what it means to be part of a big collaborative working space full of great people who were kind and polite and willing, and not just the actors, but the crew as well. It was a really inclusive on-set experience, which was what I wanted to craft and what I wanted to be able to give to our actors. It was very, very special to do this with my son. I feel like if I never do it again, it was so meaningful to have done this with him.
Thanks to Kate Winslet for taking the time to speak about Goodbye June.
Source: Comingsoon.net