When it comes to monumentally euphoric moviegoing experiences in 2024, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson have set a mightily high bar with their latest crowd-pleaser, “Ghostlight.” Five years after helming one of my all-time favorite films, 2019’s “Saint Frances,” writer/co-director O’Sullivan and co-director/producer Thompson have done it again with this phenomenally powerful ode to the ways in which theatre and its tight-knit community can help us grapple with wounds too painful to articulate in everyday life.
During the Q&A following the film’s long-awaited Windy City premiere last month at the Music Box Theatre, where it was the closing night selection for the Chicago Critics Film Festival, I acknowledged the Mount Rushmore of local theatre talent assembled both on and in front of the stage, including the legendary Deanna Dunagan (so unforgettable in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit”). One of the only key cast members not in attendance was Dolly De Leon, the stunning actress who stole 2022’s Palme d’Or winner, “Triangle of Sadness,” and is captivating here as the community theatre actress who recruits a shattered construction worker, Dan (Keith Kupferer), to perform in her scrappy production of “Romeo and Juliet.”
What makes this film so special, above all, is its trio of tour de force performances from the Mallen Kupferer family: theatre veterans Keith (whose work here warrants comparison with De Niro) and the utterly electrifying Tara Mallen (who plays his wife, Sharon), as well as their marvelous daughter, Katherine Mallen Kupferer (who delivers a breakout turn as the couple’s daughter, Daisy). Katherine co-starred in my favorite film of 2023, Kelly Fremon Craig’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”, and there’s no question that “Ghostlight” will rank highly among this year’s very best films. I must also give a shout-out to Chicago’s Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, for which Mallen serves as its Artistic Director, and which clearly shares the same mission as Cinema Femme in its elevating of female and non-binary artists (you can read all about it here).
The following conversation edits together my interactions with the Kupferer family during our press junket interview and at the film’s Chicago premiere, as well as my chat with O’Sullivan and Thompson on the red carpet.
How familiar were you with the Kupferer family before this film?
Kelly O’Sullivan (KO): Tara and Keith are Chicago theatre legends. Keith and I had done “The Humans” ten years before, and so I knew him from that. I was the daughter who Beanie Feldstein played in the film version, and the incredible Hanna Dworkin, who’s in “Ghostlight,” played my mother, so that was a great production to be a part of.
Keith Kupferer (KK): When we worked together, Kelly was so natural and really funny. She is a very funny person. To me, if you’re funny, that means that you have an intelligence, and she does. I was happy to be working with her again. She’s a fantastic artist.
Tara Mallen (TM): A gifted actor, writer and director.
KO: I wrote the character of Dan with him in mind, and we did a reading with him. Then he emailed us and was like, “My daughter would kill me if I didn’t ask if she could audition,” so we did a reading with her, and she was amazing. We cast her right away. As for Tara, she is such a phenomenal actor that Alex and our casting director, Mickie Paskal, were very smart in saying, “Cast this family!”
AT: I was joking with Tara earlier that she was the only one who didn’t have to audition.
KO: We had asked her to do a reading but she was out of town. We knew that she would kill it.
AT: We offered it to her in the garage in Rivendell, and she was giving us props to use for the movie.
KO: What’s so bizarre about it is when Mickie read the script, she went, “Oh, you wrote this family.” I was like, “No I didn’t,” and she said, “You did it without knowing it.” So I think their dynamic fits that of their characters just perfectly.
Katherine Malle Kupferer (KMK): I think I’m pretty much like Daisy in a lot of ways, such as the way that she expresses herself, or the way that she—
Tara Mallen (TM): Is loud.
KMK: Yes. [laughs] The only exceptions are the singing and having a brother.
TM: There are moments in the screenplay that Kelly wrote where, when I was reading it, I thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s us.’ It just felt so much like us in so many ways—for example, in the way that I function as the kind of person who keeps the planning going, while making sure I know where everyone needs to be and gets there. There is this one scene early in the movie where I get up and say, “You stay here. I’ll go out and talk to her.” For Sharon, that is a real change. She usually stays and works it all out, but she’s pretty angry with Dan, and I thought, ‘Oh yeah, this is exactly how I would handle this.’ There are lots of moments like that.
KK: Getting to act together in this was really quite special for all of us. You get to go to work with your family and when we came home, I think we all get along a lot better—at least my wife and I, certainly. When we are working on stuff, it somehow feeds our private life as well. Working as a family unit was unique. I never expected it to happen.
TM: It’s a real gift. We need to give so much credit to Kelly and Alex.
KK: They are incredible filmmakers and Kelly is a terrific writer. Her words are easy to say and since it’s not overwritten, there’s so much to play. They create such a wonderful set where they give you the time to develop your character. There are certain looks that we give each other that Kelly and Alex use to convey important things, rather than have us articulate it with dialogue. Those are the moments that really move the story along and give you insight into how the family dynamic works with these people.
KMK: That is especially true of what you see in the ensemble, such as moments between the actors played by Dexter Zollicoffer and H.B. Ward.
TM: It’s such a beautiful script, Matt. Kelly wrote a subtle, exquisite script. When I read it, I couldn’t get over how much it read like a play to me. Because I am so experienced at reading plays and so used to having it all be in the text, I can’t always envision a screenplay well. I don’t read it as a filmmaker, but for whatever reason, when Kelly gave me this script and I read it, I could really envision it the whole way through.
KK: Yeah, I did too.
TM: I give so much credit to Kelly for that. I have to say, too, that there is so much humor in the film where I feel that the audience needs that release. It’s done in such a skillful way.
KMK: And it always gets a laugh.
TM: I don’t know, as an actor in a play, that I could land it that well every single time, but they make sure that the laughter is right there when you need it.
KMK: Alex and Kelly were so great. They make this space onset where you have so much freedom as an actor, but also, you have so much support at the same time. That made it really easy and also a lot of fun to come to work every day. They surround themselves with great people, and so through that, we just had this huge family. Since Kelly is an actor herself, she was able to really give me and everyone else notes. I understood almost everything she was telling me to do because of how simple and straightforward it was. Alex is really educated and knowledgeable about all the technical aspects of filmmaking, such as how to set up a shot with the different lenses. For example, sometimes different actors have a lens that fits them best, and then they use that lens, which is something that neither I nor my parents would have learned about.
TM: They are so generous and they allow you to really have conversations about what you’re going be working on. You get to be a part of creating your character, and everybody that we encountered on the team were so gifted, talented and wanted to be there. Every day was so much fun. You couldn’t wait to get there and be in their presence. They treated each other with such respect and care and love, and so you never think that there are any issues or problems. Then when we did an on camera interview during SXSW, we were talking about something and Alex went, “Oh yeah, that was such a terrible day, right Kelly? We were so tense and awful.” Afterward, Keith and I were like, “Do you remember? I don’t remember ever feeling like that.”
KK: He said, “I was really angry that day,” and you never would’ve known it.
TM: It was such a tribute to them.
How does this film connect with your own views regarding the importance of theatre and its cathartic power?
TM: Keith and I are both born from the theatre, and Katherine was literally born in a theater. Rivendell, the theater company that I run, is a couple blocks away from the Music Box.
KMK: I’ve only been in two plays so far.
TM: But since she was tiny, Katherine would be making plays in the basement with her friends, such as the forgotten classic, “The Non-Miracle Worker.” She did “Gypsy” with Keith when she was five and she did Shakespeare, so she’s been kicking it around and doing it for quite a while.
KMK: It was something that I’ve loved to do since I was little.
Katherine’s “Margaret” co-stars, Abby Ryder Fortson and Elle Graham, also come from families of actors. How did you come to acting on your own terms?
KMK: I was pretty much put into it. However, I feel like I have been given the option many times to stop acting if I no longer want to do it. I could stop whenever I want to, so at this point, I keep going because I want to and not because I feel like I should.
TM: Katherine did do a bunch of plays in grade school.
KMK: But then my high school didn’t want to cast me!
TM: She auditioned for one show, got called back and she was doing ADR for “Margaret,” so that was that.
KMK: Theatre is as much of interest to me as film, moving forward.
TM: She just did a reading of a new play at Rivendell that we’re looking at.
KK: We never pushed her toward acting—in fact, a little bit of the opposite—but she definitely has the chops for it, and until she decides on her own that she’s done with this, she’ll keep going.
TM: When Katherine was three, she would line up all her costume changes for the film version of “Annie,” and she would perform each track of the musical while stopping in between them to do her costume change. She was so intense about her costumes that I thought she would grow up to be a costume designer, but we’ll see. I really want her to become a hedge fund broker. [laughs]
That reminds me of all the costume changes I had to undergo when playing every character in my sister’s homemade adaptation of “Harry Potter.” I also tackled Shakespeare around that same age, which is so tricky to make sound natural.
TM: I’m classically trained and did a lot of Shakespeare festivals early on in my career, so I was able to be helpful to Katherine with that. That’s probably the only thing that we worked on a lot outside of filming.
KK: Dan is not an actor, and you have to be a pretty good one to pull off Shakespeare. The best way to really stink at it is to just cold read it, which is what I did. That’s really bad because you have to know, first of all, what you’re saying, and I did not.
TM: You intentionally didn’t prepare.
KK: Correct, I didn’t prepare until the final scene with me and Dolly on the deathbed. I prepared a lot more for that scene.
TM: There is a shot of Keith from the side of the stage where he says his line, “I’m fortune’s fool,” and you can see him becoming an actor in that moment. This is where he’s entering into the role in a really beautiful way.
KK: He’s starting to feel something. As Tara likes to say, the film is sort of a love letter to the Chicago theatre community, not only because the people who are in it are Chicago theatre actors, but also because Kelly deftly and consciously didn’t want the acting troupe to be lampooned or mocked in any way that is the usual fare in film. Not once does the film say, “Look at those crazy actors, they are so nerdy, and whatnot.” It is a genuine depiction of actors trying to do the best they can.
TM: I was excited by how theatre artists are represented as a community of people who are so loving and accepting. It is so beautiful and true. Keith and I have been in Chicago for almost thirty-two years. We came here just the two of us, and my theatre company—our theatre community—is our family. They helped raise Katherine. We don’t have immediate family here, so they pitched in and took care of her when we couldn’t. She was at our theatre from the moment she was born, and that is a safe and nurturing space for us. For me, that is the place where I am the happiest. It fills me with the most joy, and that is very much a part of what you see in this film.
How did Dolly De Leon get connected to the project?
AT: I’m a big fan of Dolly. The word “family” is overused in the arts—sometimes it means a cult—but in the case of our work, it translates as the people we love and who they love. When I cast Olympia Dukakis in my first short, I asked her, “Who do you want to work with?” For us in the case of “Ghostlight,” it was our manager Adam Kersh, who represents Dolly. We had seen her in “Triangle of Sadness,” and were like, “This person is amazing.” It felt like such a long shot because we’re making this movie about Chicago, and she’s based in Manila.
KO: She might’ve already done “Between the Temples” before she shot this, and she had done years of theatre in the Philippines, so she just fit in seamlessly with this ensemble. She is so warm, so giving, and you can tell that she comes from theatre, because there is zero ego.
AT: A week before shooting, Kelly and I realized we had not told her that we have no hair and makeup onset, so we emailed her and she was enthusiastic about it. That said a lot.
When did this film come together?
KO: October 2023. We started production on October 2nd and wrapped the 31st. Our incredible editor Mike S. Smith was editing the entire time.
AT: We did the same thing on “Rounding.” It was the first time I was like, “Oh, I’m not an editor—this is an editor. We need this,” and it was so great. We actually missed a scene in “Ghostlight”! We wrapped and he was like, “Hey, so you guys cut 101A,” and it’s a rather important scene. So we told the school that we had left something in the gym, where the scene takes place. We loaded all our shit in and shot it with a tiny crew and no lights.
How would you liken your experience of making “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” to this film?
KMK: “Margaret” was the first time I was ever on a real film set. I had done little day shoots and stuff like that, but I had never been on set for a long period of time. It gave me the opportunity to learn how a set works, such as when to start and when to stop, and my knowledge grew from there on “Ghostlight.” I had read Judy Blume’s book in third grade before I even knew about the movie. My friends and I had never seen any of that stuff in a book before, and even though I grew up in a generation where that stuff is fine to talk about, it is still a really great thing. The screenplay portrays that book in such a beautiful way and also gets into how other generations are connected to it, not just one.
I can’t believe that the book is still being banned.
KMK: We were on a press tour for “Ghostlight” when I saw the book in an ACLU display for its Banned Books Library. I don’t understand why they are banning a book. Just because they are banning what is being talked about doesn’t mean that what’s happening in the book is going to stop in real life.
TM: Girls are going to stop getting their periods? Or stop talking about it?!
KMK: It just doesn’t make much sense to me. You can ban the book, but the ideas that are written in the book aren’t going to stop because they are most likely about things that are happening in everyday life all around the world.
TM: I read it when I was in third grade, and for me, in the early 1970s, I remember just feeling like, ‘Oh, I know what’s coming.’ It was a very profound experience and I didn’t have to talk to anyone about it. My mom was great and everything, but I felt so prepared after reading the book that I didn’t need to have a conversation with her about it. When I went to meet Judy onset, I was walking towards her, and I just burst into years. She said, “Oh, it’s okay, honey. It happens to all of the girls your age.” [laughs] I remember when I first read the script being so disappointed that they opened up the story and made it so much about Rachel McAdams’ character. Then when I saw the movie, I was so moved by her character, and I realized that in doing that, they made it for all the moms from my generation. They made it for all of us.
“Ghostlight” opens at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre on Friday, June 14th, with Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson in attendance for the 6:45pm show on opening night and the 7pm show on Saturday, June 15th (get your tickets here). “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” is streaming on STARZ and can be purchased on Blu-ray.
