‘The Bride!’ Star Jessie Buckley Says Netflix Fought Against Her Casting Because She “Didn’t Have An Instagram”
Where once was a Hollywood cared about an actor’s actual talent, is now an industry that cares more about social media engagement than anything else – and according to The Bride! star Jessie Buckley, Netflix’s own misplaced obsession with this metric almost prevented her from playing the film’s patchwork protagonist.
Originally green-lit under the purview of Netflix in August 2023, the Bride of Frankenstein’s latest cinematic outing would soon thereafter find itself back on the market after over a disagreement between the streaming giant and director Maggie Gyllenhaal regarding the film’s budget, wherein the latter insisted on shooting in New York City proper while the former refused to budge on their cost-cutting alternative of New Jersey.
But rather than being doomed to development hell, The Bride! was picked up by Warner Bros. just a few months later, with the studio’s co-chairs and -CEOs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy finalizing the deal in January 2024.
Speaking to the pair’s decision, Gyllenhal told The Wall Street Journal, “It’s a risk to take on me, and they really have supported me in every way”, while also confirming that neither De Luca or Abdy had ever attempted to unduly influence her creative choices.
And while that last question was originally understood to have been in reference to the New York/New Jersey Netflix fight, a recent interview with Buckley given to Entertainment Weekly’s Sydney Bucksbaum suggests the inquiry may have also had something to do with Gyllenhaal’s decision to cast her as The Bride!
Reflecting on her casting journey, the actress explained how Gyllenhaall “had to basically convince the powers that be that it didn’t matter that I didn’t have an Instagram account, that she only wanted me to do it.
“And I’m very, very grateful — it’s not an easy thing to do. And I also get it on behalf of the studio. It’d be way easier if I had a million Instagram followers for them. But I don’t think that actually works. At the end of the day, you want a story to have life, and whatever the director or writer feels is the way to make that come to life, that’s their choice.”
Turning to offer a general criticism of this practice, Buckley then declared, “I’m probably going to get in a lot of trouble for saying this. Maybe there was a moment where that actually had weight, and I just don’t believe it does anymore.”
“I think people like Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chloé Zhao, Denis Villeneuve, they’re just making their s—, doing it their way. I don’t think they can make the movies that they’ve made if they chose an ingredient based on Instagram followers rather than what color paint they wanted to use.”
Offering her own perspective on the back-and-forth, Gyllenhaal told EW that De Luca and Abdy “were 100 percent in my corner about Jessie from the very beginning,” and explained that, when it came to her adamant refusal to pass over Buckley, “I’ve been an actress for many years, and I just was like, ‘I’m going to bat for this girl. Who else is going to play her?'”
“When people did that for me, it changed my life, so I’m doing it,” she concluded. “And it worked, and now she’s going to win the Oscar, so I feel very vindicated [Buckley is a contender for the 2026 Best Actress award, her nomination coming in recognition of her role as Agnes Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet].”
Barring any unforeseen complications, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is currently set to make its theatrical debut on March 6th.
