Rebecca Ferguson accepts her ‘bluntness’ could be her secret trick to landing roles

‘You need OCD on crack to be able to do that!’ This is Rebecca Ferguson’s frank – and admiring – assessment of how A House of Dynamite’s intricate perspectives were woven together to make Netflix’s brand-new thriller.

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite follows the discovery of a single unattributed missile’s launch at the United States from three different perspectives, including that of the White House Situation Room (where Ferguson’s Captain Olivia Walker works as a senior officer) and the US President (Idris Elba) himself.

Bigelow, the first woman to win the Academy Award for best director in 2010 thanks to Hurt Locker – and who also helmed 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty – excels at these sorts of films: Ferguson and I settle on describing them as ‘political-investigative-journalism-documentarian-action-thrillers’.

‘I think she’s found that gritty realism,’ the 42-year-old Mission: Impossible star tells me of why she thinks Bigelow is so good at them. ‘We often talk about – it now feels a sort of a slogan for this – humanity mixed with whatever terror and horror that she is depicting in the film.’

This time, that horror is nuclear war and the US upgrading to DEFCON 1, the highest level of military readiness.

But it’s also Bigelow’s vision.

‘She throws the camera in and tells the story from another perspective, another person, as if they’re watching. You’re really immersed in a moment, and you feel the sweat, you feel the heat and you feel the confusion,’ Ferguson explains.

With Walker, she plays both a military officer in a team monitoring domestic and international events 24 hours a day, and mother to a sick child; Noah Oppenheim’s script masterfully humanises each character we meet, despite the extraordinary circumstances they’re in.

Ferguson was most concerned with ‘nailing the authenticity’ of the day-to-day when it came to connecting with her character.

‘I want the people who work in the Situation Room to watch and go, “Yes, that’s exactly what we do when we do the hand-off, when we wipe the thing down, how we talk, how we manoeuvre.” It’s tiny details, but all of those details are what makes it real.’

To help on set, there was daily access to Larry Pfeiffer, previously senior director of President Obama’s ‘SitRoom’.

‘There’s a lot of things he’s obviously not allowed to share. I tried very hard to release information, but they are very well trained, these people!’ laughs Feguson of the sorts of things she may (or may not) have learned from him.

What struck her most was how rigorous the set-up is, with the shift teams constantly ready to jump into action, but understanding they likely won’t.

‘It was just funny, [Pfeiffer] was like, “We’re quite boring people, to be honest. We rock up, we do our thing, it just is there – talk about kids, we do a handover, then we walk home.” But very rarely do you get to activate. It’s like hoping – but not hoping – that you get to experience the thing you’ve trained for.’

Ferguson immediately sees a parallel while on the promo trail with Bigelow and her castmates – who include Elba, Jared Harris, Jason Clarke, Tracy Letts, Greta Lee, Anthony Ramos and Gabriel Basso.

‘It’s also [like] when you have security guards that follow you around, which is very kind, but not always needed. But I always think, “God, they’re probably hoping for a small kidnapping”,’ she laughs.

I bring up the similarities I saw between Walker and Mission: Impossible’s Ilsa Faust, with them both being super-competent, strong and in control women.

‘What about Jessica [in Dune], Juliette in Silo – all of my roles, right?’ Ferguson interjects, making my point for me – she exudes a quality that sees her frequently cast in parts with authority and expertise, and I ask what she thinks directors see in her.

She baulks at first. ‘I very rarely try to analyse my own behaviour.’

But then adds: ‘I wonder if it is bluntness. I don’t know what it is. I speak my mind.’

Ferguson certainly has a reputation for that now, after sending Hollywood into a panic by detailing working with an ‘idiot’ co-star in 2024. While she didn’t identify them, she said they ‘screamed’ at her, prompting her to walk off set and cry. Cue panicked publicists and former colleagues rushing to demonstrate innocence, while Ferguson has since confirmed the A-lister was not Tom Cruise, Hugh Jackman or Ryan Reynolds.

She recently told The Times that she has yet to hear from the co-star in question, adding: ‘I will shove someone under a bus in front of an entire crew to make a point. I don’t applaud my own behavior in that. It’s a really tricky world.’

But in terms of acting, Ferguson insists: ‘I try and break away from it – like, I want to not always be that – but it could also be the fact that what’s on page is not the idea of a strong human being. But maybe I bring something in, because that’s what I find interesting.

‘But it’s not just strengths; what’s interesting is vulnerabilities and the things that break us. And the more that I look towards the things that break the person, the more the other side looks stronger. So it’s always a juxtaposition, we see what we want to see.’

Ferguson says it didn’t feel different being directed by a woman compared to a man in what is traditionally a more male-dominated genre for A House of Dynamite; I was curious after Douglas Hodge revealed having a female director (Patricia Riggen) and producer (Viola Davis) in charge of action movie G20 ‘100% changed’ the approach on set, in his opinion, calming down the ‘machismo’.

‘It depends on the man. I just came from working with Denis Villeneuve [for Dune: Part Three] and that guy doesn’t have a testosterone-fuelled ego. He’s the most humble, kind man but also you respect him, you don’t mess about with him. You can come with ideas and he will listen, but he will grab what he wants,’ Ferguson shares.

‘Kathryn and Denis are very similar: they’re very calm, they can manage egos very well and get what they want from everyone in a certain way.’

After being tickled to realise the two directors are so similar they share an almost identical phrase of encouragement, she adds: ‘But to come back to it, there are people you work with where the energies are different and it’s male lead driven. But I’ve been fortunate recently.’

Before we go, I share my favourite line from A House of Dynamite with her, which Walker says to a colleague planning on proposing, to reassure him, as tension starts to ratchet up: ‘This is the second most exciting thing that’s going to happen to you today’.

Ferguson calls the sentence the perfect mixture of ‘humanity and professionality’, just like A House of Dynamite as a whole.

‘It’s the level-headedness that Larry kept on coming back to. You never lose your s**t, even if you’re scared, even if you’re worried. You always come down, the single most important thing: [be] calm and deliver information, and we’ll be fine – until we’re not.’

A House of Dynamite is streaming exclusively on Netflix from today.

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