'Night Always Comes' star Vanessa Kirby filmmaker Benjamin Caron Allyson Riggs/Netflix Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text In 2018, The Crown star Vanessa Kirby submitted the Benjamin Caron-directed episode, "Beryl," en route to an Emmy nomination. The now Oscar-nominated actor and Emmy-winning EP-director worked together a handful of times on Peter Morgan's Emmy-winning series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, so they decided to keep a good thing going once they made their respective exits from the Buckingham Palace set. In 2020, the pandemic threw one potential film project of theirs into disarray, but they eventually bounced back in 2024 when Kirby's Aluna Entertainment and Caron's Square Eyed Pictures set up an adaptation of Willy Vlautin's novel The Night Always Comes at Netflix. With the help of their producing partners Jodie Caron (Square Eyed) and Lauren Dark (Aluna), Caron and Kirby have now brought the book about gentrification in Portland to the screen, as Kirby's poly-employed Lynette has one night to stave off the impending foreclosure of her childhood home by any means necessary. Related Stories Movies 'Night Always Comes' Review: Vanessa Kirby Gets Put Through the Wringer in Netflix's Grim Neo-Noir Odyssey Movies 'Fantastic Four' Box Office: 'First Steps' Pacing for $120M-$125M Launch in Notable Win for Marvel To get the cast and crew in the proper headspace for filming the crime thriller, Caron hosted a Portland-area screening of John Cassavetes' Gloria (1980). Kirby's character was modeled after Gena Rowlands' Gloria Swenson, given that they're both forces of nature who are determined to protect innocents from various threats. Granted, Cassavetes and Rowlands were married throughout the course of their ten-film collaboration together, but Caron still hopes to form a similarly lasting creative partnership with Kirby. "I'd love to think that this might be the first of many more projects together, but it's up to the studios," Caron tells The Hollywood Reporter. "When we talk, we're always like, 'Wouldn't it be great to make this kind of film?'' So hopefully that continues." Night Always Comes' spotlight of Portland's economic inequality paints quite the contrast to Caron and Kirby's previous examination of the British Royal Family on The Crown. But the crises that Lynette is facing as a member of the "working poor" go well beyond the United States. "The idea that you can work two or three jobs and still not be able to afford your home is a universal modern tragedy," Caron says. "Lynette represents millions of people who are one paycheck away or one rent hike away from collapse, and that's not something that is just exclusive to America. That's very much a story that is also happening in the U.K. and across the world." Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Caron also discusses how Kirby's The Fantastic Four: First Steps influenced Night Always Comes' release date, as well as his regrets regarding Andor season two. *** We last spoke for Sharper, and that movie involves con artists trying to steal a billionaire's fortune. In Night Always Comes, you have a desperate working-class woman who's trying to steal a down payment to avoid homelessness. (Laughs.) I know where you're going with this. Did you intend to make a companion piece on the other end of the economic spectrum? Well, the brilliant answer to that would be, "Yes, I absolutely intended to show the difference between the upper echelons of the wealthy to the less wealthy," but no, that would be absolutely rubbish. I wish I had any choice in the films that I get to make. I have a number of films that I would love to make, but the final decision is always made by the studio. They go, "This is the film that we would like you to make," and Night Always Comes was one of them. I actually hadn't thought about the connection to Sharper until you started mentioning people stealing money, and I was like, "Oh no!" So there's a theme going on here about people robbing money. In my heart, maybe I'm just a bank robber who likes to make films. Director Benjamin Caron and Vanessa Kirby on the set of Night Always Comes Allyson Riggs/Netflix A team of British filmmakers producing a movie about economic inequality in America may not seem like an obvious fit on paper, but did you, Vanessa Kirby and the rest of your collaborators find Lynette's circumstances to be universal? The idea that you can work two or three jobs and still not be able to afford your home is a universal modern tragedy. Lynette represents millions of people who are one paycheck away or one rent hike away from collapse, and that's not something that is just exclusive to America. That's very much a story that is also happening in the U.K. and across the world. In this case, America's working clas