Kate Winslet reveals why her film Goodbye June is so personal for her "brilliant, clever" screenwriting son

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

“I promise you, I didn’t plan it this way,” exclaims Kate Winslet, and for a second, her slightly brisk response leads me to wonder if she has taken umbrage at my suggestion that, as Christmas approaches, she seems to have achieved full omnipresence.

As we speak, a TikTok trend to land her the coveted Christmas number one spot is well under way, thanks to hundreds of clips of millennial Winslet fans miming to What If, the ballad featured on the soundtrack of her 2001 animated film Christmas Carol: the Movie.

Another milestone from her past that looms large at this time of year is her 2006 romcom The Holiday, whose wholesome succour has turned it into something of a cult classic. Meanwhile, in cinemas from 19 December, you can catch her in the long-awaited third instalment of the Avatar franchise, Fire and Ash. Oh, and if you tune in to Radio 4 as you wrap your presents on 21 December, you can hear her selections on Desert Island Discs.

But the reason she’s set aside a chunk of her afternoon to speak with Radio Times is a project that’s clearly closer to her heart. The film Goodbye June marks two significant firsts for Winslet and her family. The script was written by her 22- year-old son Joe Anders. And, as well as producing the film and starring in it, the movie also marks her directorial debut.

If you’ve never found yourself blubbing at a film trailer, it might also mark a first for you. The sight of a dying Helen Mirren in a hospital bed, with her screen family – Winslet, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Toni Collette – all trying to come to terms with their imminent loss should just about do it. Winslet brightens at such an outcome.

She’s fine with all of it, of course – even the revival of What If, which her husband, Edward Abel Smith, sometimes plays “for a laugh when we’re on family holidays and I least want him to do it.” She beams. “I’m lucky that I got to be across all of these things.”

She insists that directing was never an itch she felt the need to scratch. By 2015, she had already won an Oscar for her role in The Reader as well as sundry Golden Globes and Baftas along the way – but it was on the set of Danny Boyle’s eponymous biopic of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs that the notion of directing was seeded in her.

In a complex, multi-actor action shot that hit a sudden glitch – even as the cameras had to keep rolling – Winslet was able to see the exact point to which everyone would have to re-set.

“I said, ‘Oh actually, if you come back here, we can cut around it.’ I was making sure it was usable. Danny just turned around to me and went, ‘Actors don’t do that,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, well I do!’ Since then film crew members, and some other actors, have also said to me, ‘You know, you should do it.’”

So why now? Why this? Winslet, who recently celebrated her 50th birthday, talks about “a story that felt so important and personal to me, that when it was ready to send out to directors, I just couldn’t let it go.” Of course, part of the reason the story felt so personal is that it was literally so close to home. She’s aware of the optics here. Goodbye June – and Anders’s involvement in it – will be scrutinised far more closely as a result of the fact that Winslet is his mother.

At the same time, anyone who has found themselves feeling helpless in a hospital waiting room as they prepare to see a loved one, perhaps for the final time, will recognise much in this big-hearted story about a family coming to the realisation that their mother’s final Christmas may have to take place around her hospital bed. Tiny details are painfully well observed – and you can’t help wondering if Flynn’s stunning portrayal of Mirren’s struggling son Connor is perhaps the one that cleaves closest to Anders’s own experience.

Speaking about “this brilliant, clever young boy of mine”, Winslet (who has three children – actor Mia Threapleton, Joe, and 12-year-old Bear) talks about his response to the death of his grandmother – Winslet’s mother, Sally – in 2017, when he was still only 13. “It was the most significant thing that’s happened to Joe in his limited years and he remembers how everyone from our big family – nieces, nephews, siblings – came together, and just how almost geographically unusual that was.”

Unsure of “where to place himself in the world” as Covid hit during his A-levels, Anders won a place on an intensive screenwriting course at the National Film and Television School as a result of a short film he had submitted. When he showed his mother his screenplay, her first instinct was to reach out to Riseborough, with whom she has

been firm friends ever since they first spoke via FaceTime in advance of Riseborough’s involvement in Winslet’s Lee, her biopic of the photographer Lee Miller.

Of that first meeting, Riseborough recalls, “It was a moment in my career and my life that was very important.” Speaking on the phone from London en route to a fitting, Riseborough talks about taking receipt of Anders’s screenplay from Winslet: “I read it and I immediately said, ‘Oh my goodness, let’s do this.’” Did it seem surprising to her that someone with relatively little life experience should have delivered such an emotionally intelligent story?

“Certainly, in one sense,” she says, “but in another, no. I’ve known Joe for some years, I’ve seen him grow up, and I think he just has a huge amount of humility. He’s very permeable, in the most glorious way.”

In Goodbye June, Riseborough’s uptight, unhappy Molly, stuck at home with her kids, envies Julia (Winslet) for somehow managing to juggle her high-powered job with motherhood. The longer Winslet talks about this dynamic as it plays out in the story, the harder it is to tell where Julia ends and Winslet begins: “It doesn’t matter how well-oiled the machine of our life is, there are things I have missed. Not long ago, my youngest son did a piano performance of a song that he had created himself from scratch –and having to watch that over FaceTime from another country, you know, it’s hard.

“On social media, we’re constantly seeing people apparently pulling off this impossible balancing act. I wanted to punch through that and to show these two women, whose relationship has been completely misfiring for a bunch of reasons that neither can actually really remember.”

For Riseborough, this was where the heart of the film lay. “You have this unbelievably tense relationship between Julia and Molly – and to show that with somebody I love so much was a bit of an honour. Because we tackled it with such care and gentleness and softness in the in-between moments – even though we had to get through some quite volatile and aggressive scenes.”

Having worked with so many big-name directors – James Cameron, Woody Allen, Peter Jackson and Anders’s father Sam Mendes, to name a few – it’s perhaps surprising to note that the director Winslet cites as the biggest influence on Goodbye June was Mike Leigh – whom she has “never met or even had a conversation with.

“For me there was something about the tone of Goodbye June that landed somewhere in that sweet spot between Secrets and Lies and Four Weddings and a Funeral.” And as with so many of Leigh’s films, Winslet encouraged improvisation – something necessary in a story that involved so many children. Look out, in particular, for the unscripted exchange between Winslet and Flynn, during which her on-screen son – played by five-year-old Benjamin Shortland – lay fast asleep in her arms.

One might suppose that after three decades of landing lead roles, Winslet had her plum pick of supporting actors when casting for Goodbye June. In the event, she seems to perceive an unintended insinuation in the idea that she should (as I clumsily phrase it) “call upon” anyone to star alongside her. “You know, it’s not about ‘calling upon’ people, it’s really about establishing a degree of respect… and being in a position to make direct approaches.”

Nevertheless, I wonder whether – having initially explained to Winslet that she makes it a rule never to play people who have cancer – Mirren would have been curious enough to take a look at the script if a lesser-known person had sent it to her. Winslet smiles as she recalls the follow-up call from Mirren: “She said, ‘I will break my rule, I do want to support you in doing this.’ When she said yes, I just couldn’t believe it.”

Her delight was echoed by Riseborough, who remembers just what a steadying, supportive presence Mirren was, back in 2010, when she took on her first ever lead role in Brighton Rock. “I was very young and she was so encouraging. And she has continued to be incredibly supportive over the years, and is a champion of good writing. She has fantastic taste.”

Winslet would rather that Goodbye June be seen as a movie that takes place over Christmas, as opposed to a Christmas movie. The charmed afterlife of The Holiday serves as a reminder that not all Christmas classics assume that status upon their arrival in the world. If that’s how it has to be, says Winslet, then fine – “but we just want people to see it now and watch it when it comes out. When I say ‘we’, I mean me and Joe – we really just hope that people see something of themselves in this story.”

Back in Sussex at the Winslet homestead, an altogether more well-established seasonal tale is set to receive its traditional airing. “We always watch The Snowman at some point on Christmas Eve,” she says. As for the responsibility of making Christmas dinner, well, that’s one that she visibly relishes – even down to the lentil and walnut Wellington she makes for her vegan husband. “He can usually get about three days out of it, so he’s always delighted and very covetous.”

This is a ritual clearly finessed over several years. “Well, there’s really nothing I don’t love about Christmas. The letters from Santa. The chaos of it and people going crazy. Pulling things out from underneath the tree.” All spoken with the zeal of someone who thrives on being in charge. When it comes to Christmas dinner, the director and star turn get to be one and the same. It’s a role to which Kate Winslet is singularly suited.

The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.

Goodbye June will be released in select UK cinemas on 12th December and on Netflix on Wednesday 24th December.

Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.