The Phoenician Scheme stars on Wes Anderson's latest: "The funnest summer camp ever"

"I had heard sort of the fables of Wes's productions," he explained during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com. "And how everybody takes dinner together, and everything – you know that Wes is sort of this consummate host while making the movie.

"And he really is," he added. "Even just now, we all just came from Cannes, [and] that whole experience was, I would say it was curated by Wes – where we stayed, how we dined, how we traveled... you're in his experience!

"And he's really good at that, among obviously many other things. But that's a big strength of his, I think, the atmosphere he creates while working."

Another newbie to Anderson's world for this film is Mia Threapleton – the daughter of Kate Winslet whose previous credits include TV series The Buccaneers and an episode of the Channel 4 drama anthology I Am... alongside her mother.

Unlike Cera, Threapleton didn't have any particular expectations about what working on a Wes Anderson set might look like, but she quickly came to realise that it was going to be a special experience.

"I really didn't have any sort of preconceived notions about how things would be," she explained. "Because I've really not been working for very long, so I'm still very much learning everything. And I don't know very many people in the business, other than the people that I've worked with on the few projects that I've done, and none of them have worked with him before."

She continued: "There's only so much information out there about it, because it's all very beautifully, sort of, kept in this lovely little Wes bubble. And so I walked in, and I think after I met Wes for the first time, I thought, 'Wow, God, he just must be so lovely to just be around.'

"And then we had the screen test, and I met Benicio [del Toro] for the first time, and again, same thought process, just, 'Wow, this just sounds so amazing. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really hope I get this.' And then it happened. And then arriving and moving and unpacking all of my stuff into the little hotel room that I was in, I think that was when it kind of all started sinking in."

Threapleton added that when the cast and crew had dinner together on their first night, she instantly came to realise that the experience was "going to be like the best and funnest summer camp ever".

"And we really did become, like, this work family," she said. "I mean, it's impossible to not feel like that when you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together. Don't disappear off into trailers, because he doesn't do that. You're together all day, every day. There are no trailers. There's no video village. There's none of that. So you're in it, all of you. It's not hierarchical at all. And it was just wonderful."

To illustrate just how averse Anderson is to his stars disappearing off into trailers, Cera explained an interaction about portable toilets which pretty much summed up the director's approach.

"On the very first day, or one of the very first days, one of the assistants on the film said, 'Michael... we have a little honey wagon outside, if you want to go to it [between takes]. And Wes overheard and went 'Honey wagon? Why is there a honey wagon here? What? There should not be a honey wagon!'

"He immediately got involved. And was like, 'What's going on? No, no, no, no.' And, like, made a correction. Like, no more honey wagons. So yeah, he's that across everything!"

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While Cera and Threapleton are both new members of Anderson's ever-expanding troupe of talented thespians, the other of the film's three leads – Benicio del Toro – previously had a meaty role in one segment of the director's 2021 anthology film The French Dispatch.

This time, however, his role was much bigger, with Anderson even going so far as to say he had written the part specifically for the Puerto Rican actor and that the film could not happen without him. Naturally, this brought a little pressure for del Toro.

"It was scary, you know... but quite flattering and quite exciting," he said. "It's a great part of a character that is full of contradictions and has an incredible arc. So it's a motivator, you know, it turns you on.

"And as an actor, you dream of parts like this. So it was quite exciting. And then, you know, the script, the story was also unpredictable, original, fun. And then the cast, it's incredible. All those cameos, Michael, Mia, quite exciting. That's also a motivator."

In the film, del Toro plays the role of Zsa-zsa Korda, a wealthy, somewhat amoral businessmen whose dodgy schemes have made him the target of numerous assassination attempts. The film picks up immediately after another close shave, and sees him appointing his nun daughter Leisl (Threapleton) as the sole heir to his estate, before bringing her with him as he embarks on a new enterprise – the Phoenician Scheme of the title.

Anderson has explained that there were many points of reference for crafting the character of Zsa-zsa, but arguably one of the more surprising was his fellow filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.

"That was doing some kind of analogy between tycoons in the business world [and] tycoons in in the movie world," del Toro explained. "So the idea of Francis Ford Coppola came from a conversation that we were having, Wes and myself, and Wes recommended to watch a documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now.

"When I watched it, I kind of like understood – Francis had all kinds of obstacles to get that movie made. And that's similar to what Zsa-zsa goes through in this film to get his redemption."

For Threapleton, inspiration came from another source – looking further into the Catholic Church, to which her character Leisl has devoted her life.

"I was not raised a Catholic," she said. "I really didn't know very much about the Catholic faith. And amazingly... my first official costume fitting was in Rome.

"And it was cool. As we all know, it was a very full-on fitting. There was just a lot of very slow and precise looking over of things. But I did obviously make very good use of the fact that that is the hub of Catholicism. So I went around and just tried to absorb as much as I could visually, because that is the world in which she's grown up. So that felt very important.

"And I did speak to a Dean of a church that is not too far away from where I was and just spoke to people within the Catholic faith as well. I went to some church services. I just really wanted to immerse myself in that and try and understand that as much as I possibly could, so that it just felt natural."

She continued: "I also think that the nuance and the subtlety of the very complicated relationship that she has with Zsa-zsa was something that I took a lot of time over, just quietly on my own – because a lot of her journey that she's had up until the moment that we meet all of them together has only been on her own.

"It's just been quiet contemplation on these unanswered, burning questions that she's had since the age of seven, because, I think, to all intents and purposes, her dad didn't really want anything to do with her. So I spent a lot of time over that, and then we unpacked more of that when we got to Germany as well. It was wonderful to do that with Benicio!"

The Phoenician Scheme is out now in UK cinemas.

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