In Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) is forced to reevaluate her longstanding friendship with colleague Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield) after he is accused of sexual assault by their student Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri) and to consider how she can best protect herself from a changing culture very much unlike the environment she used to know.
Awards Buzz spoke with casting director Jessica Ronane about how she joined the project:
“I came on After the Hunt at the very beginning. Julia was already attached, which was brilliant, and I think very inspiring for Luca. I had a call, I was actually on vacation, and I had a call from him saying, please read the script, and then a couple hours later, have you read it? I did, and I hadn’t read a script quite like that for some time. It was a really exciting beginning.”
She shared the Julia Roberts performances that most impacted her:
“I grew up on Pretty Woman, I was incredibly impressed by Erin Brockovich. I’ve obviously watched a lot of her work over the years. Gosh, so many iconic performances, but I suppose the ones that I first ever saw her on film, they stay.”
She was particularly elated to talk about collaborating with Guadagnino again, working with him most recently on Queer and a Chanel N°5 ad:
“I’ve been fortunate to work with Luca over and over, a few times. It is always utterly different. You could not guess his next move, and that’s what makes it so exhilarating, to get the call to jump on another fast-moving train with Luca. It’s something very special. Each script is demanding in a totally different way, and they all represent a chance to immerse yourself in a different world as well.”
After the Hunt is now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.
