The last 18 months of rising star Lily Collias‘ life have been, well, let’s let her tick through the highlights. “So I graduated high school, worked on the movie, moved here for college, and then Sundance happened,” she told IndieWire during a recent early dinner in downtown Manhattan.
“The movie” in question is India Donaldson’s lauded feature debut, “Good One,” which was this January at Sundance, and is now set for a limited release from Metrograph Pictures, the distribution arm of New York City’s own Metrograph theater. Collias’ quick summation of the last few months even leaves out some other milestones, like starting at NYU (more on that later), taking the film to Cannes in May, and signing on for her next feature (which will take her to, of all places, Winnipeg).
The day we met, Collias was busy with more pressing concerns, like finding a new apartment with her best friend and roommate (likely in Brooklyn) and wondering if a self-professed homebody like her could be happy in an apartment that abuts an elevated subway track (I advised, no, way too loud). She considered it, ultimately agreeing.
Like her character in Donaldson’s “Good One,” Collias is sensible, easy to talk to, and wise beyond her years. As Sam, Collias isn’t just tasked with leading the film, but appearing in nearly every scene and serving as its moral center. And yes, this is her first leading role.
While Collias didn’t come up via the usual Los Angeles high school theater route — “I never did theater there, because I thought it was very cliquey and weird, and I couldn’t grasp it” — she has been training for a long time, including early work with the Meisner Technique, followed by schooling at LA’s Lee Strasberg Institute.
“When I was really young, [acting] piqued my interest,” Collias said. “My parents have no grasp of this industry or anything, so I found a little acting school and, from there, I met people who knew of other schools. … My dad’s all business, so he was like, ‘This looks actually helpful, so you should do this.’ I was really young, so it was still all fun and games, but now that I think about it subconsciously, foundationally, it’s made me feel really secure.”
Her early diet of movies and television was varied, from TV strongmen to adult animation, and a generous dose of some more high-minded offerings. “After school, there was a period of time where I watched ‘Hercules’ for a month straight, and I would eat half a bag of Goldfish, so I would have to buy more Goldfish every two days,” she said with a laugh.
She’s got an older brother, and so she also spent a lot of time watching whatever he wanted, like “‘Family’ Guy in my life at an age where it shouldn’t happen. ‘Happy Tree Friends,’ shit like that. As the youngest sister, that’s what you have to do.”
And Collias credits her mother, who is French, for introducing her to “cool movies.” Top of mind: “Amélie.” “I would watch ‘Amélie’ all the time with my mom as a kid, and I remember just being like, ‘I want to be just like her,’” Collias said.
Her admiration for star Audrey Tautou was complicated, because as a kid, Collias said she couldn’t quite separate the actor and the acting. “I thought that’s just who she was,” she said. That’s changed over the years, especially as she’s studied more. “Whenever I see a really interesting character, I think about what that would have been like to do [what they did], and sometimes my mind will wander and be like, ‘What would I do?’” she said. “But I have a lot of fun just seeing what other people lay out on the table.”
Donaldson had been searching for her star for awhile, to the point that she was even hitting up friends and family for help — do you know any actors? — which was what inspired her younger sister Octavia to mention her friend Collias. “We grabbed a cup of coffee and talked about art, and she liked me,” Collias said of their first meeting. “I taped for her, and she loved it. I can’t imagine that position of searching for so long and not feeling it. I would get nervous about my instincts.”
Donaldson’s instincts paid off. When casting for the lead role in “Good One,” she needed to find someone who could carry a hefty emotional load and make it look easy, natural, real. Oh, and because the film is mostly set in the Catskills, she needed someone who could do that while also hauling a back full of camping gear. You can see why it took so long to find Collias, and why it was so worth the wait.
Collias was more nervous about meeting with co-star James Le Gros, who plays her character’s father, for the first time. “I obviously wanted it to go well,” she said of the initial Zoom call between actors (Donaldson, who was scouting locations, listened in). “We were supposed to be family, and he just picked up our conversation, and he ran with it. It went on for so long, and it was so great. We were just talking and talking and talking. I think we function in similar ways, and also in ways that I don’t yet understand. We have the same humor, and we share a lot of the same goals. If those two things align, I can talk to someone forever.”
The premise of the film is simple enough: 17-year-old Sam is going on a camping trip with her dad Chris (James Le Gros), his best friend Matt (Danny McCarthy), and Matt’s own teenage son. But things are strange from the start, especially when we realize that Matt’s son isn’t coming, so it’s just Sam and these two men (who are, most charitably speaking, from a very different generation than the Gen-Z teen) out in the woods.
They shot the film over the course of just 12 days in the summer of 2023. Production first took place for two days in the city before heading upstate, where Collias promises their accommodations were a bit more luxe than those Sam, Chris, and Matt enjoy (read: actual beds). Still, she recalled fondly, “I’ve never camped before, not like that.”
Within the first two days of moving upstate, Donaldson, Collias, Le Gros, and McCarthy were actually filming the end of the feature, the culmination of a journey that the film’s young star had not been on just yet. “It was more of a psychological exercise, of not letting that affect the way that I was going to perform,” Collias said. “But India was really reassuring and was so intuitive about when to give me direction. After that day, it was just like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to be outside again and film more.’”
“Good One” seems destined to spark conversations, many of which Collias has been having for months now. Mostly, those chats revolve around decoding the moment that things change, that the mood shifts, that the motivations of our characters flip. After I saw the film at a pre-Sundance screening, the chatter among various critics in attendance centered on one question: “When did you notice?” (And if you haven’t yet seen the film, this is not a spoiler, I really promise that.) Individual revelations run the gamut, but Collias and I agreed: female audience members seem to tune in a bit earlier than male.
“All of my guy friends are like, ‘I feel really badly, but I don’t think I noticed something was wrong for the longest time,’” Collias said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, take note of that.’” Her girlfriends, she said, get hip to the tension within the film’s first 10 minutes. Already, she said, they know something is off, and the trio hasn’t even left the city yet.
So, what’s it like to see this film, one all about the ways in which younger women interact with their fathers and their friends … with her own father?
“The first time he saw it was at Sundance at the premiere, and he sat next to me, and I remember that being a very specific moment for me,” Collias said. “I would turn and see him kind of emotional. There’s a scene where I’m crying, and I saw he just started shuddering, and he said something to me that I’ll remember forever: ‘I just don’t know if I’ll ever get used to seeing my daughter cry.’ Because what dad can look at their daughter crying and not feel the same? I think it gave my dad an awareness.”
A lot has changed in the past 18 months. Collias isn’t attending NYU anymore, for one thing. “I tried to do part-time, and they took away my scholarships and grants,” she said. “So it was a financial reason why, but I was also like, ‘This just doesn’t appeal to me.’” She’s finding her way already.
“I’m having the time of my life, it’s everything that I would ever want my life to be here,” she said, again ticking through the highlights. “My roommate’s one of my best friends, so us living together is just a happy time. I have ‘Good One’ released in August, and then I’m working on my next project.”
That project, Egor Abramenko’s A24 horror film “Altar,” will take city girl Collias to Winnipeg for the end of the summer. She is, understandably and characteristically, thrilled to try something new. “I’m going to be there is the most gorgeous time of year, too, because it’s not insufferably hot. I’m excited for some fresh air,” she said.
Sounds like another good one.
Metrograph Pictures will release “Good One” in limited theaters on Friday, August 9, with nationwide expansion to follow.
