NEW YORK, Sept. 4 (UPI) — The Last Frontier, Cyrano and The Magnificent Seven actress Haley Bennett plays a woman ahead of her time, trying to balance love and science, in the new period film, Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day.
In theaters Friday, the rom-com is set in 1910 England and follows Katherine (Bennett), a passionate astronomer frustrated by the men who don’t take her and her work seriously.
Jack Whitehall from The Studio and The ‘Burbs plays William, the man she regards as a surrogate brother who supports her all things.
“She’s an aspiring astronomer. She’s awkward and restless and completely out of sync with the world around her, including her best friend, who is played brilliantly by Jack Whitehall,” Bennett, 38, told UPI in a recent phone interview. “They are set up to be married and they get into all sorts of shenanigans.”
Bennett described Whitehall as perfectly cast as nice-guy poet William.
“He is the ultimate playmate. He’s so spontaneous and game and mischievous and inventive,” she added. “He’s so completely alive in every moment and he isn’t afraid to look ridiculous.”
The film explores the contradiction of how male scientists in the early 20th century asked big questions and worked to find the answers, yet weren’t open-minded enough to accept a clearly intelligent woman studying and experimenting in this same space.
“Math was my worst subject. I’m a terrible mathematician, but what was important to me was this feeling of constantly just being told ‘no’ and being rejected and not really having an understanding or a reason why,” Bennett said.
“If I have the same ability as a man and I’m just not allowed to do something because of the gender, that’s something that is incredibly relatable and timely and timeless,” she added, noting she sees her 7-year-old daughter already “dwelling on rejection,” when she can’t immediately get what she wants.
“One of the things I loved about Katherine so much was her resistance to this nonsensical word ‘no.’ Like, ‘Why, no?’ and how painful ‘no’ can be.”
The death of someone dear to Katherine two-thirds of the way through the film helps her re-evaluate her perceptions of time, love and balance.
“How can love and career and motherhood and parenthood co-exist? How do we do all of these things successfully? And I think these are difficult things and I think that Virginia Woolf expresses that so well,” she added.
“This is a romantic comedy, but there are tragic elements to it. It’s a romantic comedy with some heavy undertones, loss being one of them.”
Lily Allen, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders and Misia Butler co-star.
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