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I<\/span>t\u2019s quite a schlep from Buckingham Palace to the mean streets of working-class Portland, Oregon, but it is one that Midlands-born film-maker Benjamin Caron and actor Vanessa Kirby have undertaken with their new thriller Night Always Comes, adapted from the taut novel by Willy Vlautin. Caron and Kirby met nearly a decade ago when he directed episodes of The Crown, in which she played the young Princess Margaret from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.<\/p>\n Now Kirby stars as a former sex worker called Lynette, toiling in multiple jobs and living with her disabled brother (Zach Gottsagen) and their wrecked, wayward mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh). They have cobbled together the funds to buy their dilapidated house at a snip, only for Lynette\u2019s mother to recklessly blow her half on a new car. Cue one manic night in which Lynette must make back the dough, by fair means or foul, or else be turfed out on to the streets.<\/p>\n Caron cites the Safdie brothers\u2019 Uncut Gems and Good Time as an influence on his picture\u2019s breakneck momentum. But, along with films such as Late Shift, On Falling and the forthcoming Urchin, Night Always Comes surely belongs to a wave of neo-realism that reflects our ongoing cost of living crisis. \u201cThe idea that you can work three jobs and still not be able to afford your own home is a universal modern tragedy,\u201d says the affable 49-year-old director. \u201cLynette\u2019s story represents millions of people who are just one or two pay-cheques away from collapse. Of course, the film is in the thriller genre but I also wanted to get across the idea that nurses or caregivers or whoever are being priced out of the very cities that they help to keep running.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/span>Night Always Comes is available on Netflix.<\/span><\/p>\n The situation first struck him during a visit to Los Angeles. \u201cI remember being genuinely shocked by seeing the homeless crisis there. People are like: \u2018Oh, they must be drug addicts.\u2019 It\u2019s very easy to throw labels like that around. But they can\u2019t all<\/em> be addicts. People are not just falling into homelessness: they\u2019re being pushed.\u201d<\/p>\n Wealthy characters in Night Always Comes, such as the client who recoils in disgust when Lynette tells him of her straitened circumstances, are naturally insulated from economic turbulence. This is a film where it\u2019s poor versus poor all the way, and kindness is in short supply. \u201cIt\u2019s a cliche,\u201d says Caron, \u201cbut desperate people do desperate things. And the film is full of desperate people. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n But I\u2019m a romantic. I like to think the world sort of had a stroke during Covid<\/p>\n Kirby is in every scene, her vitality and desperation propelling the movie in much the same way as, say, Gena Rowlands in Gloria or Mikey Madison in Anora. As Lynette, she lies and schemes, steals a car, loots a safe, and isn\u2019t above taking the nearest blunt instrument to anyone who crosses her. \u201cBeing back with Vanessa was like reuniting with a dance partner,\u201d says Caron, with a smile. \u201cIt\u2019s been a while but you still know the moves.\u201d<\/p>\n Actors bring baggage, however. The casting of Kirby \u2013 privately educated and so often labelled \u201cposh\u201d that she has even moaned about it in interviews \u2013 as a traumatised, penniless sex worker, appears to plunge the film into the territory of Frankie and Johnny, which starred Michelle Pfeiffer as a dowdy, unremarkable waitress. \u201cYou\u2019re absolutely right,\u201d Caron says, \u201cbut, as an actor, you want to avoid being pigeonholed. The more you can jump off the cliff, the wider range of offers you\u2019ll get. Vanessa has this unpredictable energy. There\u2019s no safety net with her, no filter. She makes these wild decisions in real time, in the middle of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Self-confessed lapsed Star Wars fan \u2026 Benjamin Caron on the set of Night Always Comes<\/span> Photograph: Allyson Riggs\/NETFLIX \u00a9 2025<\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget, he says, that even The Crown looked risky to begin with. \u201cThere was a moment before it went out where we were all like: \u2018Is anyone going to watch this?\u2019\u201d Similar jitters surrounded another streaming hit that became one of Caron\u2019s springboards into cinema: Andor, the gritty Star Wars spin-off that revived interest in the franchise just as Disney was in the final stages of flogging a dead Wookiee.<\/p>\n One outwardly unorthodox choice by Andor\u2019s writer and show-runner Tony Gilroy was to put Caron, a self-confessed lapsed Star Wars fan, in charge of several episodes, including the first season\u2019s finale. The lack of reverence that Caron brought to George Lucas\u2019s universe might have been one of the keys to the show\u2019s excellence. \u201cYou can get too drawn into trying to please the fans,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s a dangerous trap.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Caron became a safe pair of hands in the television world \u2013 he cut his teeth on the likes of Scott & Bailey, Skins and Wallander, and also directed the final episode of Sherlock \u2013 but he says making movies was always the endgame. His 2023 debut, Sharper, a deliciously slippery thriller starring Julianne Moore, spent just a week in US cinemas before streaming globally on Apple TV+. As a Netflix production, Night Always Comes will likewise have only the merest brush with the big screen. This can\u2019t be what he has been dreaming of all these years.<\/p>\n \u201cOh Ryan!\u201d he cries, throwing his hands up. \u201cThat\u2019s so sad! Don\u2019t say that. Look, I remember in the 1980s and 90s, you\u2019d hear about a film in America and it would take six months until it reached the UK. There was this feverish anticipation: fomo, really. And it\u2019s true that doesn\u2019t exist in the same way. But I\u2019m a romantic. I like to think the world sort of had a stroke during Covid, and everyone retreated into their rooms and drew the curtains. Slowly, they\u2019ve been coming back, blinking into the daylight. Look at Barbie and Oppenheimer. Those are moments when the audience feels that connection of sitting in a cinema and having a shared experience. For those two hours, you can be sucked into this portal and taken on a journey. Whereas, at home, you\u2019re always going to be distracted.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps the message, then, is: death to Netflix? \u201cNo, I love Netflix,\u201d he says. \u201cThey changed my career: I owe so much to those guys. With The Crown, I was working with the budget of a mid-sized movie, with actors who would normally be in films. And people have bigger screens now; it\u2019s not like in the 1980s. No director would say they wouldn\u2019t love viewers to sit in the cinema and watch what they\u2019ve made. But you also want lots of people to see your work. And, hopefully, a few million might watch it.\u201d In Caron\u2019s case, it seems, Netflix always comes to the rescue.<\/p>\n Night Always Comes is on Netflix from 15 August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s quite a schlep from Buckingham Palace to the mean streets of working-class Portland, Oregon, but it is one that Midlands-born film-maker Benjamin Caron and actor Vanessa Kirby have undertaken with their new thriller Night Always Comes, adapted from the taut novel by Willy Vlautin. Caron and Kirby met nearly a decade ago when he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4282,9329,4776,2107,1394,9330,736,9331,445,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-15824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-benjamin","9":"tag-caron","10":"tag-crown","11":"tag-director","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-realism","14":"tag-risk","15":"tag-royalty","16":"tag-thought","17":"tag-watch"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}