The B-Side Ep. 166 – In Conversation with Embeth Davidtz

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars and movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Sometimes we are lucky enough to even speak with them about their work. And sometimes, they are both a movie star and a movie director. Today that’s Embeth Davidtz, director of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, now in theaters and expanding this weekend. Our B-Sides include Feast of July, The Gingerbread Man, Mansfield Park, and Bicentennial Man. We speak with Davidtz about her directorial debut, her incredibly diverse acting career, and adapting from the memoir by Alexandra Fuller. There’s extended discussion of Robert Altman’s direction of actors, the underrated qualities of Feast of July (a Merchant Ivory production!), and the ambitions of Bicentennial Man. Not to mention the incredible high-wire act by Davidtz’s in her dual performance in that Chris Columbus sci-fi epic. There are reflections on working with B-Side friend and frequent guest Alessandro Nivola, the legacy of the Miss Honey character from Matilda, and the “trickery” involved in directing a child like Lexi Venter to an incredibly natural performance.