Steven Soderbergh is back with a new caper.
The director of the “Ocean’s Trilogy” and “Logan Lucky” has returned with “The Christophers,” which debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. The film follows the children of a famous artist (Ian McKellen) who hire an art forger (Michaela Coel) to complete some of his unfinished work. While the movie hasn’t gotten picked up yet, if it does and is released by the end of the year, it will be the third Soderbergh movie of 2025, following the ghost story “Presence” (which premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival and was released at the beginning of the year by Neon) and spy film “Black Bag” (which Focus Features opened this spring). That’s a lot, even by Soderbergh standards.
“I am creative but it’s with a keyboard. It’s not with paint brushes and colors and lights and so that was different,” Coel told TheWrap about her process of learning to be a forger – an artist herself who then settled into copy other people’s work. “But there’s something at the heart of the script for me, which I enjoy seeing in any script, which is the idea of separation and unity. And I think for Ian’s character, he has separated from parts of himself, and this film is the process of him uniting the parts that have become disparate, his vulnerable side, his creative side, and bringing that into himself.”
Coel found connective tissue between McKellen’s character and hers.
“It’s the same with my character. I used to have hopes and dreams, and I thought that this would work out for me in the same way it did for Ian’s character. And I have had to separate those hopes and dreams in order to become this person that is either forging work or restoring other people’s works or selling Chinese food in a truck, and so I’m also uniting those parts back into myself,” she explained. “It’s a very simple thing, separation and unity, but something I’m very attracted to as an actor.”
As for what it was like to work with the legendary McKellen, Coel said, “I remember having lots of chats with you Ed [Solomon, the screenwriter], and I just remember thinking, I just want to support Ian. I’m just here for Ian, whatever Ian needs.” Coel was in Ghana at the time, where she has been for most of the year. When she flew back to England, she found out that McKellen wanted to do a readthrough of the script at his house.
“I flew back from Ghana, after being there for five months, dropped my bags, went straight to Ian’s house. Was like, ‘Hello, nice to meet you.’ He’s everything delightful that you could possibly imagine,” Coel said. “I have chills just remembering that.”
