Thus far in her career, actress Elizabeth Debicki has stolen so many scenes – spectacularly – from such a small handful of projects that we should go ahead and award her the Crown Jewels before she sneaks in and takes them herself. Either way, her electric turns in The Great Gatsby, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and especially her surreptitiously sharp performance at the heart of The Night Manager have already earned Elizabeth the status of a young queen on the silver and small screens - and the announcement of her most recent project promises she'll keep on stealing. Per Variety, she’s to lend her elemental femme fatale flair to Steve McQueen’s newest film Widows and join a verifiable dream team behind and in front of the camera. Before reading onward I must implore you to beware at your own pleasure.
Four years have passed since his formalist masterpiece 12 Years a Slave won the Academy Award for Best Picture, marking Widows as McQueen’s eagerly awaited return to motion pictures; HBO pulled the plug on his would-be television series Codes of Conduct in the interim before making it to air. Debicki will star in the heist thriller alongside the incomparable Viola Davis as two of four eponymous widows who set out to finish the job that their deceased husbands began in vain. As if the thought of these two icons cracking safes or donning disguises wasn’t enough to take your breath away, two of 2016’s most revelatory, swoon-inducing actors round out the cast list thus far: Moonlight’s Andre Holland and Tony Award winner Cynthia Erivo of The Color Purple. McQueen and Gone Girl maestro Gillian Flynn will co-pen the film’s screenplay, to add onto the glut of top tier talent.
Widows won’t hit theaters until 2018 so this tease can’t help but feel a bit excruciating. How do you plan to best appreciate Elizabeth Debicki in the meantime?