Being personally a fan of Alex Garland’s past work — including his scripts for films like 28 Days Later and Sunshine — I asked about her familiarity with the filmmaker prior to signing on to work with him.
It seems that she was really blown away by Ex Machina, and immediately knew that she wanted to have the filmmaker as a collaborator.
I learned about this funny “origin story” earlier this month when I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tessa Thompson for a one-on-one interview during the Los Angeles press day for Annihilation.
It was in response to this question that the actress told me the above story about putting a message into the universe after first seeing Garland’s directorial debut.