‘Royal Hotel’: Director Kitty Green Breaks Down the Most Challenging Scene to Film

Director Kitty Green is interested in stories of microaggressions, mostly because she doesn’t have the budget for anything bigger. And on her latest feature, “The Royal Hotel,” Green dealt with all manner of issues working on a film far bigger and more ambitious than her debut feature, 2019’s “The Assistant.”

The film, which follows two young women who take a job at a shady bar in the Australian outback, had a production schedule of only 25 days. This left Green having to be incredibly precise during pre-production, and with a film that boasted 14 different speaking parts, it was a far more unwieldy project than her first film.

Add to that the film generally takes place in one location, the Australian pub known as “The Royal,” and some of the film’s big bar sequences were a Master Class in filmmaking.

“I ended up being more like this conductor of technical things,” Green told TheWrap. “Even the blocking is really tricky.” Green had to lay out where exactly all the bar patrons would sit while walking stars Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick through their movements in the space. “It becomes a very technical exercise in a lot of ways and, luckily, Julia and Jessica bring the drama. It’s all on their faces.”

“Every scene was traumatic,” Green said, a fact only enhanced by the extremely cold temperatures they were filming in. “The girls were freezing [and] we were rained out the first three days [of shooting] in a row.” Because the film didn’t have the budget for weather, cover shots had to be cut. “As my cinematographer and I were driving away from the set on the final day we felt like those two girls at the end of the movie, just bruised, beaten and tired,” she said.

One of the more challenging scenes comes before the film’s explosive climax and was one of the more technically intense moments for Green and the crew. The scene sees Garner’s character, Hanna, come out to the bar with a birthday cake. As she searches for a lighter, all manner of shenanigans start to take place, including a patron shooting off fireworks. “We had half a day, five hours, to do that entire scene, there’s 30 extras in it and there’s explosions,” Green said.

“I’m very proud of that scene because we pulled it off miraculously, and it felt explosive and crazy and the energy of the men in that room was really something,” she said. “Behind the monitor I could feel that kind of grunting and it hurt my heart. [It’s] like when you can feel it in your bones and it just felt like ‘Oh, this is the movie.'”

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