How to Watch Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie
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When the 2023 Academy Award nominations were announced, many were surprised by one name in the Best Actress race: Andrea Riseborough, nominated for her performance in To Leslie.
"I’m astounded," she told Deadline following the nomination. "It’s such an unexpected ray of light. It was so hard to believe it might ever happen because we really hadn’t been in the running for anything else. Even though we had a lot of support, the idea it might actually happen seemed so far away."
Riseborough was the focus of a late-breaking campaign for her nomination, with Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jane Fonda, Jannifer Anniston, Edward Norton, and a bevy of A-Listers posting about the film.
To Leslie, a small indie drama written and directed by Michael Morris, filmed in just 19 days and only had a limited release after premiering at 2022's South by Southwest festival. It tells the story of Leslie, a single mother from West Texas who wins the lottery but squanders it because of her alcoholism; after, she tries to reconnect with her son, James (Owen Teague). It's based on a true story written by Ryan Bianco.
Director Morris said of To Leslie, "I’m not from Texas. I’m not a single mother. I’ve never won the lottery. There are a lot of struggles in this that I haven’t struggled with in my own life, so it’s fair to question what I saw in this. But the movie, to me, is about love. I know that sounds incredibly generic, but love is a scary concept, sometimes. We hurt the people that are closest to us. The people we love the most are the ones that we are able to hurt the most. The people who love us the most are able and equipped to hurt us the most. So what is it to love somebody in the face of that?"
He added, "There was such specificity about this character, but to me, specificity is a way of making something universal. If you try to make a character universal, you’re most likely going to make something generic, I worry. So, To Leslie was a very specific character study that was written by somebody who has a very specific relationship to this world and these struggles. And as a result, it opened me up to look at it from a bird’s eye perspective and go, 'I’m Leslie.'"
Where to stream To Leslie:
You can rent or purchase the film on the following platforms:
In addition, because of Riseborough's nomination, To Leslie will have a limited theatrical release this weekend—you can check local listings to see if it's playing near you.
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