It’s a Family Affair: Ronan Day-Lewis on Creating a Modern Fable and the Father-Son Collaboration Behind ‘Anemone’ [Interview]

Ronan Day-Lewis is no stranger to the world of filmmaking. As the son of three-time Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis and writer-director Rebecca Miller, he spent his childhood on film sets in Marfa (There Will Be Blood) and on Prince Edward Island (The Ballad of Jack and Rose), absorbing the styles and influences that would one day be key to developing his own work. After years of creating short films (including a fake Nike commercial with his father) and hosting exhibitions as a painter, the 27-year-old decided it was finally time to craft his first feature film, nudging his father back in front of the camera after an eight-year hiatus. 

Day-Lewis’ directorial debut, Anemone, which had its World Premiere at the New York Film Festival, is at first, a story of the bonds between brothers. Early in the film, Jem (Sean Bean) journeys into the woods to implore his estranged brother, Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis) to return home to his son Brian (Samuel Bottomley). It’s been twenty years since Ray decided to banish himself to the remote landscape, but there is still a palpable, strange connection between the two upon their reunion, even in the unspoken. As the silence begins to fade, the story shifts into a complicated tale of the relationships between fathers and sons, and the potential for the inherited, generational wounds that can spawn from years at war. 

That father-son connection went beyond just the film’s characters, though, as Daniel Day-Lewis joins his son as a co-writer on the script. Conversations around the elder Day-Lewis’ talent almost always zone in on his unorthodox approach to crafting his characters, but in Anemone, he seems to be exploring a new kind of method, examining the dynamics between fathers and sons by working alongside his son. As Ronan describes, it was pretty serendipitous, as the two always knew that they wanted to work together, but independently found their way to the topic. The film, of course, serves as a showcase for Daniel Day-Lewis’ ferocious performance, building and shaping Ray through his signature embodiment of the character and a series of dramatic monologues. And while the performance is superb, Anemone also establishes Ronan Day-Lewis as an exciting new filmmaker, eager to experiment with the visual and sonic styles that continue to inspire him.

I was delighted to speak with Day-Lewis to discuss his experience debuting his first film, Anemone. Throughout our conversation, he was incredibly down-to-earth and thoughtful, eager to share how special it was to work alongside his father, his new discoveries as a filmmaker, and the inspiration behind the film’s more audacious creative decisions. 

Sophia Ciminello: Congratulations on your new film and the premiere at New York Film Festival! What a great debut. 

Ronan Day-Lewis: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. That means a ton. 

SC: Of course! At the Q&A after the premiere, you spoke about writing this with your Dad [Daniel Day-Lewis]. When did that process really kick off for you both?

RDL: Yeah, it’s funny because it’s hard to pinpoint the exact starting point. A few years before we started working on it together, I had this vague idea of wanting to write something about brotherhood. I have brothers, and the sort of beauty and tragedy of that archetype was something that I wanted to find some way into, but I wasn’t sure if it would be more of a coming-of-age story or something closer to my world. And then eventually, my Dad came to me with the idea of us trying to find something to work on together, but we didn’t have any specific sense of what that would be yet. Then, a couple of years later, we realized that my Dad independently had this fascination with brothers and this idea of wanting to play a brother or explore that kind of relationship, and specifically, the role that silence can play and the sibling type of telepathy that can happen. 

SC: It’s great that you were both able to find the origins of that idea independently and then work through it together.

RDL:  Yeah, absolutely, because I think it felt at first like we both loved the idea of doing something together, but there was no guarantee that we’d find something that we could get equally obsessed with. And it was around 2020 when we started actually in earnest, like sitting down and trying to find a way into it. And we kind of landed on the idea of this man who’s living in this state of self-banishment, who’s kind of living this almost ascetic existence in the middle of nowhere. And once we found that, we knew that brotherhood would be an aspect of it and that his estranged brother would show up at the beginning of the film under mysterious circumstances. That was sort of the seed for us, and we didn’t really know anything beyond that or anything about their backstory or where this was taking us, but it was very character-led in a literal way, where we had these two guys stuck in the woods together. It was kind of following them from one scenario to the next and being reactive to them being kind of reactive to each other, and sort of letting improvisation come into the process. It just started to come together kind of slowly over the course of a few years. 

SC: And in meeting the two brothers, it feels like you are illustrating a world that could be a part of a fable, where one man leaves his life behind to venture into the forest to learn something about himself. How did you create these two really distinct brothers, yet still communicate that unspoken connection between them?

RDL: I love that you mentioned the fable aspect of it, because I think that sort of fable or fairy tale quality started to develop pretty early on when we were working on it in conjunction with these very heavy themes and this kind of framework of historical reality that the film also had to kind of adhere to. But yeah, as far as developing, I feel like the two characters really developed almost in opposition to each other, which was kind of a fun way into thinking about character, and it kind of helped elucidate certain traits of Ray’s and of Jem’s, just in the ways that they would approach certain things differently, like eating dinner together. There’s a scene where Jem starts praying and saying grace, and Ray just looks at him for a second and just starts eating the food with a spatula, like in the middle of the prayer.

And there were certain things like that we discovered — almost these incidental moments between the two characters that were very small and granular, but then ended up actually being super informative. As we followed them further into the story, they became indicative of this bigger rift, and specifically, faith, or the lack thereof, became a big kind of focal point and type of rift between them. They’d both come from this shared upbringing, which we realized more and more had a lot of trauma in it, but the ways that they had dealt with that trauma couldn’t be more different. And I think that that also ended up opening us up to this view of religion that felt like more of a kind of bird’s eye view of it, and this other kind of form of spirituality ended up finding its way into the film that was almost separate from the depiction of Christianity or of organized religion. The characters ended up really leading us that way, though. 

SC: That difference in their responses to faith and organized religion also comes up through the monologue that Ray gives about the priest. That’s also where your Dad’s performance really comes to life, too. When did you decide that Ray was the character that he was going to play?

RDL: Yeah, it’s funny because I always, I think, thought that he would be Ray. Like, even from the first scene that we wrote of Ray, where we discover him in the clearing and he’s hacking at the roots, and we’re kind of pulled into the mystery of him. I just always saw him really clearly as Ray. And it was actually, I guess, a misunderstanding because I found out recently that he was at first equally interested in Jem. So I think at a certain point, I guess he slipped into the idea of Ray in this unspoken way that I wasn’t really aware of at the time. Because I always thought he was going to be Ray if we were able to get the script to a place that we felt good about. But yeah, it was amazing to watch. I think part of the reason why I thought that was because certain parts of the script, like the monologue you mentioned about the priest, came about pretty early in the writing process. And they really came out of my dad’s kind of inhabiting of this character. I mean, he would improvise as multiple characters, but specifically as Ray, that monologue came about pretty early on. And that became almost like an anchor for me and for both of us, where the second that appeared, I could see that there was a film there, I guess, in this way, more vividly than I had after the initial conversations about it. 

SC: It’s such a perfect role for him, too, especially as those monologues build and reveal more about the character. 

RDL: Oh, thank you, I think so too. 

SC: I was also struck by how you chose to begin the film before we even meet Ray and Jem. You introduce the story with a narrative colored-pencil drawing that depicts the history that’s essential to the characters. How did you decide that that’s how you wanted to start the story?

RDL: I think so much of the film takes place before it actually starts in terms of the weight of the past. Both the historical and the personal pasts in the film, I think, are this kind of storm cloud hanging over the whole thing. And so it felt important to have some visual way of communicating that history at the beginning of the film that wasn’t just putting a title card with, you know, information about The Troubles. That was something that at certain points, the editor and I considered, and it just always felt like it was betraying the spirit of the film and the kind of tone of the film. But the drawings kind of became this way to communicate that history in a kind of naive, simple, visual way that was also thematically tied to this idea of sort of a child’s view of war. Which becomes more important, I think, as we go on and we meet Brian and kind of understand his perspective on the mystery of what happened to Ray, and also his carrying on of that legacy of violence. And so, yeah, it was a way to bring in some of those thematic threads, but in this kind of, yeah, very childlike way. 

SC: When you mentioned the storm cloud hanging over the film, I immediately thought of the weather and how the movie has this kind of musicality to it with the score and the sounds of nature. Did you have any specific inspirations for that sound?

RDL: Oh yeah, I think those are two aspects of it that you put really well that I think built up to that musicality. That’s the score itself–which I was listening to a lot of music from the period that I’ll get into more specifically– but then also the other score of nature, of the kind of sense of the wilderness pressing in on the hut and the constancy of the wind, which becomes, I think, almost like a narrator in the film that’s constantly kind of pummeling away at this human structure and always making you aware of it in the backdrop of human suffering and the human drama of the story. So I worked with this amazing sound designer, Steve Fanagan, for months to find the perfect wind sound, actually, that kind of whistling, old-school sort of wind that feels like it has that kind of spiritual energy contained in it. And we looked at some scenes, actually. There was this one scene in 8 ½ where they pull into an alleyway, and there’s just no sound except for this wind in the backdrop that we looked at. And then also David Lynch’s sound design work. Specifically, there are these hallway scenes in Blue Velvet. There are these transitional scenes, but they have this subterranean mixture of wind and almost like an industrial sound that we looked at. 

And then in terms of the score, I was listening to a ton of shoegaze in prep, like a lot of Slow Dive and My Bloody Valentine, and then smaller bands like Lovesliescrushing, if that’s the right way to say it (laughs), and Drop Nineteens. And so I had this big playlist that I was just obsessively listening to all the time and was kind of sharing certain songs from that with the heads of department to kind of communicate the tone and the visual language, actually. And then yeah, when I first started working with our composer Bobby Krlic, I mentioned the idea of it being almost a shoegaze score. And I was amazed, actually, at how intuitively he got the kind of sense of that because it isn’t the most obvious pairing with the darkness, and I guess, the heaviness of some of the historical aspects of the film. But partially also because it’s set in England in the mid-90s, there is that kind of historical way in, because that was sort of the time that shoegaze was flourishing. And then also, the way Bobby put it, which was really beautiful, was that there’s this kind of repression in shoegaze because it’s these angelic voices trying to kind of press out from under these walls of sound that are almost like keeping them walled in. And there’s something about that that relates to Ray’s repression and his kind of emotional trajectory over the course of the film. And also that angelic kind of voice that becomes almost Nessa’s voice throughout the film, and this kind of nagging, spiritual bent that ended up sort of making its way into the score. So yeah, it was incredible to work with Bobby to bring that very specific sound in, but then also kind of meld it with a more classical DNA, which I think the film required at times. 

SC: And shoegaze has that dreamy, ethereal quality that a lot of your images have. 

RDL: Oh yeah, exactly. 

SC: I’m thinking of Nessa floating at the end of the bed and of that giant silver fish. How did you create those images with your cinematographer?

RDL: Yeah, so I was working with Ben Fordesman, I had seen his work in Love Lies Bleeding and Saint Maud, and when I realized the same person did both of those, I was just like, “Oh my God, this guy’s doing something else.” So, it was incredible to work with him. And yeah, definitely my work as a painter was super informative for the visual language. It was pretty unconscious, I think at first, but there are definitely certain colors that I’m drawn to a lot in my work, and blue is a color that I use a ton in painting. I was always drawn to blue as a kind of emotional, I guess, vessel in the film, and then thinking about these also, yeah, pockets of red in Ray’s environment in contrast to the blue of Brian’s bedroom, and the contrast between the two of them being this like inversion of each other. 

And we looked at some different sources like this book, “The Book of Miracles”, which was this illuminated manuscript from the 16th century that had all these illustrations of these cosmic events, like massive hailstones and blood rain and these kinds of things happening in the sky with like daggers in the sky and suns making strange formations and stuff. And that ended up being a kind of roadmap for the more mystical elements in the film that I think emboldened us to just go deeper into and accept those moments of slight unreality. And then also looking at this book of photographs by Nick Waplington, which was of Sheffield in the mid-90s, which were all these amazing references for interiors, and like wall-to-wall carpeting and just the kind of patterns and fabrics and more grounded parts of their world that could be used more for the Brian and Nessa scenes in the house. Yeah, those two books in combination end up becoming a really helpful kind of seesaw for us.

SC: I love that you had a Medieval and a more modern reference point. It does combine that more grounded reality with something that feels a bit more otherworldly. 

RDL: Thank you, yeah, it’s exactly that.

SC: I know you’ve been asked a lot about your Dad’s involvement in Anemone, but your Mom also has a project world premiering at the festival…

RDL: Yeah!

SC: What have you learned from her about filmmaking and storytelling?

RDL: Oh, so much, yeah. I mean, first of all, I’ve been so lucky that she’s just shown me so many films from a young age that I otherwise would never have come across until way later. And I’ve had so many conversations with her leading up to making Anemone that were just so helpful. And everything from like more practical kinds of questions to just more generally, the philosophy of how to go about something of this scale, because I had done smaller, you know, short films and music videos and things. But yeah, mainly I think the way she just kind of encouraged me to follow my instincts through the whole storm of it was really just a guiding star. And I think also just learning from watching her films, like Angela is a really important film to me, and The Ballad of Jack and Rose, and just the bravery of certain decisions she made creatively in those films kind of felt like a spiritual guide in a way in terms of Anemone because there was a way that this story I think could have been told in a far more kitchen sink and a much safer way I guess I would say and and I think I look to films like that especially Angela for guidance on how to how to approach these themes that feel more archetypal but in a way that’s more lyrical at times. 

SC: Oh, that’s great. And in making your first feature, what are you excited to take into your next artistic venture, whether that’s filmmaking, painting, or something else? 

RDL: Yeah, I guess the thing that was the biggest learning curve was just the hyper collaborative nature of filmmaking compared to painting, which is so solitary. You’re just in a room with this image, and you’re kind of banging your head against the wall trying to make it work, and you can kind of only rely on yourself. And here, getting to work with all these people, each one of whom has this incredible craft that they’ve dedicated their life to, and then finding a way to communicate a visual language and a tone and a kind of wavelength to everyone involved in ways that at times feel impossible to put into words. I think that was maybe the biggest lesson for me, I guess, not limiting yourself to words, as a way of communicating to people and your collaborators. And yeah, knowing when to embrace other ideas that are coming at you from your collaborators and when to stick to the ideas that were always there from the beginning. 

SC: Thank you, Ronan! And congratulations again on the film.

RDL: Thank you so much, Sophia. I really appreciate it. It was so great to chat.

Anemone is currently in theaters from Focus Features.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Sophia Ciminello

Sophia is a lifelong film enthusiast who considers herself a scholar of Best Actress winners, the films of Paul Thomas Anderson, and 1970s cinema. She hosts and produces the podcast "Oscar Wild," where she celebrates her love of cinema with retrospectives, deep dives on all 23 Oscar categories, and interviews with directors and creatives. She thanks her mother for her love of Old Hollywood and her father for letting her stay up late to watch the Oscars when she was in preschool. Her favorite Best Picture winners are All About Eve and Ordinary People. You can follow her on Twitter @sophia_cim.

Latest posts by Sophia Ciminello (see all)

• ‘Marty Supreme’ Review: It’s One Paddle After Another For Timothée Chalamet in Josh Safdie’s Instant New York Classic [A-] - December 1, 2025
• ‘Hamnet’ Review: Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal Will Break Your Heart in Chloé Zhao’s Timeless Tale of Profound Loss and Boundless Love [A] - November 25, 2025
• Interview: Renate Reinsve on Collaborating with Joachim Trier to Create a Family Portrait in ‘Sentimental Value’ - November 25, 2025