![George MacKay On Mark Jenkin’s ‘The Rose Of Nevada,’ The Magic Of Cornwall & The Nerves Of One-Take Filmmaking [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/19111941/RON-Production-124_Steve-Tanner.jpg "George MacKay On Mark Jenkin’s ‘The Rose Of Nevada,’ The Magic Of Cornwall & The Nerves Of One-Take Filmmaking [Interview]")
George MacKay is one of our most thoughtful and interesting actors working today. After a string of small parts here and there early in his career, he exploded into the mainstream with “1917.” Beneath the exhilarating conceit of an action film seemingly done in one continuous “oner” was a performance packed with genuine pathos and nuanced, textured decisions. A thousand thoughts could be read on MacKay’s face as he ran through explosions, debris, and bodies. It’s not easy to deliver a near-wordless performance without appearing like a dry, blank slate, but MacKay has quickly proven to be one of our best.
While he’s gone on to give strange and electric performances in films like “True History of the Kelly Gang” and “The Beast,” MacKay is often at his best when he’s forced to assess. Those deep blue eyes scan an environment, trying to suss out every nook and cranny. It’s what makes him so great in Mark Jenkin’s latest, “Rose of Nevada.”
When a long-missing boat unexpectedly returns to Cornwall, two young, aimless men hired as fishermen, Nick (MacKay) and Liam (Callum Turner), are transported back to 1993 on their first voyage out into the ocean. Once there, Nick and Liam uncover lost secrets about their families and themselves. While one seeks a path back to his own time, the other begins to feel more comfortable in 1993, creating tension between letting go of the past and the fear of embracing the future.
MacKay is excellent here. Immediately confused and taken aback, he’s often forced to move silently through the frame. As his surroundings make less and less sense, you see that face, full of emotion, as he processes his new reality. MacKay is a perfect star for Jenkin’s brand of filmmaking. Shot on a 16mm Bolex camera, his eyes become as deep as the ocean when captured in the texture of film. With all sound recorded in post, MacKay’s physicality is brought into stark relief. It’s a full-bodied performance with eerie, almost dissonant vocal tracks layered over it. He more than meets the moment, working within such tight, strange confines.
Ahead of its release, I sat down with MacKay to talk “Rose of Nevada,” working within Mark Jenkin’s restrictions, not embedding himself in the mindset of 1993, and the magic of Cornwall.
Mark is famous, or maybe, for being an actor, infamous for shooting one, at most two, takes. How do you prepare for that? It must be a little stressful knowing that you have to nail the first one.
You just aim at the target. Some of the time, if you understand the nature of filmmaking, especially now with digital or some directors’ processes, you’re there to offer many options so that they can craft and distill the performance and the character in the edit. That is, on one hand, liberating because you can go home feeling like you haven’t left a stone unturned, but on the other hand, it can sometimes be a bit confusing because you get to the end of the shoot and you still don’t quite know what version of the character will be there. With Mark, you have a real sense of ownership because it’s a one-and-done, and because of that, you go with your gut. Of course, there’s a wee bit of nerves, but it’s kind of like doing a play in that sense.
I think those nerves are healthy, really. It’s just trusting your director, trusting their judgment, and then trusting yourself. That, for me, is born out of lots and lots of prep so that you, without deadening it, look under all the leaves and stones beforehand to know that, “Okay, I think I can feel comfortable that between my gut and my prep, this version is a solid offering.”
Was that the approach to working with Mark in general? I spoke to him a bit about working within the confines of his personal manifesto, and I’m wondering what that’s like for an actor.
One of the best and biggest lessons from working with Mark is that limitations blossom his creativity. I remember him saying, in the week before we started shooting, “Oh, this is my favorite bit. This is when we get all the budget cuts, and we lose everything that’s not essential.” Because of budgeting and a bunch of pragmatic logistical reasons, you have to make decisions. You’re asked to confront what is absolutely essential and what we can do without. That sort of distilling of what’s most important is really healthy. It takes away any fluff, and it brings a real purity to what’s there. Mark’s positivity in the face of those limitations is something I really took from the whole experience of working with him.
Were you a fan of his prior to “Rose of Nevada”?
Oh, definitely. I saw “Bait” in the cinema on my own. Just the other day, he asked, “There were other people in the cinema?” I was like, “Oh yeah, there were other people in the cinema, but I myself was on my own.” [laughs]
I was really struck by it. I remember hearing the buzz about it, and then when I saw it, it felt totally its own and, in some ways, like films of old, but not in any sense derivative. It had a very unique and individual quality and energy. Process is the most important reason for being part of a project. People’s processes of work, I find fascinating to learn about, whether that’s an athlete, a director, or a musician. I’m fascinated by process. Knowing that his process with “Bait” was as unique as it was fascinating. The fact that he didn’t see a stitch of the film until he developed it himself after the shoot, I think, is amazing. The fact that he did all the sound in post, the fact that he concocted the developing fluid with instant coffee and stuff. I just wanted to work with that man.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to shoot everything without sound. What is that process like, having to go back and record everything in post?
It was always laid out right from the beginning. He says, “I’m not going to record any sound on set. There is no sound when we shoot.” So every stitch of sound in the film is post-sync. We come back, and we do the dialogue. There are no guide tracks recorded, nothing. It’s Mark and his sound design editor, Ian, who, after the shoot, really begin from a blank canvas and a clean slate, the creative process of building the sound. He was actually talking about the storm sequence earlier. He was saying that the visuals of the storm sequence were set, the edit was set, and he had a kind of big soundscape, but it just wasn’t quite there in his mind. Then, he was watching his favorite program, “Deadliest Catch,” which is about industrial fishing.
He said there was a big storm sequence, and he realized there was this WHOOMP of the big green water. Before you get the spray, you have this big sort of thumping whoomp of a sound as it hits the hull. He said, “I hadn’t got that whomp.” We had all the spray and the push and the kind of top sound. He said, “So we went, and we developed our own whomp. I put that a second before every bit of spray in the footage.” Then the scene really came alive.
You and I are around the same age. I’m 35, and I believe you’re around 33. So we both grew up in the ’90s, but probably don’t have much of a sense of that early part of the decade. This is set right in that pocket, in 1993. How do you put yourself in the mindset of that period?
It’s funny because the film is sort of out of time, and my character is, in a way, a bit of a not-very-good fisherman. I was dealt an easy hand in terms of my character. He’s freaked out about being in the ’90s and observing it as an outsider. So I wasn’t so concerned about trying to embed myself into that time, but I think I have a lot of childhood memories of it. The World Cup of ’98 was a fundamental memory for me. The shape of people’s clothes, people’s haircuts, families, and cars of the ’90s I remember, even if I was very, very young. In a way, I kind of just concentrated on Nick. My character is always thinking, “What the fuck is going on?” I just concentrated on that feeling more than the embedding of the period.
What’s it like shooting in Cornwall? The way Mark describes it and depicts it in his work, there’s almost a sort of magic that seems to permeate.
Yeah, big time. Cornwall’s ancient. There’s a magic and a folklore to it. There’s a darkness to it as well. I’m very lucky with my work that I get to go to lots of different places, and I feel quite comfortable pitching up somewhere at short notice and leaving at short notice. I’ve learned to be easy with being present in lots of different places, and therefore, I don’t miss places that much. I come and go and feel okay about it, but Cornwall is the one place I really miss. There is a magic to it, and I don’t really know what it is, but in the best way, it really got under my skin, and I miss it. I can’t put my finger on what I miss, if it was the community that Mark built, that Callum and I stepped into, or if it was just the process of filmmaking. But I really do think it’s something in the earth and in the waters and in the air over there. I haven’t missed a place like I’ve missed Cornwall.
“Rose of Nevada” opens in New York and Los Angeles on June 19. Check out some limited-release dates beyond New York and LA here.
