Jennifer Esposito celebrates ‘Fresh Kills’ on the Times Square billboard | Photo credit: Arturo Holmes
Actress Jennifer Esposito, best known for playing CIA Deputy Director Suzanne Raynor in the Amazon series ‘The Boys’, opened up about the challenges of making her directorial debut ‘Fresh Kills’. People.
The writer, director, and star of ‘Fresh Kills’ attended the event Live with Kelly and MarkWhere ‘The Boys’ actress revealed that she “produced the movie and paid for most of it herself.”
“I have mortgaged my house,” he said.
The ‘Blue Bloods’ actress’ first directorial feature film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a murder drama set in Staten Island, in which she plays a family matriarch alongside Emily Bader, Odessa Azien, Nick Cirillo and Annabella Sciorra.
Esposito said Fresh Kills is “the first film in the mafia genre where we’re looking at a female perspective.” Born in Brooklyn but raised in Staten Island, the filmmaker said she was inspired by seeing “young women who were really violently angry” and whose families were involved in criminal activity.
“I realized it was really more about the choice,” she added. “I kept going back over and over again. [the script] When I would hit an obstacle in my career or life and think, ‘This is where this anger comes from.’ It’s about the boxes we’re put in and not having a choice.”
Esposito admitted that she “definitely went a little crazy.” “Nobody wanted to make it. I couldn’t even convince people to read it. And then when [they] I read it, and it was like, ‘We’ll give you $5 million if you work with a big name. Because women don’t sell movies.'”
She suggested funding the film to her husband, Jesper Westerström, in 2020. “I went to my good husband and said to him, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea. What do you think about mortgaging the house?’ My belief is that if you don’t bet on yourself, who will bet on you?”
