Julia Roberts and Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, 46, appeared together on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show which is taped at the Mandarine Oriental Hotel in New York City.
They were promoting their new film Leave the World Behind, which is an apocalyptic thriller about class and race relations in the midst of an unexplainable blackout caused by a cyberattack.
Roberts, 56, stars alongside Ethan Hawke, 53, and Mahershala Ali, 49, in the adaptation of the Rumaan Alam novel of the same name.
Roberts and Hawke play a married couple on vacation who encounter a father (Ali) and daughter who claim to be renting the same AirBnB and who may know more about the impending doom than they let on.
The Pretty Woman star wore a black T-shirt with Esmail’s face on it with black leather leggings, cropped black leather jacket and black pumps for the taping of the SiriusXM show.
Julia Roberts and Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, 46, appeared together on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show which is taped at the Mandarine Oriental Hotel in New York City
Afterwards, the Erin Brockovich actress was seen out in the same leggings with a plaid coat and Gucci horsebit loafers
Afterwards, the Erin Brockovich actress was seen out in the same leggings with a plaid coat and Gucci horsebit loafers.
Esmail, who is married to actress Emmy Rossum, 37, sat down for an interview with the Hollywood Reporter last week to discuss the film about two families who are strangers until a cyberattack takes out the power and technology and brings about the end of the world as they know it.
He was also grilled about casting Roberts, who is largely considered to be America’s Sweetheart as a deeply unlikeable ‘Karen.’
‘But it’s for that reason,’ he said. ‘Amanda’s a very flawed character in the book, but I found her compelling, and I knew making it into a film, the audience needs to find some way to access this person and it was going to be hard,’ he told the outlet.
‘You really need someone like Julia Roberts. She’s not only America’s sweetheart, but she’s like the Michael Jordan of actors, and she was going to find a way to channel the humanity out of this person,’ he continued.
He sent the book to Roberts, who has become a frequent collaborator and muse of his, appearing in his films Gaslit and Homecoming.
Esmail said: ‘She read it in a day, and called me the next day, and said, “I’m in.”
And he has wanted to do a disaster film for some time but didn’t know what kind until he read the book during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
They were promoting their new film Leave the World Behind, which is an apocalyptic thriller about class and race relations in the midst of an unexplainable blackout caused by a cyberattack
Roberts, 56, stars alongside Ethan Hawke , 53, and Mahershala Ali, 49, in the adaptation of the Rumaan Alam novel of the same name
‘When I expanded the disaster elements in the sort of cyberattack context, I think that exposed that notion to the audience of what a cyberattack might look like,’ he told Entertainment Weekly.
‘Because cyberattacks in general are a little obtuse and mysterious in their own right. I think people don’t quite grasp what that means or what that would look like.
‘And when you start dramatizing that on screen and they start realizing that that’s a real connection to reality, I think that’s where the real terror might hit.’
He hopes that that terror might prompt some thinking and conversation. ‘For me, this was a conversation starter. It’s to really get inside your mind and unlock the fears that you might really have about our world, and to be moved by that enough to talk to someone about it,’ he explained.
