Penélope Cruz, who plays Enzo Ferrari’s hot-headed business partner and wife Laura in a new biopic, has revealed that she asked director Michael Mann to remove a scene from the movie which “really worried” her.
In the scene – from Mann’s Ferrari, released in cinemas on Boxing Day (December 26) – Laura and Enzo (Adam Driver) are arguing when she pulls out a pistol and fires it intentionally into the wall next to her husband’s head. It sets the tone for their dysfunctional relationship throughout the movie, which involves business disagreements and marital infidelity on the half of Enzo.
“I had a lot of resistance to that scene and I actually tried to convince Michael [Mann] to do a version without the gun,” Cruz told NME in an exclusive interview with Driver and co-star Shailene Woodley. “I thought it put [my character] in a very vulnerable spot… [the other characters] all behave like it wasn’t the first time that she reacted like that with a gun in her hand… I just had a fear of it not working.”
Adam Driver in ‘Ferrari’ as the titular automobile icon. CREDIT: Sky
Eventually, Mann managed to convince Cruz to shoot the script as it was. “Michael was right,” she explained. “He said, ‘No, we don’t need the other version because this is going to work.’
“I was very happy that he pushed us… It was a risk but I think Michael made it work in the way that he directed us and in the way that he edited the scene.”
Driver agreed: “What Penélope’s not saying is that it could have been a very obvious movie moment where it feels very exterior – but because of the way that she played it… [Laura] starts out shooting at someone and then [Penélope had to match] that with the consistency of the character. It was very big. It could have been a moment that didn’t work.”
You can watch the video interview in full above.
Michael Mann on the set of ‘Ferrari’. CREDIT: Sky
Director Michael Mann, known for his crime epics such as Heat and Thief, returns to the screen with Ferrari for his first movie in eight years – following 2015’s commercially disappointing thriller Blackhat. In that time, Marvel movies have dominated the global box office. However, in 2023, the comic book franchise failed to break the billion-dollar mark with any of its titles.
“People are kind of getting tired of superhero movies,” Mann told NME. “They’re becoming more interested in pictures like Heat, if you like… We found that out when I wrote Heat 2, the novel [released in August 2022]… the first week it was out, it was instantly a number one New York Times bestseller.”
‘Ferrari’ is in cinemas now and on Sky Cinema soon
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