Getting cast in a Steven Spielberg movie is a big deal for any actor. For some, it can lead to awards season acclaim. For others, it signals an arrival in Hollywood, a sign that they’ve finally made it in the business. For Courtney Grace, the role represents the biggest opportunity she’s had — and a surprising return to her broadcast roots.
Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” which finds him revisiting the alien genre of blockbuster that his earlier classics all but defined, centers on two characters brought together by cosmic forces beyond their understanding. After Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor go on a thrilling adventure filled with car chases and villain monologues, Spielberg hands some of the movie’s biggest emotional heavy lifting to a relative newcomer to Hollywood in the final act.
Grace plays the role of an unnamed NBC news anchor tasked with presenting to the world an archive of video evidence proving the existence of extraterrestrials on Earth stretching back decades. By most metrics, her role is small. She’s on screen for a matter of minutes during the film’s final act. She doesn’t interact with the other characters and she’s mostly speechless. But moviegoers won’t soon forget her impressive turn, communicating the stakes of a massive cover-up that sought to prevent the knowledge of aliens walking among humanity for decades.
Spielberg rests the finale on her performance — done entirely behind a TV news desk with a close-up on her face — which takes viewers from shock and dismay to fear and confusion, ultimately leading us into an uncertain but resolute future. Already, fans on social media are pointing out Grace as a standout.
Grace has starred in five episodes of Netflix’s “Sweet Magnolias” and played the role of a nurse in “Stranger Things.” But portraying journalists has been her specialty of late, with reporter credits in a series titled “Miss Governor,” the Sydney Sweeney vehicle “Christy,” “Tulsa King” and “Murdaugh: Death in the Family.” Bitten by the acting bug while performing in church plays as a child, she won’t soon forget her latest gig. “I will hold on to that for the rest of my career — for the rest of my life,” she says of being directed by Spielberg.
We caught up with Grace to chat about working with Hollywood’s foremost expert on alien life, her role and more. Here’s what she disclosed about her day on the set.
Not many up-and-coming actors can say they worked with Steven Spielberg in so prominent a role. What was it like walking onto set?
I was pretty overwhelmed with the thought that he would invite me. With that alone, I already felt like I won at that moment. … I went, OK, I’m just going to bring my best and did a take. Then they said cut and I hear in my ear, “Steven’s coming up.” I went, “You’re referring to Steven Spielberg right now.” He came in and I can’t remember his exact words but he just affirmed for me what I was doing, and that meant the world. Some of the tears that you see on screen are also probably me still being very much overcome by his kindness and his compassion and his excitement for the work.
Before “Disclosure Day,” you worked as an anchor, most recently in Tampa, Fla., at WTSP, right?
I was a news anchor and I want to shout out all of the news anchors and journalists out there. I did that for off and on throughout like seven-ish years, but I always loved acting. Then one day I had a mentor look me in the eyes as I was training to become a better interviewer and he said, “You don’t want to do this, do you?” And I said, “No, I do.” He said, “What do you really want to do?” And I just broke down. I said, “I want to be an actress.” So I quit my job a month later. I had only a $500 booking ahead of me. This was three years ago and here we are. Here we are today. My dream was to hope that this industry would want me in it.
It’s hard to imagine a bigger vote of confidence than Steven Spielberg saying,”I want you to be in my movie.”
Right?
When did you first meet him? Was it that day on set?
Yes, I was looking at the monologue, the two pages that they gave me. I showed nobody. I just sat in my room for a day and marinated on [screenwriter] David Koepp’s words and I wept as I read them, because they were so beautiful. Then I get to set and I got to shake the hand of the legend that [Spielberg] is.
At what point did you realize that you were being handed the reins at the end of the film? We’re really just watching your face for much of the climax.
I didn’t get the entirety of the script, I got just my scene so I didn’t know where it was going to live in the film. It was the day before the New York premiere when I watched it with the cast and crew. [Producer] Kristie Macosko Krieger was so gracious to invite me, so I got to watch it for the first time. I remember taking a mental note of time as I was watching the film so I could let people know I might be coming up around the 40-minute mark or the 30-minute mark. I was watching it and I was like: It’s definitely been longer than 30 minutes. I was figuring it out in real time and I was so honored that Steven Spielberg would trust me with such an important moment in his story. It’s very overwhelming and I’m just so grateful for him.
I’m curious about how you prepared. Were you watching other news anchors? Were you looking at historical footage?
No. I can’t remember how much time I had with it. It was a couple of days and so truly it was on the page for me. There are just some times where a script will just pull everything. It attaches to your soul instantly. There’s a line that I still can’t really get through without getting emotional. [Shakily] It says, “It’s overwhelming to think about this footage that raises profound questions about what has been happening in our skies, and what the nature of who we are and what our place is.” It overwhelmed me to think about all the possibilities of our world only being like the tip of the iceberg and all of creation.
Are you just reacting purely off of the words on the page or did they give you some of the visuals you’d be seeing?
They didn’t show me anything. What I had was a prompter, which I’m so grateful they gave me. I don’t want to go into the mechanics of everything but no — it was all imaginative.
My final question was going to be about you having to keep the ending a secret for so long, but it sounds like you got to experience that with everyone.
I got to experience it with everybody. Now I will say, when you go back and listen to the words, there is important information in there, which is why I still have never shown anybody those pages. It was quite special for me to be trusted with something that was really important in the story. But we ain’t sharing nothing, OK?
A good reporter never gives up their sources.
This is the first interview that I’ve had since everything and I really would like to add this: I’ve been pretty quiet on social media because I really haven’t known what to say, but I want people to know that I have read every single comment, message, watched every video, listened to every voice memo. It has deeply moved me and their kindness is a reminder of how much good there is in people and in this world. So from the bottom of my heart, I just want to say thank you to them.
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