Ninety-six-year-old June Squibb zoomed into Deadline’s Contenders Los Angeles panel Saturday because she is performing *Marjorie Prime* on Broadway. The stage lead comes after leading roles in *Thelma* and *Eleanor the Great*. Squibb is happy to see more roles available for women her age, but she feels audiences want to see women like her.
“I just think all at once we’re becoming more real,” Squibb said. “It’s a whole sense of reality now as what film is dealing with age and I think that’s great. I do think our whole population is interested in age. We’re an aging population. I think so many people are frightened of it, don’t know what it means, don’t know what it entails, aren’t living with their parents or grandparents so they have no reference at all. I think these films give them an idea.”
In *Eleanor the Great*, Squibb plays the title character. Moved to New York with her family, Eleanor accidentally attends a Holocaust survivor support group. She was not a survivor but continues to play the role, telling stories from her late friend, an actual survivor. It is only the latest in a string of Eleanor’s lies. Her other fibs may be humorous, but the film never mocks her.
“I will not do anything that laughs at age,” Squibb said. “I just want the reality of age, of what you go through as you age.”
Tory Kamen wrote the screenplay. Eleanor is inspired by Kamen’s grandmother, with whom she was close.
“My grandma found that it was really difficult to make friends at 95,” Kamen said. “We would talk every night. We used to Skype before Zoom. She felt like a novelty and nobody cared about her present tense. I thought what must that be like and what could she do to get attention? I thought of this, the worst possible thing my grandmother could do. She would never do that.”
Squibb validated the authenticity of Kamen’s grandmother’s struggle and Kamen’s depiction of it.
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“I think that that’s a part of my life,” Squibb said. “I think when you move especially, if you are older it’s difficult. Every time I read something, it was like I know exactly what she’s going through. I know exactly why she’s reacting in this way. I just felt this is me. This Eleanor is who I am so let’s do it.”
Squibb walks with a cane in the film. She can walk without one, but Scarlett Johansson, making her feature directing debut with *Eleanor the Great*, suggested she use it in the film.
“She said, ‘Let me see you walk without the cane,’” Squibb recalled. “So I walked away. She said, ‘Use the cane.’ That’s how the cane came about.”
The other members of the support group are played by Holocaust survivors. Kamen researched with the Holocaust Museum and Museum of Tolerance, and Johansson brought the Shoah Foundation on board. It was important to Kamen that real survivors be represented too.
“I always intended in my mind’s eye,” Kamen said. “I think these survivors should be played by survivors should they want to come with us.”
https://deadline.com/2025/11/eleanor-the-great-june-squibb-interview-1236618458/