news Steven Soderbergh Is Melanie Lynskey’s ‘Favorite’ Director: He’s ‘Perfect’

Melanie Lynskey is marking a career highlight as (maybe) making Steven Soderbergh cry.

The “Yellowjackets” Emmy nominee revealed that Soderbergh is “one of the greatest ever” directors, listing him as her “favorite” collaborator behind the camera. Lynskey starred in Soderbergh’s 2009 film “The Informant!” opposite Matt Damon.

“I saw him one time, after a take, go like this,” Lynskey said during the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast while mimicking drying her eyes as Soderbergh on set, “and it was like he was wiping a little tear away. And I said, ‘Are you crying?’ And he said, ‘Shut up.’ So that was like the closest I’ve ever got to a compliment from him.”

Lynskey continued, “He did say a lovely thing to me once outside of work that really means a lot to me. But at work, it just felt like working, and I love that. Every idea that he has, it just was so fun…I like to be given space. I like to feel like a grip or a costume assistant. I like to feel like we are all doing a job and unless you mess something up, no one is going to come in and tell you like, ‘Hey, lay this track like this. Oh, you’re hemming this? You might want to do this kind of stitch.’ Unless you see me do something terribly wrong…And in that same regard, I don’t like a lot of compliments. I don’t like somebody coming up to me in between takes and going, ‘Oh my god, so beautiful, I love this, I love that.’ You don’t do that to the crew. It’s a waste of time and I don’t need it. Just tell me what was wrong, what you need an adjustment on.”

She summed up, “So for me, Steven is like the perfect director because it’s very much like that.”

Soderbergh recently directed “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” and served as an executive producer for 2023 Sundance breakout film “Divinity.” He is set to direct limited series “Full Circle” about an investigation into a botched New York City kidnapping.
 
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