Within the overwhelming cast of the new Wes Anderson film, “The Phoenician Scheme”, there is a name that may speak to you less than the others: that of Mia Threapleton. So get to know the revelation of the feature film.
Benicio Del Toro, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Rice Ahmed, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Murray, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Mathieu Amalric, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston … Say that the cast of a Wes Anderson film is impressive today of the pleonasm, so much he became normal to see the actors to be in front of his Camera, even in secondary roles.
Without necessarily reaching the summit of The French Dispatch, which took advantage of being cut into three distinct stories allowing to multiply its distribution, The Phoenician Scheme is no exception to the rule and has still offered to the Cannes Festival, whose director is now one of the regulars, one of his most beautiful red carpets before a face does not stand out during the standing ovation which followed the projection: that of Mia Threapleton, revelation of the feature film.
If she embodies one of the three main characters in this story of relationship between a father and her daughter on the background of industrial spying, the actress is the least known of the members of the casting. Much less than her mother in any case because, as her name does not indicate absolutely, Mia Threapleton is none other than the daughter of Kate Winslet, awarded the Oscar for best actress in 2009 for The Reader, and seen the poster of two of the five biggest success of all time (Titanic and Avatar 2), just that.
It is by his side and at the court of Louis XIV that Mia Threapleton made her cinema debut in 2014. Born September 12, 2000, the eldest daughter of Kate Winslet, born of her union with the director Jim Threapleton, has just celebrated his 14 years when the historic drama The King's Gardens, directed by Alan Rickman, is presented at the Toronto Festival The next day, a few months before its release in France.
Interpreter of Hélène, her role is too reduced for the media to notice it then, and he will remain unanswered until the beginning of the following decade. But the future Liesl of The Phoencian Scheme already knows, by dint of having gone to film sets, that she wants to follow the steps of her mother, while defending herself from having been pushed by the latter: “I really made this decision on my own”she told her during the Cannes Film Festival. “I was not influenced on what I wanted to do. I discovered my love of cinema by myself.”
“I discovered my love of cinema by myself”
“But when I told her what I wanted to do – I had to have ten years – I remember that she replied 'Oh, I thought you wanted to become a marine biologist. Is that no longer what you want?' When I told her that I wanted to be an actress, she told me 'it's great, do it. Which is true, but I am grateful that things happened in this way, because it means that all my experiences are clean to me. “
Experiences that take over during the COVID, with the horrific thriller Shadows, never released in France when it played the main role, then on a small screen. And, for good, alongside Kate Winslet (and her half-brother Joe Anders), in an episode of the anthological series I am …collection of portraits of women where Mia Threapleton embodies a teenager increasingly addicted to social networks, in what constitutes his most current role to date.
We do not know if it is linked to having started in a film whose action is at the time of Louis XIV, but Mia Threapleton accumulates travel in the past thanks to the projects it begins to chain: the new television adaptation of the dangerous links which propels it in the 18th century and in the skin of Rose (character created for the occasion); Apple TV+ The Buccaneers series, where it is really starting to stand out thanks to this story of four young American women who land in England in 1870 to find a husband (and, incidentally, energize the conventions in place); and the queen's game.
Universal Pictures International France Mia Threapleton in The Phoenician Scheme
If it is not present at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival to present, in competition, this historic drama signed Karim Aïnouz in which Jude Law and Alicia Vikander deliver high -flying performances in the respective roles of King Henri VIII (1491 – 1547) and his sixth and last wife Catherine Parr, it is only a part of Mia Threapleton. Who takes a good part of the lighting of the spotlights on The Phoenician Scheme two years later.
If her filiation with Kate Winslet was put forward when the trailer had been revealed and the public wondered who was this unknown actress in the middle of all these familiar faces, it is thanks to her performance that she is talking about her on the Croisette. She embodies Liesl, daughter of the industrialist Anatole 'ZSA-Zsa' Korda (Benicio Del Toro), who returns to her father when she became a nun and he has just resumed the sixth assassination attempt against him, in Europe in the 1950s.
A new jump in the past for the actress whose comic timing, associated with an impassive face in all circumstances, is wreaking havoc at the heart of this story of adventures which summons Tintin as well as Ingmar Bergman, orchestrated by a Wes Anderson more worried than ever in the world around him and to which he refers in his twelfth feature film. In the middle of this millimeter chaos, Mia Threapleton is more than doing well and is already asserting itself as one of the cinema revelations of the year 2025.
Kate Winslet soon at Wes Anderson?
So much so that we can't wait to know what the future has in store for him, in addition to season 2 of The Buccaneers, expected from June 18 on Apple TV+. Because there is no doubt that this remarkable passage at Wes Anderson should attract the attention of other great directors to it. Unless she succeeds in convincing her mother to come and take a look in the world of the author of Moonrise Kingdom: “When I told her that I had picked up the role, she was incredibly excited”she tells us after laughing when we made this suggestion.
“I was on a train and we were both very excited. I was even crying and my hands were shaking. But yes, I will have to talk to him about working with Wes Anderson.” We can already imagine the result, and it can only be good.
Interview by Maximilien Pierrette in Cannes on May 17, 2025
