The Croisette shimmered a little brighter on Sunday night as Mia Threapleton, a fresh-faced force of nature, graced the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of The Phoenician Scheme. At just 24, she carried the weight of her first leading role like a crown—unpolished yet undeniably regal. Her emerald-green Oscar de la Renta gown, a masterpiece of strapless audacity, seemed to whisper secrets of old Hollywood glamour, its gold embroidery catching the light like scattered coins in a fountain. The ensemble, voluminous and vivid, couldn’t help but evoke memories of another iconic moment: her mother, Kate Winslet, swanning down the 1998 Oscars red carpet in Givenchy. But this was Mia’s night—a debut spun from her own thread.
In Wes Anderson’s latest cinematic confection, Threapleton plays Sister Liesl, a nun-in-training thrust into the chaos of inheritance and espionage when her estranged father, a European magnate (Benicio del Toro), survives an assassination attempt. The film, a tapestry of deadpan humor and pastel-hued intrigue, boasts a cast that reads like a film buff’s fever dream: Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Riz Ahmed, and Michael Cera, all orbiting Anderson’s meticulously framed universe. For Threapleton, it’s a leap from indie trenches (The Buccaneers, I Am Ruth) to the high-wire act of a leading role—one she navigates with the quiet precision of a tightrope walker.
The curtain fell to a standing ovation that stretched like taffy, Threapleton blinking back tears in the flickering light. Just days earlier, she’d confessed to the surreal whiplash of sharing a table with legends. “I had to sit on my hands,” she admitted, recalling a dinner with del Toro, Hanks, and Bryan Cranston. “I kept thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’” The question hung in the air, unanswered but irrelevant—her performance, a blend of wide-eyed innocence and steel resolve, was proof enough.
Though her mother’s shadow looms long, Threapleton has carved her path with deliberate grit. “I wanted to do this on my own,” she insisted—a mantra etched into every role she’s taken. Anderson’s film, his fourth in competition at Cannes, will unfurl in U.S. theaters like a slow-burning fuse: select cities on May 30, then nationwide in June. By then, the world may finally know what Cannes already does: Mia Threapleton isn’t just arriving. She’s arrived.
