Margaret Qualley hits back at criticisms of film with Jacob Elordi: ‘Last of my worries’

Exclusive: Margaret Qualley is a two-time Golden Globe and two-time Emmy nominated actress who has starred in four Oscar-nominated films, was a previous Ralph Lauren model and is now an ambassador for Chanel.

But The Dog Stars actress, who also happens to be Andie MacDowell’s daughter, tells nine.com.au she tries to block out the noise – be it nepo-baby talk or social media criticism – and let the work speak for itself.

“BookTok’s like the last of my worries,” Qualley says with a laugh, holding her dog Smokey on her lap in a London hotel.

“Go and BookTok away.”

The actress – who may have been alluding to her recent separation from husband Jack Antonoff in the quip – batted away the raised eyebrows of TikTok’s book community that came ahead of the release of Riddley Scott’s adaptation.

The movie, also starring Aussie actors Jacob Elordi and Guy Pearce, sparked backlash online over shooting the beloved post-apocalyptic book in Italy instead of Colorado and for notably casting a Blue Heeler dog instead of a Belgian Malinois, which is the breed in Peter Heller’s 2012 novel.

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“I’ve done I don’t know 1000 films and the reality is, you piss somebody off inevitably because you’re not right for this role, or you’re not in the right place, or you’ve chosen to look like this.

“There’s always going to be someone who wants to be a little bit offended by something you choose to do,” Pearce tells nine.com.au.

“That’s their issue.”

‘Nervous wreck in the beginning’

Qualley admits, regardless of book fandoms online, she always gets nervous about starting a new project, even with impressive titles under her belt.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done a job and not freaked out for at least the first two weeks,” the 31-year-old tells nine.com.au.

“I’m usually kind of a nervous wreck in the beginning.”

Pearce, 58, agrees, saying starting every movie “feels like you’ve never done it before”.

“It’s a tricky thing starting a film because you don’t know the people you’re going to be working with, you can suddenly find yourself in a situation and go, ‘This is not what I thought it was. Am I going to be able to handle this?’,” the Australian actor tells nine.com.au.

“And usually, you work things out but a lot of things are on the fly, so it can be confronting sometimes.

“I think, for me personally, a lot of it is about me bringing my own insecurity about not really having figured my character out yet, so that can amplify things. It’s not usually about working with people who are difficult or anything like that.”

The movie was also challenging in a different way for fellow co-star Josh Brolin, who almost quit on day one.

The 58-year-old felt anxious about the unconventional way the famed director filmed, despite having worked with him before.

But, Brolin tells nine.com.au, he was glad he stuck it out because he was “addicted to it by the time I left”.

“I don’t necessarily panic, or, I’ve come up with a way where I mask it because it’s been four decades,” Brolin admits.

“But with Ridley ... Ridley’s so ominous, he just beats to his own drum – and I’m even used to that with the Coens [Coen Brothers] or with other directors I’ve worked with, Denis [Villeneuve], they’re very iconoclastic in their own way, but Ridley kind of threw us [in the deep end].

“The way Ridley films, there’s not a lot of rehearsal. You’re not gonna get a lot of set-ups to try and figure everything out because all the cameras are going at once, and by take four, you may be done with the scene.”

He described the constant need to cut and add dialogue while finding his space in the scene as “f----ng chaos” but eventually “started feeding off that” and praised Elordi, 28, for being able to keep up.

Brolin – the son of actor James Brolin and casting director, turned wildlife activist, Jane Cameron Agee – made his film debut in the 1985 hit The Goonies.

While he’s worked with Qualley’s mum before (“I love her!“) he hadn’t met the young star himself before working together on The Dog Stars.

“It’s wild seeing the children of [other actors]… But no, I had never met her, and what a pleasure she is,” Brolin says of working with the next generation.

He tells nine.com.au while he understands the fascination with Hollywood’s recently reignited nepo-baby debate, he thinks “the whole thing is boring, personally”.

“It makes sense because it’s what they grew up in, and it’s what they understand, and it’s a very unconventional upbringing,” Brolin says.

“It wasn’t necessarily for me because I was away from that whole thing, and I was around my mother, and she had a different deal.”

He adds director Spike Lee’s words always come to mind, reminding him “it’s a tough business”.

“You have to hold your own, otherwise you’re done,” he says.

“You can’t fake it, and it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful, and it’s not for everybody.

“Like when my daughter said to me that she wanted to be an actress, I said, ‘ah, what do you want to do that for? It’s like you have rejection, rejection, and then if you’re lucky enough to get work, then the work’s going to be judged, judged, judged’. It’s still a wonderful job, but that thing never stops.

“You post one thing on Instagram, you’re going to have half the people are like, ‘Oh, you’re amazing’, and then the other half are going to go, ‘You go away’, ‘We’re tired of you’, ‘We’re sick of you’ – you wouldn’t wish that on your worst enemy.

“So the nepotistic thing, I think, is a real thing right at the beginning, and then I don’t think it pertains after that.”

And, with no fewer than five productions yet to be released, it seems Qualley’s on her way to holding her own, in her own right.

The Dog Stars is in cinemas around Australia on August 27.