"At first, I responded to her reading," Arquette says of Morrone's audition tape. "But then I thought, 'Is she too pretty? Will people not take her seriously? Will women not like her subconsciously? Will men not take her seriously?' Then I thought, 'Oh my god, this is terrible reverse discrimination that I am having myself.' This kind of weird bias like, 'Oh, sorry you're just too pretty. You can't also be a great actor. You can only have so many talents in life.' And I thought, 'No, she really gave the best reading, and so I have to really challenge my own bias.'"
Thankfully, Arquette bucked whatever internalized misogyny lurks even in the staunchest of feminists (she famously advocated for equal pay for women when she won her Oscar for Boyhood in 2015) and cast Morrone. The pair — who stopped by Parade's office studio during the Tribeca Festival to discuss Gonzo Girl ahead of its American premiere — now seem as thick as thieves. However, after Arquette cast Morrone in her film, it took the pair three years to actually meet in person.
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"He was really pivotal to me growing up as a writer and as a free spirit," Arquette says of Thompson and why she signed on to the project. "I came of age in the '90s, and there's a lot of aspects of the story that I thought were interesting for me in my own life: addiction, co-dependence, beauty in the '90s, being in the orbit of a celebrity, being trapped by your own success, this kind of mentor relationship that they have. And also there was room for really good acting."
"You meet him, and he's so warm and generous as an actor," she says. "Willem is very free. He's very playful. He's very silly. He's goofy. He could laugh at himself."
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Patricia Arquette and Camila Morrone attend the "Gonzo Girl" premiere during the 2025 Tribeca FestivalJamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
"You, beginning your career and being pretty green, were really professional and showed up, and you knew all your lines and everyone's lines," Arquette remembers. "But sometimes you'd be like, 'In the script, it says, "Pick up this on this line."' I'm like, 'Do you feel like picking it up in that line? Do you feel like avoiding the conversation with [Dafoe's character], so that's why you start doing the dishes? If not, do it at a different point in the scene.' Like, I don't care what the script says. I don't care about that. What is your body saying? What are your instincts saying? Don't get so stuck on the script. Challenge it."
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"I got very ill from taking placebo pills because I was trying to be a good actor and actually chug the pills," she remembers. "After we did it like 15 times, I was like, 'I shouldn't have taken the pills.' Patricia was like, 'Start spitting them out. Stop swallowing them.' Then we lost an hour while I was having a moment."
"You're never stopping. You're never coming down. You're never going to your trailer," Morrone recalls. "Once you start, you're just running through three weeks of trying stuff and moving, and you only get a couple takes each scene, so it creates another kind of adrenaline."
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When asked if she'd direct another film, Arquette seems hesitant. "Until I sell [Gonzo Girl] to a distributor and put it out in the world, I feel like I'm in an eternal birth process," she says. "I cannot give birth to this movie until it's done and out, and then I'll decide [if I want to direct] again. Right now, I feel like I'm trapped in this endless labor."
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