<\/p>\n
\n\tIf you\u2019re wondering whether long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad liked Nyad <\/em>\u2013 where the titular character played by Annette Bening fulfills her dream of finishing the Cuba-to-Florida swim at age 64 \u2013 a good judge would be her real-life coach, Bonnie Stoll, played by Jodie Foster in the Netflix drama.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWell, it has her name on it, so she loves it!\u201d Stoll told the Princess of Wales Theatre at the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday night during a post-screening Q&A. Stoll stood in for Nyad, who was a no-show at the international premiere at TIFF after Telluride due to her membership in SAG-AFTRA, as were Bening and Foster due to their own Hollywood strike restrictions.<\/p>\n \n\tBut the marathon swimming drama does little to dissuade its viewers that the true-life Nyad is 100 percent self-centered and driven or, as Foster\u2019s Stoll tells\u00a0her best friend in the film, she has \u201ca\u00a0superiority complex.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe movie dramatizes Nyad who, in 2013, became the first person to swim the 110-mile distance from Cuba to Florida without the aid of a shark cage. It was her fifth attempt, and she completed a 53-hour swim through the dangerous open ocean that included overcoming sharks and poisonous jellyfish.<\/p>\n \n\tElizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi was without co-director Jimmy Chin in Toronto to present her narrative debut, where she heaped praise for Bening and Foster\u2019s performances. \u201cThese actors have access to these emotions and\u00a0craft and having that as tools for us to tell this story was incredibly helpful,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n \n\tStoll told the TIFF audience she spent much time with Foster but never offered advice about playing her role. \u201cI never said a word about anything, until after I saw the movie. And from the first time I saw it, I was watching myself up there,\u201d she recounted. <\/p>\n \n\tVasarhelyi talked about making her and Chin\u2019s first narrative film after winning an Academy Award for their 2018 documentary\u00a0Free Solo<\/em> about rock climber Alex Honnold. She also opened up about diving into dangerous waters <\/em>for Nyad<\/em>, with cameras rolling in a giant tank in the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt was tough. We shot for 41 days, started shooting in a tank and I\u2019ve never directed actors before, and I\u2019m given a bullhorn and told to yell at Jodie Foster and Annette Bening across the water. To their credit, they were gracious,\u201d Vasarhelyi remembered.<\/p>\n \n\tNyad<\/em> is produced by Andrew Lazar and Teddy Schwarzman and was developed by Mad Chance and Black Bear Pictures. The feature\u00a0will hit theaters on Oct. 20 before launching on Netflix on Nov. 3.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Nyad #Helmer #Talks #Directing #Annette #Bening #Jodie #Foster #Sea #Hollywood #Reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019re wondering whether long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad liked Nyad \u2013 where the titular character<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1851,1852,1850,1854,1848,1821,1853,1847,1822,1855,1849],"class_list":["post-1324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-news","tag-annette","tag-bening","tag-directing","tag-foster","tag-helmer","tag-hollywood","tag-jodie","tag-nyad","tag-reporter","tag-sea","tag-talks"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"medium":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"large":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"chromenews-featured":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"chromenews-large":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"chromenews-medium":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false],"arpw-thumbnail":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/NYAD_20220422_07240_R-H-2023.jpg",1,1,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Movie News<\/a>","tag_info":"Movie News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}