Ellie Bamber bounces onto my screen. Everything else fights me. The note-taker dies first. Then the internet connection. Then, somewhere inside a home in Surrey, the power cuts out, and now the television in the lounge behind her starts rotating on its own. Drama. A patience test for both of us before hello. She is unbothered. Effervescent even. She has just walked off her first Brownstone Cowboys cover shoot, the flaming red hair still hot from Dylan Massara’s lens. Effortless, candid, and vulnerable in the way only the genuinely steady are. Half here, half drifting out the window into the garden beside her. She is also a little ruffled. Fair enough.

The television, or the house, might be possessed. Somewhere off camera, my French bulldog snores at my feet. We could not be further apart on the globe. I am in the bottom end of New Zealand. Ellie is in Surrey. We might be performing an exorcism in minutes. But first, we settle in. We have a film about being looked at to discuss. For the uninitiated, the short version. A stage child, cast by Trevor Nunn at 13. Ellie broke through on screen as Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, then strung together the kind of television run most actors wait a whole career for. Cosette in Les Misérables. Mandy Rice-Davies in The Trial of Christine Keeler. Angela Knippenberg in The Serpent.

Elora Danan in Willow. Best Actress at the Soho House Awards in 2022. Princess Beatrice in Red, White & Royal Blue. Now Kate Moss. Off screen, a Refuge ambassador since 2024, standing with survivors of domestic abuse. What Ellie and I end up trading is humanity. Flaws, mostly. How we’re all flawed and how that’s exactly what makes us beautiful. The line that hooks her recent film, Moss & Freud, ends up hooking the conversation too. You are extraordinary because you are ordinary. Freud says it to Kate. She let me say it back to her. Here’s how the rest unfolded.

BJ You’re playing someone in a film about visibility and an identity crisis. There’s nowhere to hide. How do you hold on to Ellie when you’re inside that?

EB Honestly, it’s the people around me. That’s always been the thing that keeps me, well, me. Being able to separate from a role is so important. You go home at night and you remember who you are. The laugh, actually, became a problem. The laugh was such an important part of getting into Kate. There was a moment where my own laugh started to blend with hers, and my brother took me to one side and said, it’s got to stop. The laugh is so confused now that it’s not Kate’s, it’s not yours. It’s some kind of weird thing in between, and it’s not good. So let’s just cut it out.

BJ Brotherly love.

EB Totally.

BJ The film is about a woman being stripped down. To get inside that role, what was your process?

EB It was amazing to spend so much time with James Brown, because as one of Kate’s best friends, he knows her so intimately. I wanted to feel safe and open, and he would do things like spray her perfume on me in the morning, which would just transport me. Then I worked with a movement coach, Polly Bennett, who is fascinating. She talks about mannerisms and where they come from psychologically. Why does a person move the way they do?

With the vulnerability of it, the nudity, Polly told me to undress in front of my bedroom mirror at home. To start feeling comfortable doing that. To imagine other people in the room with me. People I didn’t know well. Because however much you prepare, there is always going to be vulnerability when you’re exposing yourself like that.

The screen freezes. The signal dies mid-sentence. Blackness for 3 mins. She dials back in, breathless.

EB Oh my god. I am so sorry. Where were we?

BJ We were getting naked. HA! We laugh.

BJ British and Antipodeans are not the we-get-naked-in-a-Finnish-sauna types. You spend a large part of the film without clothes. Did it lose its weight, day after day?

EB I think I just tried to act my way through it. To put myself in the place Kate might have been at different stages. There was a level of comfort at points, because she had taken her clothes off for photo shoots for years. So she’s done it so many times. And then suddenly, when she’s looked at by him, it exposes something else, because she feels like she’s really being seen. That was the most vulnerable moment for me. Not the nakedness. The being seen.

BJ The line that lands hardest in the film for me is you are extraordinary because you are ordinary. It’s the moment it stops being about glamour and becomes about identity. Where does the film hook in for you?

EB I love that line. It plays into Freud’s whole practice. There’s a quote I love which goes, we all share the same sad shape. We are all quite ordinary, all lumps and bumps. Freud is so clinical, but in this otherworldly way. It’s insane how he paints. That moment matters because it shows we’re all just human, all flawed.

The other moment was when the painting was revealed. The whole film, for me, is a coming of age story. A young woman discovering her power inside a difficult industry, and finding her way toward motherhood.

BJ So what's ordinary about Ellie?

EB Oh god. So many things. I have my worries, my neuroses. I overthink. I have a bit of imposter syndrome. But I do a lot of self-reflection, and I've found a space where I can work on those things and feel more confident in myself. And then more fundamentally, I spend a lot of time in joggers. That's quite ordinary. I have all the flaws of any human. All the same ones.

BJ We're all flawed. That's what's so beautiful about us all.

EB Exactly. The important thing is that we keep learning about ourselves and growing.

EB OMG. Can you hear that? That television is literally still moving. I don't even know what's happening.

BJ No. But I have the location address so I can send help if needed. Ha! We have agreed to pretend this is normal, and keep moving.

BJ Kate is one of the most photographed women in the world and famously doesn't do interviews. The version of her in your head, in mine, in everyone's, is constructed. How did you handle that pressure of presenting your version of an icon to the world?

EB There's a responsibility when you're playing a real-life person. You take care. You get as close to the essence of her as you can. We went through every interview we could possibly find. The challenge was that she's 27 in the film, so we needed footage of her speaking and moving in that exact period. We change so much over time. Voice, tonality, the way we move. There were maybe only two or three videos we could actually use. So it was picking through that, very carefully, and then remembering that as much as I'm playing Kate, I'm also playing a character on the page. So there was a little guesswork also.

BJ The costumes are iconic. The vintage birthday dress!? Working with our very own Style Director, and Kate's dear friend, James Brown, how was that experience? Spill the T.

EB I love James! When you step into her actual vintage birthday dress, the real one, you can't help but be transported. I had pictures of Kate on my bedroom wall growing up. To wear her actual clothes was kind of trippy. James is phenomenal. He went to vintage stores and found pieces Kate would have worn, then folded in current designers. A Nensi Dojaka piece. Maison Margiela by Galliano gown. Vintage Versace. He has this eye I wish I had. He'd hold something up and just know. That'll fit you perfectly. That one's a tad too big, but we can deal with it. And he was always right. I adore him.

She says this so plainly, the way people who aren't performing tend to. Her gaze drifts. She has lost the thread, but in the way that reads as reverie, not vacancy. She finds herself and comes back to the screen.

BJ Brownstone loves people with causes outside their craft. You became a Refuge ambassador in 2024. What made you decide silence wasn't an option?

EB It was important to me for many reasons. Women and girls around the world have needed protection, families, support for so long, and domestic violence is something that society needs to be looking at more seriously. There should be much more work happening within governments, within legislation, to prevent it and to keep women safe. It's a cause I've always cared about, and working with Refuge is something I feel deeply honoured by. The work they do is extraordinary.

BJ Few people of profile use their platforms this way. Do you think there are barriers, or is it personal?

EB I think it's personal. For a while I didn't know what mine was. I had this feeling of, I have a platform, I really want to use it to serve something greater, but I hadn't found the thing yet. Finding Refuge was an important moment. So I think it's less about barriers and more about finding the cause that calls to you. The one you genuinely feel you can help with, in whatever way is possible.

BJ You're 29 and the slate behind you is heavy already. What's next?

EB I'd like to make a TV show. That would be really cool. I'm doing a lot of producing now, working from the conception of a piece, which I'm loving, because as actors we usually come in much later. I'm working with filmmakers I love on building things from the ground up. And I want to keep acting. I want to keep doing what I love and growing as a person and understanding myself more. That's it really.

BJ Last one. We have to ask. What's the thing this film left on you that won't wash off?

EB Ha! There's a hair technique James Brown taught me, scrunching at the front, swirling at the back, that I use all the time. I still sometimes wear Fleurs d'Oranger by Serge Lutens, because that perfume is not even debatable. It's so beautiful. I'd never had a spray tan before this film and now I'm obsessed. James Read is my literal saviour. And I've fallen even further into vintage shopping than I already was. James Brown showed me how to really do it. He has a gift.