Josh O’Connor says making a film these days feels almost like a miracle, and he has a reason for saying it. The 35-year-old actor was talking about Rebuilding, his latest film, a story set in southern Colorado that follows a reserved cowboy named Dusty after wildfire destroys his ranch.
In the film, Dusty is trying to piece together a life while living in a trailer community on a FEMA campsite. He also reconnects with his ex-wife, Ruby, played by Meghann Fahy, and his young daughter, Callie-Rose, played by Lily LaTorre, in writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s drama about loss, work and the long aftermath of fire.
The timing of the conversation matters because Rebuilding was made during the 2023 US writers’ and actors’ strike, when the production was forced onto standby for about a week while waiting to see whether it would get an exemption. It did, and filming resumed, but the pause left O’Connor with a clear view of how fragile a movie set can be. He said the delay gave the cast and crew a fair bit of time off right in the middle of the shoot, and he spent part of it exploring Alamosa, Colorado.
That landscape fed directly into the film’s mood. O’Connor said that in the mountainous regions, vast stretches of land had been burned by wildfires, calling it a relevant subject for many ranches in the area. He also said the experience felt special because of the people around him: many of the cast members were local non-professionals, including Dwight, a farmer from Alamosa who plays his farmer friend in the movie. O’Connor said he has stayed in touch with several of them, and described Dwight as “super special.”
The tension in his remarks is that Rebuilding looks intimate and local, but the process behind it was anything but simple. O’Connor said film production depends on an impossible number of things going right at once, from weather to travel to the script and the actors themselves. He said that because people in the business are self-employed in different trades, getting work is a real gift, and that creates a camaraderie that can be easy to miss from the outside.
That view also fits the arc of O’Connor’s own career. The Emmy winner for The Crown said he had always wanted a diverse career and once imagined himself focused on theatre, even if he dreamed of taking on all sorts of roles. Rebuilding, with its wildfire scarred setting and its mix of professional and local performers, is the kind of project that shows exactly what he means: in a business full of uncertainty, the fact that the film was made at all is the point.
