Banshees of Insherin and Better Call Saul star Kerry Condon has said that working with Brad Pitt on new action drama film F1 was "a dream come true" and joked that her aim was to become "one of his top ten co-stars".
In the new film, Tipperary-born actress Condon plays Kate McKenna, the race director of the fictional APXGP team and the first female technical director in Formula 1, opposite Pitt as veteran driver Sonny Hayes and Damson Idris as young rookie driver Joshua Pearce.
F1 is released on 25 June and speaking at a press day at UK racing track Goodwood, Condon said, "Working with Brad was like a dream come true. He's been in the business so long and he’s worked with some amazing people, I just wanted to be in his top ten co-stars. That was my aim."
She added, "Working with Damson Idris was fun. He’s like a child, he has so much energy."
In the movie, Hayes, a racing star in the 1990s, is forced to retire from Formula One after a terrible crash but is asked to return by team owner and friend, Ruben (Javier Bardem), to mentor rookie prodigy Joshua "Noah" Pearce (Damson Idris).
The film was shot over the past two years at real Grand Prix races around the world.
"The stuff we shot at the grand prix was so timed to a tee," Condon said. "We had to shoot pitstop stuff during the actual Grand Prix races so I felt very much like I was part of a team at the Grand Prix - I was nervous, excited, I didn’t know what was going to happen. It was amazing, really amazing."
"We were really encouraged to have fun, which was strange - I was surprised I was getting paid to have fun but we wanted to capture a playfulness. We went all over the world."
Condon also said she received a lot of help in her role as a race and technical director from Northern Irish woman Bernie Collins, who is a Formula One strategy analyst for Sky Sports and F1TV and former F1 strategy engineer for the Aston Martin F1 team.
"She’s an Irish girl so there a lot of similarities," Condon said. "But basically, I knew she was a girl who excels at physics and maths and who did engineering in school and I had some friends who did that so for the role in FI, I just imagined that I was good at physics."
