Makenzie Foy is a (self-proclaimed) wannabe horse girl. The nineteen-year old actor, best known for her roles in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn and Interstellar, was recently “bit by the pony bug” while revamping Anna Sewell’s 1877 novel Black Beauty for its second film adaptation. Starring as Jo Green, a seventeen-year old grieving the death of her parents, Foy shares the screen with Kate Winslet, who plays the voice of the titular mare. Though filming may have wrapped in late 2019, Foy’s foal fever has endured beyond an obligation to her character—she has returned from an afternoon ride just minutes before our chat. “I’m obsessed now,” she gushes. “I’ve been riding every week.”
Citing the nineteenth century classic as a childhood favorite—“one of the ones that you just tore apart from reading so much”—Foy was thrilled to take up the novel’s remake, which was written and directed by 33-year old wunderkind, Ashley Avis. “Ashley is an absolute genius,” Foy, who commenced her career at age four as a child model and in recent years has enjoyed high-fashion support from brands such as Chanel, proclaims. “When I got the script I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I love it so much!’ And then when I read it, I was just crying by the end of it, that’s how perfect it was. It was everything that I wanted it to be.”