Scarlett Johansson Misses Paper Tiger Cannes Premiere

James Gray had his phone out and everything. As Paper Tiger held the Grand Théâtre Lumière in a standing ovation Saturday night at the Cannes Film Festival — a roar that lasted somewhere between seven and ten minutes depending on who you ask — Gray reportedly tried to FaceTime Scarlett Johansson so she could be part of the moment. She didn’t pick up.

It was the kind of detail that perfectly captured the bittersweet reality of the evening: a crime drama earning one of the festival’s most enthusiastic receptions in years, with one of its three stars thousands of miles away on another set entirely. Johansson is currently filming Universal’s Exorcist reboot directed by Mike Flanagan, an all-new story unconnected to the original franchise, and her scheduling had already required some careful navigation when she signed on late last year.

Co-stars Adam Driver and Miles Teller were both on the Croisette to soak up the love. Johansson was not — and her absence was felt.

The Letter That Made Gray Queasy (By Design)

At the press conference the next day, Gray addressed the empty chair by reading a letter Johansson had sent. She didn’t explain why she couldn’t be there, but she apologized, and she did something else: she called her shot on exactly how Gray would react.

“Working with James and this extraordinary cast was one of the great pleasures of my career,” she wrote. “I feel so fortunate to have been part of a story so deeply rooted in what matters most: human connection, identity and the way our values evolve across generations. I’m sorry I can’t be there with you today. James, I know you are reading this right now and this part will make you genuinely queasy. My apologies.”

She continued: “But I want you to know how much it means to me to have been part of something that you created with such care and intention that came from the depths of your artistic soul. The consideration and sensitivity towards the human condition in this film is so evident on screen, every frame of it, and I am so extraordinarily proud to have been part of it.”

She closed with something that felt less like a press release and more like a genuine belief: “Cinema has this rare and remarkable power to connect us to one another through a shared experience. It happens in the dark, where we can’t see each other’s faces, and yet somehow we can feel each other’s presence, each other’s empathy. That collective empathy is something we could certainly use more of right now.”

Gray, for his part, had already telegraphed just how much this collaboration meant to him. “Scarlett’s last day on set was just about one of the hardest days I’ve had — I was so sad,” he told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the premiere. “It took me a long time to get over it. Maybe that’s too corny, I don’t know. But it is true.”

The Film Gray Was Always Meant to Make

Paper Tiger is Gray’s sixth film to premiere in competition at Cannes — following The Yards, We Own the Night, Two Lovers, The Immigrant, and Armageddon Time — and the one critics are already saying might finally win him the Palme d’Or he’s never taken home.

Set in 1986 Queens, the film is a noirish crime drama that Gray originally conceived as a companion piece to Armageddon Time, his 2022 semi-autobiographical drama. It opens with an Aeschylus quote — “Let there be wealth without tears; enough for the wise man who will ask no further” — and then proceeds to show you exactly what happens to the people who don’t heed that warning.

Driver plays Gary Pearl, a smooth-talking ex-cop who draws his more cautious brother Irwin (Teller) into a business deal with the Russian mob involving the toxic Gowanus Canal. Johansson plays Hester, Irwin’s wife and the quiet emotional center of the story — a Queens mom privately receiving devastating medical news while her family’s world unravels around her.

The casting wasn’t originally this trio. Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, who played a version of Gray’s parents in Armageddon Time, were initially set to reprise those roles. When scheduling conflicts pulled both out, Gray reimagined the project — leaning into something more heightened, more melodramatic in the classical sense, and ultimately more personal.

Gray had wanted to work with Johansson for years and assumed she had no interest. “I’ve been kind of obsessed with working with Scarlett for a long time so I had total pessimism about it,” he admitted. Johansson, who was listening in on the same Zoom call when he said this, barely suppressed a smirk before firing back: “I won’t comment on the pessimism part…but James and I have met before to discuss different things, so he’s actually not being totally forthcoming. He did know that I was interested.”

What sealed it was the script. “I was like, ‘Oh, I know I can do this. I don’t necessarily know how I’m going to do it, but I know that there’s something here that I can do and that I can be additive,’” she said. “It had so many elements that I loved. It’s a big story inside of a small story.”

Who Hester Pearl Really Is

Johansson dug deep into the character in ways that were clearly personal. “I liked the idea of Hester being feminine and soft and graceful because she has a lot of chutzpah inside her,” she said. “She loves fashion magazines and going to the movies — she loves romantic comedies and all things romantic — and window shopping. All of those things are such an important part of who she is and how she presents herself. She should be in the middle of her life and striving for more — vivacious and full of life. That’s how I envisioned her.”

The Queens accent and the curls and the big emotional swings came naturally — maybe too naturally, at times. Gray would occasionally pump the brakes. “James would sometimes say to me, ‘It’s too much: You’re not a yenta from Brownsville!’” Johansson recalled with a laugh. Gray defended her: “Scarlett would never do something that wasn’t real. You have to be careful because it can be totally real, but it will fall outside the realm of the language of the movie.”

The role hit a nerve for Johansson beyond just the accent and the period details. “Women give up their dream for their husband and take a step back, and the dream becomes more of a dream for their family. It’s so common. I’ve seen it in my friends, I’ve seen it in my family,” she said. “I just know in my bones what that is — there’s a sadness about it and a beauty about it. It’s such a bittersweet thing.”

What the Critics Are Saying

The notices have been largely strong, with some calling it outright the best film of Gray’s career. The Hollywood Reporter declared it “arguably the director’s best film,” writing that “Gray and his superb cast are in blazing form and full command here in a bruising movie that reveals the heavy price of pursuing the American Dream too recklessly.” Deadline called it “riveting,” singling out a chase sequence through a wheat field as “the single finest scene Gray has ever staged” — one that drew comparisons to the crop duster sequence in North by Northwest.

Indiewire went furthest on Driver, calling his performance “career-best” and the film itself “a devastating tragedy” that is “both sweepingly mythic and hauntingly personal all at once.” The Guardian gave it four stars, calling it a “heavyweight saga,” while the Telegraph also awarded four stars and specifically praised Johansson as “terrific in this grubbily engrossing crime thriller.”

Time magazine put it simply: “Some thrillers are enjoyable enough, and suspenseful enough, while you’re watching them, and vaporize the instant the credits roll. But there’s another, much rarer kind of thriller: one that follows you home… Paper Tiger is that second kind.”

Not everyone was fully converted. Variety called the film more atmospheric than plausible and suggested Gray is “an ace director who’s still being undercut by the holes in his screenplays.” Next Best Picture found it uneven, saying there are “flashes throughout of the filmmaker at his absolute best” but that the whole doesn’t quite match the parts.

Neon — which has won the Palme d’Or for the past six consecutive years — holds North American distribution rights. The film runs just under two hours.

Johansson also has another Cannes credit this year: her directorial debut Eleanor the Great world premiered at the 2025 festival. Between that, Paper Tiger, and the Flanagan Exorcist reboot in production, she is having a remarkable stretch — even if she couldn’t be there to take her bow for this one.

Gray’s letter reading at the press conference said everything, really. She knew it would make him queasy. She did it anyway. That’s the kind of trust you build when you make something that comes from, as she put it, “the depths of your artistic soul.”