James Gray wants to set the record straight about Scarlett Johansson declining his FaceTime call during the six-minute standing ovation at the premiere of his latest Cannes debut, Paper Tiger Saturday night. (The director dramatically shrugged as the call dropped while he and cast members Adam Driver and Miles Teller stood under spotlights in front of the entire Grand Theatre Lumiére audience — in one of the great comic moments of Cannes 2026.)
“I want to be fair to Scarlett, I didn’t tell her I was going to FaceTime her! I thought I’d get lucky, but she’s working and all that in New York.” Gray said, laughing, at Sunday’s press conference.
The absence of the film’s biggest stars, and arguably one of the biggest movie stars of this year’s muted festival, had been a sore disappointment to the screaming crowds outside the Palais, but Johansson is busy filming the reboot of The Exorcist.
In Gray’s taught thriller, set in 1980s Brighton Beach; the Gowanus area of Brooklyn; and Great Neck, Long Island, two brothers (Driver and Teller) fall afoul of Russian gangsters in a rapidly transforming city where high-stakes opportunities for riches also come with a high risk of life and limb. Johansson spends the movie in an unfortunate blonde wig and glasses, with a thick Long Island accent, as the wife to Teller’s non-streetwise suburban dad, who unwittingly puts a target on his family’s back.
