Kate Winslet Reveals On ‘The View’ Why Helen Mirren Almost Didn’t Agree To Star In ‘Goodbye June’: “It Was Not Easy”

Kate Winslet corralled a dream team of actors to star in her new Netflix film Goodbye June, which marks her directorial debut and her son’s first-ever screenplay. But the actress revealed on The View that there was one star who proved difficult to cast: Dame Helen Mirren.

Winslet joined her co-stars Toni Colette and Andrea Riseborough on The View, where she revealed she somehow convinced Mirren to break her own personal rules about acting in order to join the cast.

“It was not easy and yet it was completely straightforward because she’s totally her own person and she’s utterly frank,” Winslet said of Mirren.

Winslet explained that she and her son created a wishlist of actors they would like to star in the film. “We did this wishlist of actors, which I did more as a sort of support exercise for my son because he didn’t believe I meant it when I said this is a movie, we’re gonna make it into a film,” she explained.

After “all” of the actors they approached agreed to join the film, Mirren was the last person Winslet spoke to.

“I described the story. I said it had been written by my son, I was going to direct it,” Winslet recounted on The View. “She said, ‘Listen, I do need to tell you something I do have two personal rules.’”

According to Winslet, Mirren shared that her two personal rules are, “I don’t want to play anyone with dementia and I don’t want to play anyone who’s dying.”

Behar asked if it was because Mirren was “superstitious,” to which Winslet replied, “No, it’s just something that meant something to her.”

Winslet explained that she initially was not going to share the script with Mirren after hearing this, but Mirren was still interested in the project and said it sounded “rather lovely.”

“And a week later, I got an email and she said, ‘I’ll break my rule. I’d love to support you,’” Winslet revealed. “But thats who she is.”

Goodbye June, which was written by Winslet’s son Joe Anders, is about a complicated family that reunites when their mother’s health takes a turn for the worst. Joined by Johnny Flynn, Winslet, Colette and Riseborough star as siblings who have to set their differences aside after they’re thrown together to say goodbye to their mother one last time.

After Behar pointed out that Mirren has “no ego at all,” Winslet shared that was common for her entire cast. “We didn’t have that. There’s just none of that rubbish because it just takes up space. None of us are like that, thank goodness,” she said.

Goodbye June premieres on Netflix Dec. 24.