Kate Winslet ‘Desperately Tried’ to Recast Herself in ‘Goodbye June’ Directorial Debut: ‘I Cannot Do Three Jobs’

Kate Winslet is opening up about the challenges she faced while making her directorial debut, “Goodbye June.”

Written by her son, Joe Anders, the actress revealed that she only planned to star and produce the film. When she was also offered the opportunity to direct the feature, Winslet said that her initial thought was that she “cannot do three jobs.”

“I know I’m good at multitasking, but this is too many things,” Winslet told Digi Spy. “I desperately tried to recast myself [and] had a really good list of a handful of people who would have been absolutely brilliant in that role.”

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She continued, “But at that point… well, first of all, Netflix was like, ‘Uh-uh,’ and secondly, I’d cast all these incredible actors. How could I not go and play with them? Because that’s what we do. We play, we pretend, and it’s an amazing thing.”

Now playing in select theaters, “Goodbye June” follows four adult siblings and their father as they navigate their family dynamic as their sick mother’s health takes a turn for the worse. Winslet stars as Julia, one of June’s children, with Helen Mirren playing June, the matriarch of the family.

“I know it sounds a bit sickly, but we had to really become a family in order to make it feel as real as possible and as relatable as possible,” Winslet added. “You can’t just show up and do the job and go home again; it becomes something else. We were lucky on this film that that really happened.”

In addition to Winslet and Mirren, “Goodbye June” stars Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough and Timothy Spall. Additional cast members include Stephen Merchant, Fisayo Akinade, Jeremy Swift and Raza Jaffrey.

After its theatrical run, the film will arrive on Netflix on Dec. 24.