In recent years, Nicole Peltz Beckham has been best known for her spectacular wedding to Brooklyn Beckham, her best friendship with Selena Gomez and her numerous appearances in the fashion industry. One wonders if the “Transformers” actress has hung up her Hollywood hat for good.
But behind the scenes, Peltz Beckham had been working on a story that, six years after she wrote it, is finally on the market.
More from WWD
“Lola” is a coming-of-age story about Lola James, an impoverished young woman who works at a strip club and a supermarket and tries to save enough money to get her brother out of their toxic home. Peltz Beckham is the writer, director and star of the project, which was originally supposed to be co-written with “The Florida Project” actress Bria Vinaite before they parted ways. It is Peltz Beckham’s debut as a writer and director.
Peltz Beckham, now 29, wrote the script at the age of 23 within three consecutive days.
“I didn’t sleep for three days. I have screenshots from 4:50 a.m., just me writing. When I started writing down my thoughts, they just wouldn’t stop,” she says.
She wrote in chronological order, without an outline or idea of what the ending might be, thus avoiding, as she says, “the pressure on myself.”
“For me, writing was always something private,” says Peltz Beckham. “It was just a love that I felt and that I never wanted to share, at least not at the time.”
Her acting teacher was the first to see the script – which at the time consisted of a single coherent sentence – and encouraged her to turn it into a proper draft.
Many of the supporting characters in the script are based on people from her life: the best friend in the film is inspired by Peltz Beckham’s childhood best friend Angela, and the little brother is modeled on her godson. Lola herself obviously has a very different life from the writer, who grew up in New York and is the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz.
“I just felt like I had read a lot of scripts and I wanted to play a resilient, strong girl, but I didn’t want the star of the film to always be right. I wanted the film to be told from her point of view, but that doesn’t mean that all of her decisions were right,” says the actress.
“I wanted to write a character with flaws, but also someone who has her heart in the right place. I just think that’s life, and imperfection in life will always inspire me. And I think it was always interesting to tell the story from her point of view, because when it says, ‘There’s your story, his story, and then the truth,’ I think that’s really true. I wanted it to be told from her point of view. That doesn’t mean the audience will agree with every decision she makes, but you can understand why she makes that decision.”
It’s ironic that the daughter of a billionaire – and daughter-in-law of one of the world’s most famous celebrity couples – would write the story of a young woman struggling to make ends meet and cast herself in it. The film has drawn criticism since its release. That’s nothing Peltz Beckham isn’t prepared for.
“The way I see it, I feel very connected to the characters that I have created. And as I said, my best friend and my godson, they came from my life and a lot of connections and relationships came from my life. But of course, I didn’t grow up like Lola at all,” she says. “And I wanted to write a story from a person’s perspective and a different point of view that wasn’t my personal point of view and wasn’t my upbringing. I’m an actress and my dream is to see the world from different perspectives.”
Her goal with “Lola” was to create something that people would gravitate to, and she says several people came up to her at the film’s premiere and told her they were moved by Lola and her choices.
“It’s all I could wish for,” she says.
The best of WWD
