- - Kate Winslet Got Pushback from Her Son When She Suggested Turning His Class ‘Assignment’ into a Movie (Exclusive)

Jack Smart, Bailey RichardsDecember 10, 2025 at 11:35 PM

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Joe Anders and Kate Winslet at the New York screening of 'Goodbye June' on Dec. 8 -

Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with family drama Goodbye June, written by her son Joe Anders

Winslet recalls to PEOPLE what she told Anders after reading his screenplay, which he had written for a school assignment

Goodbye June is in theaters Dec. 12 and streaming on Netflix Dec. 24

For Kate Winslet and her son Joe Anders, their new movie started its journey to the screen as just a school assignment.

Winslet, 50, makes her directorial debut with Goodbye June, which Anders, 21, wrote for a screenwriting class. As the Oscar-winning actress tells PEOPLE at the Monday, Dec. 8 screening of the film in New York City, her son resisted it coming to fruition at first.

“I just read it and said to him, ‘You've written a screenplay,’” recalls Winslet. “He was like, ‘No, mom, it's not that. It's an assignment that I was set in my screenwriting course. You don't have to do that. You don't have to make me feel good about this thing that I was just trying to do to see if I could write something.’”

Kimberley French/Netflix

Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet in 'Goodbye June'

But the Titanic star knew enough about filmmaking to tell Anders he had “actually” written something worth shooting. She recalls telling him, “‘I'm really sorry. We're going to be making it into a film.’ He's like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

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Goodbye June, starring Winslet alongside Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall and Helen Mirren and more, takes place during Christmas, “when an unexpected turn in their mother’s health thrusts four adult siblings and their exasperating father into chaos as they navigate messy family dynamics in the face of potential loss,” per an official synopsis.

Dia Dipasupil/WireImage

(Left-right:) Andrea Riseborough, Kate Winslet, Joe Anders, Timothy Spall, Toni Collette and Kate Solomon at the New York screening of 'Goodbye June' on Dec. 8

Mirren’s June “orchestrates her decline on her own terms — with biting humor, blunt honesty, and a lot of love,” it concludes.

“Our wishlist of people all said yes,” says Winslet of her cast. After working on the script with Anders, she adds, making the jump to her directorial debut was a no-brainer. “At that point it really felt like ours and I just didn't want to give it to another director.”

She continues: “It's one of those things where I feel like even if I never, ever get to do it again in my whole career, for whatever reason, that I did this and I did this at this time in my life when I was really ready to do it… I feel really proud of us and I feel really proud of the film.”

Kimberley French/Netflix

(Left-right:) Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Kate Winslet and more in 'Goodbye June'

Winslet has also collaborated onscreen with Mia Threapleton, one of her two other children, in 2022 TV drama I Am Ruth. Calling both Threapleton and Anders "extremely talented,” she tells PEOPLE, “actually, neither of them really have an awareness of that at all. They're very humble. They just love the job, they love the work, and they know that they've been really fortunate to have worked with extraordinary people from whom they've already learned a lot.”

Goodbye June is in theaters Dec. 12 and streaming on Netflix Dec. 24. Winslet also stars in James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash (in theaters Dec. 19).

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”