The Matrix's co-creator Lilly Wachowski explained why she didn't join her sister Lana in returning for the series' fourth film, The Matrix: Resurrections.
Speaking at a Television Critics Association Summer Tour virtual panel while promoting her Showtime series Work In Progress, Lilly said she had many "tough" personal reasons for not taking part in the new Matrix sequel, citing family issues, exhaustion with filmmaking and her gender transition. "I got out of my transition and was just completely exhausted because we had made Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending, and the first season of Sense8 back-to-back-to-back," Lilly said. "We were posting one, and prepping the other at the exact same time. So you're talking about three 100-plus days of shooting for each project, and so, coming out and just being completely exhausted, my world was like, falling apart to some extent even while I was like, you know, cracking out of my egg. So I needed this time away from this industry. I needed to reconnect with myself as an artist and I did that by going back to school and painting and stuff."
Lana, who is also transgender and began her transition during the production of The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions, discussed her ideas for The Matrix: Resurrections with Lilly, but Lilly found the idea of returning to a series she made during a darker time in her life to be unappealing.
"[Lana] had come up with this idea for another Matrix movie, and we had this talk, and it was actually -- we started talking about it in between [our] dad dying and [our] mom dying, which was like five weeks apart," said Lilly. "And there was something about the idea of going backward and being a part of something that I had done before that was expressly unappealing. And, like, I didn't want to have gone through my transition and gone through this massive upheaval in my life, the sense of loss from my mom and dad, to want to go back to something that I had done before, and sort of [walk] over old paths that I had walked in, felt emotionally unfulfilling, and really the opposite -- like I was going to go back and live in these old shoes, in a way. And I didn't want to do that."
It seems as if Lilly is generally less interested in science fiction projects at the moment; Work In Progress is a realistic comedy about a depressed queer comedian, and while promoting the show's first season, Lilly said that she was less interested in the more subtextual nature of sci-fi storytelling. Lilly describes Work In Progress as "a new thing that I could go do and be myself in," and is uncertain whether she'll collaborate with Lana on other projects in the future.
Lana Wachowski's The Matrix: Resurrections premieres in theaters and on HBO Max December 22. New episodes of Work In Progress, co-written by Lilly Wachowski, are premiering on Showtime Sundays at 11 PM ET/PT.
Source: EW
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