Hotel Artemis: Jodie Foster on Playing the Nurse

Jodie Foster plays a mysterious nurse and Dave Bautista is her fearsome assistant in the futuristic new crime thriller.

In a rundown hotel in downtown Los Angeles in 2028, there exists a hospital where criminals can safely get treated for their injuries with no questions asked and no shooting allowed. One must be a member to enter Hotel Artemis, which is bankrolled by a crime lord known as the Wolf King (Jeff Goldblum) and manned only by the Nurse (Jodie Foster) and her assistant/security guard Everest (Dave Bautista).

As the dystopian thriller Hotel Artemis starts, brothers and low-level bank robbers played by Sterling K. Brown and Brian Tyree Henry get caught in a botched heist. Henry’s character is wounded and the two of them make their way to the hotel, initiating a chain of events in which the Nurse and Everest struggle to maintain control of their facility as different factions — including the minions of the Wolf King himself — begin a battle within its walls.

“I love the Nurse,” says Foster about her character, who is kind of the calm at the center of the storm. “(She) has this kind of Barbara Stanwyck, old movie banter, but really emotional…(she) has this really emotional back story and the mother-son love story at the center is my story with (Bautista)’s character, with Dave.”

“It was surreal from the moment it was mentioned to me,” says Bautista when asked what it was like to work with two-time Oscar winner and all-around acting legend Foster. “I haven’t talked about this until now with anybody but close friends, but the first day we went in for the table read, for one I couldn’t believe I was sitting to read with Jodie, and then she says, ‘You’re not as big as I thought you’d be.’ (laughs) And I’m starting to think, ‘Oh man, is she second-guessing me for this role?’”

Written and directed by Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3), who makes his feature debut behind the camera, Hotel Artemis has a top-notch cast includes Foster, Bautista, Goldblum, Brown, Henry, Zachary Quinto, Sofia Boutella, Jenny Slate and Charlie Day.

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Hotel Artemis is out in theaters this Friday (June 8).