Irish actor Kerry Condon, who portrayed APX GP technical director Kate McKenna in the F1 movie, has opened up on filming a tense scene with Brad Pitt, who played Sonny Hayes.
Starring alongside Pitt and Condon were the likes of Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Tobias Menzies and Kim Bodnia. It was directed by Joseph Kosinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton also served as an executive producer on the blockbuster.
The film follows nomadic racing driver Hayes as he returns to F1 to help the struggling new team, APX GP, and its rookie driver Joshua Pearce, played by Idris. Since its release in June 2025, it has brought in $68.8million at the box office.
“That was very early on in the shoot,” she explained to Deadline, discussing the scene in which McKenna is brutally honest with Hayes, stating, “Sonny Hayes isn’t a has-been, he’s a never was.”
Condon added: “We’d shot at Silverstone, and it was a big high. Everyone went out, but I was like, ‘I’m not going out. I’ve got that big scene with Brad on Tuesday. There’s no way I’m hitting the town.’
“So I laid low, because I knew I had that scene coming up, and it was a really big scene, and I wanted to prove why I got the job. The biggest thing for me in that scene was when I pick up the pint, I was like, ‘Don’t shake the pint! Don’t shake the pint!’ That would give away the fact that I was nervous. I was like, ‘Just pick it up!’
“Joe [Joseph Kosinski] said, the more takes we did, the meaner I got, which I was surprised by. I was like, ‘I don’t think I was that mean to him!’ And so a lot of the cut that you see was the first take. The actors’ strike started the next day, so a part of me was like, ‘I could get recast if I don’t do this good.’ Stranger things have happened.”
F1 Movie scene
F1 Movie scene
The movie was filmed during real-life F1 weekends, alongside the 20 F1 drivers and other team personnel, some of whom appear in the film.
“I felt like we were a guest of Formula 1, and we were a film crew infiltrating their actual job,” she said. “Joe did tell me when I got the job, ‘Your theatre background will help, because there’s a live aspect to this.’
“You couldn’t be like, ‘Can I go to my trailer? I just want to brush my teeth.’ It was like, ‘You’ve got to be ready. There’s nobody waiting for you.’ I kind of loved the non-princessy vibe, because it was like, ‘We can’t be thinking about that. We haven’t time.’”
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