Jennifer Esposito mortgaged her own home to make her directorial debut.
Jennifer Esposito mortgaged own home for new movie
The 51-year-old actress wrote, directed and stars in new movie 'Fresh Kills' and revealed she was so passionate about telling the story that she “produced it and paid for most of" it herself.
Speaking on 'Live with Kelly and Mark', she said: "I mortgaged my home. No one wanted to make it. I couldn’t even get people to read it. And then when [they] did read it, it was like, ‘We’ll give you $5 million if you cast it with a big-name man. Because females don’t sell movies.’"
So Jennifer decided to approach her husband Jesper Vesterstrøm with a radical idea.
She said: "I went to my nice husband and was like, ‘Hey, I got an idea. What do you think about mortgaging the house?’ I do believe, if you don’t bet on yourself, who is going to bet on you?”
She added: "'Fresh Kills' is the first film in the mafia genre where we’re seeing the point of view from the women. [I was inspired by seeing] “young women really violently angry.
“I saw, it’s really more about choice. I kept going back to [the script] when I would hit roadblocks in either my career or my life and think, ‘That’s where that rage came from.’ It’s about the boxes we’re put in and they didn’t have a choice.”
Meanwhile, previously revealed her career was nearly cut short by a “Harvey Weinstein-esque person”.
The star did not name the man, but branded him a “notorious” and “brutal” producer and accused him of spreading lies about her as part of a mission to derail her path to fame when she was only 26.
She told the ‘She Pivots’ podcast: “He fired me for no reason. He wanted someone else and he got her.”
Jennifer also told the show’s lawyer host Emily Tisch Sussman the producer discouraged others who wanted to hire her, and added about his lies: “He said I was a drug addict – (that) never happened.
“(He) had the power and used it to completely end a young girl’s career at 26 years old.”
Jennifer added that without the hard time she endured at the hands of the producer early in her career she may not have achieved the feat of writing and directing 'Fresh Kills'.
Referring to her 26-year-old self, she added the project “really was” dedicated “to that kid”.
She added: “It was a hard time. But it was also a beautiful time. Because if I wasn’t that kid, I would have never been this woman.
“And I’m very proud of who I am and very proud of what I’ve done.
“I know for a fact that if that didn’t happen with that producer and my road had been easier, I would have never written and directed what I just did.
“I gave her her career back in the way that she could do it. Not the way someone else told me I could do it. I needed to right the wrong again.”