Thelma filmmaker Josh Margolin pointed the film’s 95-year-old leading lady June Squibb to the same source of inspiration that sparked the movie itself: his grandmother, who shares the name of the title character. “Josh gave me some little films that he’d made, like of Thelma going to the store or Thelma celebrating her birthday, just to get an idea of who she was and what she was like,” Squibb explained during a panel with Margolin at the Deadline Contenders Film event on Saturday. “She’d always just been a huge figure in my life and sort of an inspiration to me and someone I always looked up to,” Margolin said of the real-life Thelma Post.
“I had been making these little documentaries about my grandma when she was living alone in her nineties for the first time ever,” recalled Margolin. “And it was just an interesting time because two things were happening: She was grieving the loss of her husband and kind of entering this new chapter of aging, but also kind of relishing having that space and that time in a way that she just never did before then.” RELATED: 2024-25 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Oscars, Grammys, Tonys, Guilds & More Margolin told his grandmother’s story through the lens of a con targeting the elderly that Thelma actually experienced.
“In the wake of the real scam incident that inspired the movie, I realized I had been thinking about her for I guess my whole life, but especially in those past few years in a new way,” he said. �.
