Remember the Divergent movies? Not only did the dystopian book adaptations bring a ton of young talent like Shailene Woodley, Theo James and Miles Teller to the big screen, it also enlisted the great talents of some established actors, especially with Kate Winslet being cast as one main Divergent villain, Jeanine Matthews. Spoiler alert: Jeanine dies in Insurgent, and as Veronica Roth revealed, one time Winslet’s son actually approached the Divergent author on the subject.
Winslet played the corrupt leader of the Erudite faction in the first two Divergent movies who got what was coming for her in 2015’s Insurgent when Jeanine was stabbed to death. As Veronica Roth recently recalled, the plot point was the source of a hilarious encounter the bestselling author had with Winslet’s eldest son Joe. In Roth’s words:
The best thing that happened was probably when her son was on set and he came up to me and he said, ‘Why did you kill my mom?’ I said, ‘I didn’t know it would be your mom when I did it,’ And he was like, ‘That makes sense.’ That was it. He walked away after that.
Joe would have been around 11 at the time of his inquiry to Roth. And hey, if you were that age watching your mom getting killed off on the set of a movie, and your mom was an Oscar-winning actress and the star of Titanic, wouldn’t you ask the same question? As Roth shared with People, she simply told Joe, who is also the son of 1917 director Sam Mendes, that she made the decision before she knew Winslet would embody the character.
Roth also recalled her experience working with Kate Winslet, saying that it was very much a positive one, calling the actress “so friendly.” She said:
You can always tell something about a person by the way they treat the assistants on set, and she was such a joy to deal with for all of them. I’ve been a fan of hers for a long time and she was so cool — just really aggressively cool.
I think it’s safe to assume that if Veronica Roth knew Kate Winslet would play her character, she might have made her the undying heroine, especially considering her incredibly positive experience working with the actress. Though Winslet must have had a blast playing Divergent’s villain as a change of pace.
At the time, the actress said she actually took the role to be part of something that would impress her kids. At the time, her eldest daughter, Mia, was 13, and she was pregnant with her third child, Bear. Her middle child clearly got to hang out on set, and he even got some face time with the author of the Divergent books.
While much of the Divergent cast is hard at work on other Hollywood projects these days, the franchise ended awkwardly when the fourth installment was going to be turned into a made-for-television movie before it was ultimately canceled. Divergent director Neil Burger has since told CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast in 2021 that he had doubts about the series ever concluding. You can read the full story about why we didn’t see more Divergent movies here on CinemaBlend.