Each week, Netflix drops a list of the top 10 films and TV shows dominating the platform. For the week of Aug. 11, two vastly different films, both featuring Vanessa Kirby, are in the US Top 10: Netflix original Night Always Comes and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.
If you consider that Kirby is also starring in Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is currently No. 4 at the box office, and she briefly reprised her role as White Widow in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, which also arrived on digital platforms this week, the actor seems to be everywhere.
The fact that Kirby is starring in two of Netflix’s top films at the moment feels like a bit of a homecoming. Her breakthrough role in 2016 was in the Netflix original series The Crown where she portrayed Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret, for two seasons and earned a BAFTA award for the role. In the time since, Kirby has starred in three massive film franchises that have raised her profile in Hollywood, but she also started her own production company that struck a deal with Netflix so that smaller, woman-led projects like Night Always Comes would have a home.
Night Always Comes, which snagged No. 4 on Netflix’s Top 10, is an anxiety-riddled thriller about a woman (Kirby) who has 24 hours to come up with the $25,000 she needs to buy the house she rents and shares with her mother and brother. The film is a dark and desperate look at a woman who is barely scraping by and trying to do right by her family but is forced to collect money by any means necessary — calling in favors, begging for loans, even selling her body, just so she can maintain a sense of normalcy and stability at home.
The grim reality of Night Always Comes is diametrically opposed to 2019’s Hobbs & Shaw, the outrageously fun buddy-action film where Kirby plays Jason Statham’s sister Hattie Shaw. Her performance alongside Statham and Dwayne Johnson has helped propel that film to the No. 6 spot this week in the US, outperforming the six other Fast & Furious films that arrived on Netflix this month. (That in itself seems impressive, but it almost seems as though Hobbs & Shaw has taken on a life of its own and has gone beyond any other entry in the Fast & Furious franchise. Fans — and the film’s original writer — have been hoping for a sequel for years, and the film handily stands on its own.)
Kirby will appear next in Avengers: Doomsday in 2026. In the meantime, there are more than a few titles where you can see her versatility in action.
