Stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, and Colin Firth share how the “Jaws” filmmaker brings humanity and heart to their new sci-fi adventure.

Out of this world: Steven Spielberg exposes the truth about his latest extraterrestrial thriller Disclosure Day

Stars Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colman Domingo, and Colin Firth share how the "Jaws" filmmaker brings humanity and heart to their new sci-fi adventure.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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June 9, 2026 12:00 p.m. ET

Steven Spielberg has the jitters.**** More than 50 years into his career, the filmmaker still feels a wave of anxiety as he anticipates the opening weekend of his latest project, the sci-fi thriller *Disclosure Day*.**** "Nothing has changed," he tells **. "I'm as excited and nervous now as I was when I first did this [in 1971] for *Duel*. So that hasn't changed. That level of excitement and stress is absolutely something that doesn't age. I age, but that doesn't."

The filmmaker's seemingly unquenchable enthusiasm is evident on the set of EW's cover shoot in New York City. His moment in front of the camera comes after his stars, Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor, have already completed most of their part of the shoot, but he calls for their input.

"Oh, give me your notes!" he exclaims. "Torture me like I torture you! Torture me!"

Later, after seeing a photo of himself looking off into the distance against the backdrop of an eye's striking blue iris, he comments to Blunt, "Two words: Marvel. Hero."

But Spielberg's self-deprecation about his directorial style couldn't be further from his actors' description of their time making *Disclosure Day*.

"Honestly, there's nothing austere about him. Even though he's the GOAT, clearly, he is so joyful," Blunt says. "Steven allows you to have so much spontaneity and playfulness. So that leaves room. You're not in this strict format where you have to play the character a certain way. He's very interested by what you might bring, and the humor or improv or anything you want to throw in there."

"Steven really backed me," O'Connor adds. "You've got this unfair advantage of having Steven Spielberg as your mentor in challenging situations — and he is not a hands-off director, he's fully with you the whole way through."

Blunt thinks "his own childlike wonder really bleeds out to the rest of us, and he's relentless and tireless and very, very brave. I don't think he even realizes he's being so bold and so brave, but I think this is an incredibly brave film to make."

Watch the skies

Josh O'Connor, Steven Spielberg, and Emily Blunt for EW's 'Disclosure Day' cover shoot.

"At the core of *Disclosure Day* is the question: Where has all our empathy gone?" Spielberg reflects. "Would an actual disclosure day reunite what's divided, or begin to repair what's broken in this siphoning away of empathy? And I think that was the personal link for me. There's more focus in this story on human connection than even the eventual and hopeful connection between an off-world civilization and the human species."

The film grapples with the existence of alien life, which has been a topic of Spielberg's curiosity for as long as he can remember. His interest was initially piqued when his father woke him in the middle of the night to observe a dazzling meteor shower during his childhood; that experience partially inspired *Firelight*, the homemade sci-fi movie that became Spielberg's feature debut at age 17. *Firelight*, in turn, led to *Close Encounters of the Third Kind*, the 1977 hit inspired by decades of mysterious, supposedly firsthand experiences with interplanetary life forms and the vehicles that got them to Earth.

Steven Spielberg on the set of 'Disclosure Day'.

Niko Tavernise/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Spielberg described himself as something of a true believer in UFO conspiracies at the time of *Close Encounters* in the '70s, but expressed some doubts in subsequent years after the advent of camcorders failed to yield much credible evidence of otherworldly sightings. Recent events, though, have prompted Spielberg to rediscover his faith.

"For eight decades, there have been flare-ups of sightings, and then it goes dark for a number of years, and then there are outbreaks of sightings again," he explains. "But after the smartphone was invented, suddenly more and more very credible visual evidence began to permeate, not just here in this country, but in every country around the world."

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Spielberg still hasn't experienced a close encounter of his own.

"I haven't seen a UFO, and I'm a little upset by that, because of all the people who haven't seen UFOs — I'm the guy that made UFO movies like John Ford made Westerns! And yet I haven't seen one for myself," he says. "But based on a preponderance of visual evidence and testimony, I have no doubt that we have been visited by off-world species since Roswell in 1947. I was less a believer [before] because I always said, 'I've got to see one to believe one,' but now there's too much circumstantial evidence."

The filmmaker was fully reactivated by the 2017 *New York Times* article that marked the Pentagon's first public acknowledgment of its Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a formerly secret program investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs (the preferred 21st-century terminology for UFOs). The report accompanied footage from a 2004 incident in which two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets encountered a flying ovular object colloquially known as the Tic Tac.

"It was probably the best footage anyone had ever seen of a UAP," Spielberg says. "And suddenly things started to happen quite quickly. It took a number of years until the House Intelligence Committee held hearings on UAPs in 2023, where witnesses testified under oath before a bipartisan congressional committee and the American public, which was the second wave of disclosure. And by that time in 2023, I was already writing the story of *Disclosure Day*."

Putting pen to paper

Josh O'Connor as Dr. Daniel Kellner and Eve Hewson as Jane Blankenship in 'Disclosure Day'.

Niko Tavernise/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

By writing, Spielberg means he was hammering out an extremely detailed treatment for the film in the Notes app on his iPad, which was around 52 pages by the time he officially enlisted the help of his frequent collaborator David Koepp — who previously penned *Jurassic Park* and *War of the Worlds* — to convert that treatment into a full-length screenplay.

"It was an idea he'd had for so long, and was so obviously personal, so I think the notion of both writing and directing it possibly felt a little lonely," Koepp speculates. "You really want a collaborator to help you figure things out, especially if it's too in your head. It's really nice to get an outside voice."

The 2023 congressional UAP hearings were instrumental for both Koepp and the cast.

"They were stunning," the screenwriter recalls. "We took a lot of language out of those hearings and put them in dialogue. The people who were speaking under oath were really credible."

Emily Blunt for EW's 'Disclosure Day' cover shoot.

"I watched pretty much every congressional hearing, documentary, and docuseries under the sun preparing for this," Blunt says, explaining that many alien experiencers' testimonies feel "inarguable" to her. "They were so authentic and so deeply shifted and moved and completely absolute about what they saw. There was nothing wavering for them. And I was really floored by that — by this kind of sense of peace they had."

Despite its attention to detail, however, Spielberg doesn't want the film to be mistaken for a definitive account of decades of UAP lore.

"*Disclosure Day* is not a holistic review of the entire history of the UFO phenomenon," the filmmaker says. "It is an immediate, impending story that threatens to let loose the truth about UFOs on the entire world. And that truth is being carried by some really amazing performances that I was very lucky to be given by these actors."

Getting into character

Josh O'Connor for EW's 'Disclosure Day' cover shoot.

*Disclosure Day* revolves around a pair of protagonists: Daniel Kellner (O'Connor), a programmer with a wealth of knowledge and evidence that could definitively prove the existence of alien life; and Margaret Fairchild (Blunt), a Missouri-based meteorologist who develops supernatural abilities as the film progresses. The two leads are drawn together as they go on the run to expose a hidden truth about the world and, simultaneously, discover hidden truths about themselves.

O'Connor recognizes that he's not the first actor you'd imagine in the lead role of a Spielberg thriller.

"I've never played a role like it before. I would argue it's not obvious casting," he says. "I wanted to step out and do something different or out of my comfort zone. There's a number of things about Daniel Kellner that's out of my comfort zone — jumping on trains and the action aspects, and then I'm deeply dyslexic, and he's a mathematic genius."

Blunt also embraced the challenge of portraying a character in dauntingly unrelatable circumstances.

"Normally when you're playing a role, you subconsciously are pulling from your life experience, and other people's life experience, or what you imagined their life to have been, because it would be within your grasp of understanding," she explains. "Yet what Margaret is experiencing, by being imbued with this extraordinary gift, is not something I have any point of reference for. So how do you play that in a very realistic way? It felt like a leap into the unknown more than anything. How do you show that? How do you reveal it?"

Colman Domingo as Hugh Wakefield in 'Disclosure Day'.

Daniel and Margaret's journeys are defined by questions, so the most reassuring presence in the movie is the character with many of the answers: Hugo, a level-headed deep state defector portrayed by Colman Domingo, who previously worked with Spielberg on *Lincoln* and the 2023 version of *The Color Purple*. Hugo directs Daniel from behind the scenes while orchestrating a broader plan that's not in full view until the film's final moments — and, fittingly, Domingo says that he partially based his performance on Spielberg himself.

"I could just tell that there was something that Steven really understands about Hugo," the *Euphoria* star says. "I would listen to Steven and play Hugo based on some of my conversations with Steven and my understanding of Steven. He has a profound belief in people and humanity and what people can take."

Domingo appreciated how Hugo's restraint and serenity marked a change of pace from more intense, showy characters he's played in recent projects such as *The Running Man* or *Rustin*.

"This was a bit more of a quiet grace that I had to play with, as someone who's a bit more professorial," he explains.

Emily Blunt for EW's 'Disclosure Day' cover shoot.

To avoid getting lost in the film's lofty sci-fi ideas, Spielberg and the cast repeatedly made choices throughout preparation and production that prioritized human touch and emotional realism.

For example, Blunt was responsible for the ominous alien clicking noises featured in the film's trailers. The actress says the otherworldly sound design could have been achieved solely through digital methods, but she wanted to actively participate in the process.

"I said, 'Well, I think I can make some very strange sounds,'" she remembers. "We went in the booth, and we did a variety of humming and guttural sounds and clicking sounds, and just consonants and whispers. And then [sound designer] Gary Rydstrom layered the entire thing so that it's a myriad of sounds happening simultaneously. I think he wanted it to sound quite mathematical and yet warm — not necessarily scary, but probably a bit overwhelming."

Josh O'Connor for EW's 'Disclosure Day' cover shoot.

The characters spend significant portions of the film in separate locations, and sometimes communicate only by phone. Spielberg insisted that the actors perform those phone conversations together in real time, even when they weren't physically in the same space, so that the cast could react to each other's actual performances.

"He made sure that we were available on a call with that person, wherever we were," Domingo says. "So I was doing calls from L.A. or Europe. I would be on hold, and I would hear from the first assistant director on set, 'We're about to go again!' I would talk to Josh a little bit. We'd laugh and joke, and then we would do the scene. I'm actually acting with my scene partners each time and each take. And that's rare."

Blunt's role required her to deliver dialogue in Russian and Korean, which meant extensive prep with multiple dialect coaches — and she wanted to ensure that her line deliveries were as authentic as possible.

"I would get the teacher to record it for me, like, 'What if you're angry? What if you're scared? How would you say it? What if you're trying to reassure someone?'" she recalls. "I remember my Russian teacher going, ’Oh, you want me to act now? Okay!' So I was like, ‘Well, how would you say it if you were yelling at your husband?' And then she'd record it like that for me. And that's all I listened to. I don't think I listened to music for months. It was just Russian and Korean."

Emily Blunt for EW's 'Disclosure Day' cover shoot.

O'Connor's preparation focused on exploring Daniel's psychology.

"He's kind of your everyday guy," he says. "He's not Tom Cruise, but he is doing Tom Cruisey things at times, so there were questions about, who is he, and what's his driving force?"

The *Challengers* star landed on a sense of ethical duty as Daniel's ultimate motivator.

"He feels very strongly that we need to disclose this information, and therefore it's almost like an act of activism, essentially."

Close encounters of another kind

Josh O'Connor and Steven Spielberg on the set of 'Disclosure Day'.

Niko Tavernise/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Spielberg wants to set the record straight: Despite rampant online speculation, *Disclosure Day* has no literal, textual connection to *Close Encounters*.

"It is not a sequel in any way, shape, or form to *Close Encounters*," he insists.

Though both films hinge on elaborate cover-ups of alien activity, the director notes that there's a key distinction between the two conspiracies: *Close Encounters*' aliens are hidden by the government, while* Disclosure Day*'s are not.

"I really don't believe that governments can keep secrets," Spielberg says. "But big tech companies can. And there are contracting companies that I believe hold all the knowledge and have the archives, not governments."

As a result, the main antagonistic force in *Disclosure Day* is Wardex, described by Spielberg as a "deep state contracting company" that keeps all evidence of alien life under lock and key.

"Wardex is operating outside constitutional restraints, and they hold all this knowledge, and they are the ones that are trying to get it back from our whistleblower heroes."

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Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Casper Boyd and Colin Firth as Noah Scanlon in 'Disclosure Day'.

Niko Tavernise/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Koepp weighs the similarities between the post-Watergate historical context that led to *Close Encounters* and the volatile world about to receive *Disclosure Day*.

"In late '70s cinema, or in the '70s in general, there was a sense that, 'Hey, maybe our government might be lying to us,'" he reflects. "And now the sense is, 'Hey, our government lies to us constantly. I wonder when, if ever, is there any truth?' And it's really sad because it's collapsing our faith in all institutions."

Wardex is headed by Noah Scanlon, a relentless leader played by Colin Firth, who desperately tries to keep the truth from getting out.

"I felt that nothing in it was obvious," Firth says of the script. "It helped that both David and Steven said from the very beginning, 'This man doesn't think he's doing evil, or even a disservice to the world.' I mean, quite the opposite. Actually, I think he sees it as a kind of burden of responsibility."

"He is putting out an argument in our film, which a lot of people believe in," Spielberg explains. "If this ever gets disclosed all in one fell swoop, people could go into a culture shock. When people's foundational understanding of reality is blown up, the forced acceptance of a totally new worldview creates an ontological shock."

Ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances

Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, and Colman Domingo in 'Disclosure Day'.

Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

In *Close Encounters*, Bob Balaban's translator David Laughlin describes the unexpected assembly of civilian characters as "ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances" — a phrase that just as aptly epitomizes the people at the heart of *Disclosure Day*, especially since Blunt, O'Connor, and Domingo all independently use the word "ordinary" to describe the film's heroes.

"I think in my experience reading these kinds of big, massive movies, you have often got characters who are maybe a little more generalized or palatable or easy to pin down," Blunt says. "But Steven likes misunderstood people, restless people, ordinary people in over their heads. I think he likes people who are longing for a connection or a sense of belonging. And I think he likes using characters like that because they're relatable."

As the filmmaker explains it, "It's all about balancing what the audience will believe is true inside the film and what the audience will feel is jumping the shark. I never wanted anything about this movie to fall into the uncanny valley. I wanted it to hit people like, 'Yes, I believe in this story, all these events are actually happening.' And when things became too sci-fi-ish, I would sit with David Koepp or the cast and figure out a way to make it more like real life and less like science fiction."

Josh O'Connor for EW's 'Disclosure Day' cover shoot.

For example, there's a moment in which one of the main characters narrowly escapes death in a pulse-pounding action scene involving a train, and instead of brushing off the experience like most action heroes, they have a full-blown panic attack.

"I'm not a guy who watches action movies. I'm not the go-to audience for that sort of a sequence," O'Connor explains. "You often see people jumping off cars, jumping onto buildings, jumping through things, getting blown up, all that sort of thing. And then the scene happens, and they're sort of fine, and you're like, 'Dude, you nearly died! You almost died a second ago!'"

He continues, "I just find it so moving, for the character's response to be essentially a panic attack — that feels so human. It's what Steven does best: He can take the extraordinary situation and put in the ordinary person and we all relate."

In another key sequence, Daniel runs across a field as he sneaks toward a small army of encroaching Wardex agents and attempts to hijack a car — and in the middle of an elaborate, swooping crane shot, O'Connor fully stumbles onto the ground as he runs for his life.

"I'd love to say it was a mistake," O'Connor says sheepishly. "No, we choreographed this run, and that detail comes from this thing that Steven tapped into. Traditionally, you go with the unlikely hero — but this is the *real* hero. People don't know what to do in their situations, and people fall over because they're afraid they're going to die."

Colin Firth as Noah Scanlon in 'Disclosure Day'.

Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

As Daniel embarks on a thrilling car chase, O'Connor kept the character's cluelessness at the top of his mind.

"Once he gets into one of those vehicles and he's driving, I remember saying to Steven, 'How does he know what to do? He doesn't know what to do!'" he says. "He's just terrified. He would be. *I* would be terrified. So there's a messiness to the getaways, and there's a messiness to the action that I really love."

Firth was also struck by his character Noah's vulnerability, and noted how unusual it felt to play an antagonist whose actions take a huge physical toll on him.

"I've seen a lot of stories where the hero is being depleted by his mission as he goes," the actor says. "He might be wounded, he might be barely alive, but he plows on. That's hero stuff. I don't think I've seen a lot of villains doing that. The bad guy's menace is usually intact throughout the story."

Follow your instincts

Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, and Colman Domingo in 'Disclosure Day'.

Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, and Colman Domingo in DISCLOSURE DAY

Domingo suggests that all the characters are "surrogates for Steven in some way."

The characters, particularly Margaret and Daniel, are constantly overwhelmed by forces they don't fully understand, and their journeys require them to follow their instincts. Spielberg has repeatedly said that his strongest directorial work comes on the days when he arrives on set without a plan and allows his natural impulses to guide his vision. That parallel is not lost on the filmmaker.

"At some point, every character has to save themselves, which is sometimes how I feel when I'm being challenged by how to tell the story," he explains.

Steven Spielberg for EW's 'Disclosure Day' cover shoot.

"This might shock people who think they know how I make movies, but the one thing I hope never to achieve when I'm directing a film is total confidence, because then I'm not challenged by anything, and then panic doesn't set in, and then all the good ideas never come, because the best ideas come when I hit a wall about something, and something isn't working, and I've got to figure my way out of it. I get my best ideas when I'm on thin ice, not when I'm on solid ground."

He adds, "All the characters in the film do reach the abyss of their own capabilities and have to reach down deep to push themselves further. A very important dramatic tool that we all have available to us is to make sure that all of our characters have a low point — and that low point suddenly becomes a springboard so they can achieve their goals and become their own kind of hero."

Spielberg sees *Disclosure Day* as a fitting capstone to a career defined in large part by sci-fi wonder.

"I'm telling the story about an area of interest that I have never been able to divest myself of," he reflects. "It has been too compelling for me, and has kept me thinking about what's out there, what's been out there, and how come we've not been told it's out there. And I wanted to finally make this movie, in a way, as a summation film for all the sci-fi films I've made, starting with *Firelight *when I was 17 years old on 8mm film — about the truth about: Are we alone, or are we not alone?"

*Directed by Kristen Harding + Alison Wild*

*Photography by Pari Dukovic*

*Motion — DP: Cory Fraiman-Lott; 1st AC: Christie Leitzell; 2nd AC: Shelby Lail; DIT: Paul Liatis; Crane Tech: Jacob Shayevich; Mosys Head Op: Mike O'Shea; Gaffer: Jonathan Alvarado; Best Electric; Nick Love; Key Grip: Brandon Roberts; Best Grip: Shamus Lobene; Swing: James Kump; Electric - Jacqueline Riede Dervay; PAs: Matt King, Jose Torchio*

*Photo — Crew: Christian Larsen, Muhammet Gencoglu, Aubrey Wipfli, Lynda Goldstein*

*Production— Executive Producer: Julie Brantley; Producer: Johnny North; Producer: Mandy Philp; Associate Producer: Shannon Segura; Production Manager: Evan Meszaros; Production Coordinator: Bix Giegerich*

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