Rebecca Miller spent five years interviewing Scorsese

Ahead of the June 4 IndieWire Honors Spring 2026 ceremony, Rebecca Miller reflected on the “weird magic” of close creative relationships while looking back on more than 20 hours of interviews with Martin Scorsese for Apple TV’s five-part docuseries “Mr. Scorse

Rebecca Miller’s fascination isn’t with famous films or famous names—it’s with what happens when two people make something together.

She called it the “weird magic” of deep interpersonal relationships. those charged connections that can produce something electric—or land flat—depending on the person and the fit. “It’s like when you go to the psychiatrist. Some work really well for you, and some don’t. Or love affairs,” Miller said over Zoom ahead of the June 4 IndieWire Honors Spring 2026 ceremony in Los Angeles. “Or friendship, or even director-actor relationships. All of these deep interpersonal relationships are dependent on some kind of elective affinity.”.

Miller. who is being recognized as a Magnify Award recipient at the ceremony. is no stranger to the exact kind of alchemy she describes. Recently, she stepped into it as the director of “Mr. Scorsese. ” a five-part Apple TV docuseries shaped as an artist’s portrait of the life. the times. and the films of Martin Scorsese. the 83-year-old director of “Taxi Driver. ” “Goodfellas. ” “The Wolf of Wall Street. ” and many more.

The series is built on a long conversation. Miller said she sat down with Scorsese for more than 20 hours of interviews across five years, using those sessions to craft a portrait of an artist whose work spans decades and controversy as well as craft.

Her questions weren’t random. Miller said she was drawn in by the tension she sees between Scorsese’s Catholicism and his fascination with violence. and how those forces exist “in opposition to or existing alongside” each other. She told the same story of her own creative life. saying those issues were “very personal to me as well. ” even though the world of mafia brutality and New York City street vigilantes can feel far from her own subject matter.

Miller’s relationship to Scorsese’s work didn’t form instantly. She said she would have been about the age of Jodie Foster’s child sex worker in “Taxi Driver” the year that film came out. but her connection really started taking shape with “Goodfellas” in 1990. when she was still a painter. Then she began revisiting the films—step by step—until her focus sharpened into making films herself.

“The next big movie from me was ‘The Age of Innocence,’ and then I started rewatching and revisiting them all from there on in. By the time I watched ‘The Age of Innocence,’ I was starting to make films,” Miller said.

She got to know Scorsese more personally during a stretch in Italy. outside Cinecittà Studios. where he recreated a version of mid-1800s New York City for “Gangs of New York.” That film starred Miller’s husband. Daniel Day-Lewis. Miller described the moment like a filmmaker watching another filmmaker inhabit his own process—especially as she moved around the set.

“I would walk around that set, that incredible set, and you know, Daniel had that immense mustache, terrible road rage,” she said. “It was a funny time, and I loved it.”

That was also around the time she was preparing to make “Personal Velocity. ” a triptych film she described as emotionally frank but delicately told. starring Parker Posey. Faruza Balk. and Kyra Sedgwick. Miller said she became “completely fascinated by his films” while working on it—particularly because she needed to use voiceover. and Scorsese is known for using voiceover.

She said she began asking Scorsese about how films use voiceover for “Personal Velocity,” while already studying his work. “Of course, I’d already been studying his films for that, and he was able to give me some other ideas, too,” Miller said.

She remembers how his feedback landed—not as control for its own sake. but as an obsessive attempt to protect what he believed the work was trying to do. Miller recalled his main note for “Personal Velocity.” “His main note for ‘Personal Velocity. ’ I remember him saying. ‘My mind wandered here.’ There was a part of the film that was very. kind of. slow. and I cut it down. and I reacted to his note. It was a great note,” she said.

In her view, his notes weren’t “proprietary or invasive.” She framed them as personal feelings about the film—questions shaped by where his connection broke, where the “hypnosis” stopped working.

“Where did the hypnosis fail to work? That’s sort of what he was saying, like, ‘I got disconnected, the ribbon was broken.’ That’s what he was generally telling me… when was he not connected anymore?” Miller said.

Two decades later, she brought that same closeness into “Mr. Scorsese.” But Miller emphasized that the method wasn’t a standard interview setup. She described the experience as a “conversation” rather than a sitdown Q&A, built around what she had prepared.

“It was very much a conversation versus an interview because. of course. I had loads of notes. and I had prepared and watched all his films. and all the films I felt he watched at that time that I should have watched. ” she said. “But at the same time, it was just a conversation. I tried to say something to start with. I knew I needed to hit certain films, but it was like call-and-response.”.

She said it helped that she didn’t know “very much about his personal life,” while she did know his films well. For her, that meant the questions felt more like real questions than attempts to force answers.

“All the questions are real questions rather than me actually knowing the answer and then trying to get it out of him,” Miller said.

Miller also said she felt a strong instinct to make the portrait generous and clear-eyed. She described reaching into Scorsese’s cocaine days, his brushes with failure on “The King of Comedy,” and controversy on “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

Her own career has long been shaped by similar collaborations across film and TV. including work with actors like Anne Hathaway. Marisa Tomei. Julianne Moore. Ethan Hawke. Greta Gerwig. and Daniel Day-Lewis. Miller also pointed to something central to her identity as an artist: in her view. her work keeps containing pieces of herself.

“One of the hardest things, honestly, was figuring out how much I’m in [‘Mr. Scorsese’], my voice. I found that if I took it out too much, it’s very disorienting, because he’s obviously talking to someone, and it’s like, ‘Who is that person?’” Miller said.

She added that she removed some interjection sounds so they wouldn’t distract, but she also admitted that by the end she felt more present than she intended. “You feel me, but that’s good because it’s honest,” she said.

In the docuseries, she doesn’t just treat Scorsese as a subject. Miller said she sees him as a leading character in her own long-running interest in character—the “anomalies that people contain.” She compared it to how she approaches her fiction and filmmaking. where she’s fascinated by complicated people.

“If you look at this as just a film, Marty is an incredible protagonist. He’s like the perfect protagonist, actually, in many ways,” Miller said.

Her personal connection runs deeper than craft. Miller is the daughter of Arthur Miller. described in the piece as arguably the most famous American playwright of all time. She directed “Arthur Miller: Writer. ” a documentary about her father. and she has published five books while building a career of award-winning collaborations.

Still, when Miller talked about what she related to in “Mr. Scorsese” where his daughters factor in, she didn’t focus only on being a daughter of an artist. She said the part that landed for her was the “layered family” aspect.

“I do think I also came from a layered family, where my older siblings came from other times, and they had a different father. It’s very similar,” Miller said. “You win in some ways, but then you lose the father, too. I was the last batch of family, so I understood that very well, that dynamic.”

That layered understanding also matched how she described Scorsese’s battles over creative control. She said she could relate to his defense of his own work and his willingness to accept—or reject—feedback. referencing his dispute with Harvey Weinstein over cuts and changes on “Gangs of New York.” She also said there have been times in her own career when she felt pressed to conform to someone else’s “probably wrong opinion.”.

“I’ve had to have long conversations where I pretended that something was wrong with the line. and I couldn’t understand the notes. so many things where you have to just have to find a way forward where you’re respectful to people. ” Miller said. “But at the same time, you protect the thing that you’ve given everything to create.”.

Miller added that the work doesn’t get easier as relationships and power shift. “It’s not getting any easier, either. I think I’m less tender-hearted than I was,” she said, adding, “Maybe not tenderhearted, but I have a little bit thicker skin.”

She also said she understands the idea of failure or perceived failure. In Scorsese’s case, Miller described encounters with it as relatively sparse across a career filled with cosmic scale. In her own work. she said. she’s extracted brilliant performances from actors who keep wanting to work with her while earning recognition from critics and intelligent audiences.

“I do think it helped that I was a child of artists, who some things worked for and many things didn’t. You wouldn’t be human anymore, and you wouldn’t be a very good artist anymore if you didn’t care at all what or how things work or don’t work,” Miller said.

She pointed to her first film, “Angela,” saying that about 12 people probably went to see it in cinemas. She described it as minimally distributed, but said it still found its life over time—something she doesn’t view as predictable.

“It amazes me that here we are 30 years later. and the film has a life. and you realize that you can’t predict it. maybe that your successes are not successes later. and it may be that things that don’t work as well now work better later. ” Miller said. “You can’t control that stuff, and you can’t blame other people. You just have to say. I’m giving you my truth now. and if it works now. then that’s great. and maybe it’ll work better later. that’s great too.”.

That philosophy of letting art live beyond its release moment shaped her approach now. Miller said she believes people want instant enjoyment, but she tries to stay steady anyway.

“Everybody wants people to enjoy their work in the moment, but I think I try to, you know, be a bit zen about it now, I guess is the word. I try,” she said.

“Mr. Scorsese” is now streaming on Apple TV.

Rebecca Miller Mr. Scorsese Martin Scorsese Apple TV IndieWire Honors Spring 2026 Magnify Award Gangs of New York Personal Velocity Daniel Day-Lewis voiceover Taxi Driver Goodfellas The Wolf of Wall Street