Kirsten Dunst talks Landry, 'The Beguiled' and heading back to TV

BEVERLY HILLS — Kirsten Dunst does decently well in seclusion.

Mid-deep dive into The Beguiled, the Thomas Cullinan tale of how a cloistered boarding school of Confederate women took in a wounded Union soldier, talk turns to how isolated women became on plantations as the Civil War raged around them.

"I love being at home," Dunst, 35, riffs with a chuckle. "I would have done great back then."

Today's setting is a far cry from the battle-worn South of the 1860s. Dunst sips iced tea inside a breezy poolside cabana; she's in solid shape despite attending a wedding the night before. “I was good,” she says with a smile.

The Beguiled (in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles Friday, nationwide June 30) marks Dunst’s fourth film with Coppola, almost 20 years after two shot 1999’s The Virgin Suicides. Back then, Coppola was newly engaged and Dunst was 16.

In a role that helped transition her from a child star to an adult actress in a more sexualized setting, "she really took care of me," says Dunst.

Now they're like sisters. “I’ve seen her grow up,” says Coppola, 46. “I really feel like we trust each other."

Coppola flips the script on the original Beguiled starring Clint Eastwood, a 1971 version told from the soldier’s perspective. Coppola turned the camera around to focus on the corseted women inside the columned manor, casting Nicole Kidman as the headmistress, Elle Fanning as a coquettish student and Dunst as a prudish schoolmarm.

The Beguiled arrives after a successful debut at Cannes Film Festival, where Coppola won best director — only the second woman to take the prize, and 56 years later.

“I wasn’t raised to have that mentality that a woman couldn’t do that job,” says Dunst, name-checking films she’s made with women behind the camera, including Little Women (Gillian Armstrong) and Bachelorette (Leslye Headland). "But I never thought, like, 'Oh, this is a female director.' I just think, ‘This seems right.’ "

The conversation occasionally veers into the personal. No, Dunst doesn’t have "baby fever," as so many headlines about her on Google exclaim. (In a recent interview, Dunst joked it was time to “have babies and chill.”)

“I said it so casually!” the actress says. “I realize I have a very cavalier way of speaking. (People) really like to put us in those boxes, though.”

In person, the Dunst is easy and forthcoming, the kind of gal who loves Rihanna, has worn (and donated) her share of awkward bridesmaid dresses and dons loungewear at home, just like the rest of us. "That’s all I wear."

Off-screen, she’s engaged to her Fargo co-star Jesse Plemons, a fan favorite from TV's cult series Friday Night Lights. "I'm marrying Landry!" she laughs.

The couple soon may be doing the long-distance thing. "Final details" are almost in place for her to star in the upcoming AMC series On Becoming a God in Central Florida, a dark comedy about a Florida water park employee who schemes her way to the top of a pyramid scheme.

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The prestige project has The Lobster's Yorgos Lanthimos set to direct. Often in movies, "they want you to play, you know, like the wife, the supportive girlfriend," she says. "I like doing comedy, too."

If she relocates to Florida, they'll deal, she says. "You work consistently for three months, you visit each other if you can. You make it work. We also get big chunks of time when neither of us are working, so we lucked out in that way, too."