It was a big deal when it was announced that The Matrix was returning with its first big screen installment in nearly 20 years. It was also a big deal when it was announced only one of the sisters who created it was returning. When The Matrix: Resurrections drops later this year, it will bear only the name of Lana, not Lilly, Wachowski. But so far the reason why has been shrouded in mystery. No more.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Lilly addressed her absence during the Television Critics Association Summer Tour virtual panel for Work in Progress, the Showtime comedy for which she’s an executive producer.
“That’s a tough one,” Lilly she said when asked. Sure enough, she didn’t have a single answer. One of them involves having too much on her plate. “I got out of my transition and was just completely exhausted because we had made Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending, and the first season of Sense8 back-to-back-to-back. We were posting one, and prepping the other at the exact same time. So you’re talking about three 100-plus days of shooting for each project.
“And so, coming out and just being completely exhausted, my world was like, falling apart to some extent even while I was like, you know, cracking out of my egg,” she said. “So I needed this time away from this industry. I needed to reconnect with myself as an artist and I did that by going back to school and painting and stuff.”
Lilly also doesn’t seem to be so into the reboot/revival/belated sequel craze that currently dominates Hollywood, saying, “there was something about the idea of going backward and being a part of something that I had done before that was expressly unappealing. And, like, I didn’t want to have gone through my transition and gone through this massive upheaval in my life, the sense of loss from my mom and dad, to want to go back to something that I had done before, and sort of [walk] over old paths that I had walked in, felt emotionally unfulfilling, and really the opposite — like I was going to go back and live in these old shoes, in a way. And I didn’t want to do that.”
Lilly isn’t the only Matrix vet who didn’t return for Resurrections. Among others includes Morpheus himself, Laurence Fishburne. But he seems to be cool with it. Meanwhile, the world will find out what a Wachowski movie looks like when there’s only one of them.
(Via EW)
