entertainment
16
SPRING 2020 WAYNE MAGAZINE
(Top and above left) Brian Flynn, as Brody, and Haley Finnegan, as Emelia, in Westfalia.
(Above right) Behind the scenes, on the set of Westfalia.
Mechanical engineering and water
purification were topics of concern
at the dinner table, she said.
At Wayne Valley High School,
where she graduated in 2004,
Finnegan excelled on the stage in
dramatic productions such as The
Crucible and Our Town, and on the
slopes for the ski team.
“I made the decision before I have
a memory of making the decision,”
Finnegan said of her intention to
become an actress. “I think I was
born knowing, if that's possible. I
don't remember making a choice.”
She studied for a year at Montclair
State University before transferring
to a university in France and, then,
to Rutgers, where she graduated in
2009.
Finnegan's career, she admitted,
has been marked by highs, lows and
a series of close calls at auditions that
ultimately didn’t yield roles. One par-
ticular disappointment, she said, was
losing the part of Vanya Hargreeves,
a leading role on The Umbrella
Academy, a Netflix action-adventure
series. It went to Oscar-nominated
actress Ellen Page instead.
“I was sick of asking for permis-
sion,” she said, remembering the
way she felt on that last evening of
April 2018. “I just wanted to make
art. So, on a night when I was
going to quit acting again, I wrote
Westfalia.”
Finnegan said she is currently pro-
ducing a feature-length version of the
movie and that she hopes it will be
shot this summer. The short film was
screened at 24 festivals last year, pre-
miering at the Tribeca Film Festival
in Manhattan and winning Best
Fiction Short Film at the Traverse
City Film Festival in Michigan. ■
good friend, Brian Flynn, to ask for
his opinion of the story.
Flynn said he met Finnegan at an
improvisation class in October 2016,
and that she showed up on a skate-
board. “I assumed that she was an
L.A. staple, sort of like a California-
born surfer,” said Flynn, who hails
from Massachusetts. “And, then, I
get to know her, and she's this East
Coast transplant, like myself.” He
said the two hit it off. “Her sense
of comedy is so well-developed, so
ingrained in her,” he said. “She’s an
original talent. We gravitated toward
each other because there was a
shared humor between us.”
Flynn, 34, plays Finnegan’s boy-
friend in the film, which follows the
couple on a camping trip in a 1984
Volkswagen Westfalia. Their goal is
to be famous on Instagram, and they
envy the success that another couple
has had in gaining followers on the
social media platform. The film, large-
ly improvised, is funny because the
central characters, Brody and Emelia,
are so eager to be noticed on social
media that their approach seems
desperate and, at times, outrageous.
But, at the heart of the
film lie more serious motifs of peer
pressure, self-worth and the perils of
superficiality. Of the film's message,
Finnegan said, “You have everything
you need already around you to be
happy. So, just be yourself and pick
your head up out of your phone
every once in a while, and you might
actually get to experience the beauty
of things.”
Finnegan is everything the char-
acter she portrays is not. She is real,
unapologetic for her flaws and not
interested in making a fortune. “I
don't really want to be famous,”
she said, “and that could be the
way I remain — locally known,
not globally.”
Finnegan was raised in a modest
Cape Cod, the third of four children,
a block from the western shore of
Packanack Lake. Her parents, Mary
and Donald Finnegan, instilled in her
the importance of family values and
how to make light of weighty issues.