Kristin Scott Thomas received the Golden Nymph Award at the opening ceremony of the 65th Monte-Carlo Television Festival from Prince Albert II of Monaco on Friday evening, June 12, 2026, and discussed her work on Apple TV+'s Slow Horses and the script she has now completed for her second feature as writer-director in a press conference the following morning. Deadline published the interview on Saturday, June 13 at 4:08 a.m. ET, with the actress moving fluidly between English and French through the press session, and a longer follow-up sit-down on the festival's Saturday programming track.
Scott Thomas told Deadline that her Slow Horses role, the formidable First Desk character Diana Taverner, surprised even her when she watched the cut back:
What has astonished me is that sometimes in my life people have accused me of being frightening, and I go, 'What are you talking about?' And then I saw Slow Horses and oh my god, I just saw the way this woman looks at people.
On the lift-and-corridor scenes that have become a recurring beat in the show's MI5 setting, she said: "During Slow Horses, there were times, which were perhaps a little bit like 'Oh, I've got to get into another lift.' That's the nature of long form TV." The press conference confirmed her second feature as writer-director is a novel adaptation, with the script finished and production targeted for 2027.
The Crystal-vs-Golden Nymph distinction is worth pausing on, because the festival's reporting cluster has been mixed all weekend. The Golden Nymph is the festival's competition trophy; the Crystal Nymph is its honorary lifetime-contribution award. Scott Thomas received the Golden Nymph version, the Variety wire confirmed the same designation, and the conflation across some early reports has now settled toward the correct award name.
The career-arc framing is the part of the press conference that will travel furthest. Scott Thomas is sixty-five, and the second half of her on-screen career has been remarkably specific in its tonal choices. She returned to English-language prestige drama through Fleabag and The English Patient revivals, anchored the Slow Horses ensemble alongside Gary Oldman across three seasons, and used the 2024 release of her directorial debut, North Star, to formally reposition herself as a filmmaker rather than only a leading actress. Saturday's confirmation of a second directorial project lands inside that arc as a hard commitment to the new register.
The novel adaptation she has now adapted is not yet publicly named, but Scott Thomas told Deadline that the script is finished and that she is "adapting a book versus her directorial debut," a contrast that places her second film in a different production-financing bracket than North Star. North Star was a self-financed European indie cut at the boutique-festival circuit; an adaptation of a published novel typically opens the door to a studio-affiliated specialty label and a wider theatrical footprint.
Her European-cinema framing is the connective tissue. Scott Thomas has lived primarily in France since the 1990s, and her career has consistently moved between French and English productions in a way that few Anglophone leads of her generation have sustained. The festival's choice to honor her with the Golden Nymph at this year's edition lands in a year when the institution has been visibly reasserting itself against the streaming-platform programming that has dominated recent festival circuits, and Scott Thomas reads as the festival's exact ideal of the cross-Channel art-house presence.
What sits ahead through the rest of the festival week is the question of which TV-side projects Scott Thomas commits to next. Slow Horses season four wrapped principal photography earlier in 2026 with a fall release target on Apple TV+, and season five is in the writers' room. Whether she signs on for season six, or whether her writer-director schedule pulls her off the show after season five, is the practical question that production sources will be reading the festival press cycle for. The Saturday conversations gave no concrete signal in either direction.
