Camila Morrone Made Her Toronto Debut At TIFF 2023 & Shouted Out An Iconic Canadian Brand

Model and actress Camila Morrone said she was thrilled to make her first visit to Toronto on Thursday, while sharing a very Canadian craving on the red carpet of her new film Gonzo Girl at TIFF 2023.

Morrone, who also starred in Prime Video’s Daisy Jones & The Six, was asked for her first impressions of Toronto, and she made it clear that she did her homework beforehand.

“I love it!” she said of the city. “I’ve already had some coffee but I’m looking for a Tim Hortons.”

Morrone plays the lead in Gonzo Girl opposite Willem Dafoe, in a fictionalized twist on iconic writer Hunter S. Thompson’s final days. The film, which is based on a book, sees Morrone playing an assistant to a drug-fuelled, gun-loving writer whom she must cajole into doing his work, even though he’s basically gone to seed.

Thompson was the journalist who famously inserted himself into his stories in a style that became known as "Gonzo journalism." He's perhaps most well-known for writing Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, which later became a film in which he was played by his friend, Johnny Depp.

Gonzo Girl is based on a the semi-autobiographical book by Cheryl Della Pietra, and follows a Thompson-like writer named Walker Reade at the end of his life.

"This is a character that is inspired by Hunter Thompson. It's not a caricature," Dafoe told Narcity on the red carpet. "We knew we didn't want to do an imitation," he added. "This is something else."

"It's inspired by (...) that wild kind of person and artist as they get older," said first-time director Patricia Arquette, who also appears in the film. "You're trapped by your own success. you enjoy the fruits of it but you want to break out as an artist."

She added that it's a "coming of age" story for Morrone's character, and that lines up well with where the actress is at in her own life. She won plenty of fans as Camila Dunne in Daisy Jones & The Six on Prime Video, and this leading role in a feature film, with another (Marmalade) on the way next year.

In fact, Gonzo Girl is a bit of a full-circle moment for Morrone. The actress actually posted a photo of her big pandemic reads on Instagram back in 2021, and she's now appeared in adaptations of two of them: Daisy Jones & The Six and Gonzo Girl.

Will she bring any more of her favourite books to the screen in the years ahead? We'll have to wait and see!

Gonzo Girl made its TIFF 2023 premiere on the opening night of the festival at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, just down the road from the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Cast members were allowed to walk the red carpet as part of an interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA, the Hollywood actors' union that is currently on strike.

The festival runs until September 17.