June Squibb wins Best Actress award at age 95 for Thelma

Thelma is this week’s Sunday night movie on M-Net (DStv Channel 1010), premiering at 8:05PM on 21 September 2025 before streaming on Showmax from Monday, 22 September.

In the action comedy, Oscar nominee June Squibb plays a feisty 93-year-old grandmother who gets conned by a phone scammer. Accompanied by an ageing friend (Shaft trailblazer Richard Roundtree in his final performance) and his motorised scooter, she sets out on a treacherous quest across Los Angeles to reclaim what was taken from her. 

Richard Roundtree as Ben and June Squibb as Thelma

With a 98% rating, Thelma was Rotten Tomatoes’ 5th best-reviewed Comedy Movie of 2024. The Australian calls it “Mission: Impossible on mobility scooters, with a soundtrack to match… Full of humour, and not a little sadness." 

Thelma earned its 95-year-old star the Best Actress in an Action Movie award at the 2025 Critics Choice Super Awards, among other accolades. This was the first leading film role of her 70-year career, which includes a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Nebraska.

Writer Josh Margolin, who makes his feature film directorial debut with Thelma, was inspired by a real-life experience.

“My grandma refuses to die,” he says in Thelma’s production notes. “She just turned 103 and has survived the Great Depression, WWII, the death of her husband, a double mastectomy, colon cancer, a valve replacement and an ongoing but allegedly benign brain tumour. So, when she got duped by phone scammers a few years ago (and nearly sent them thousands of dollars for my “bail”), it pierced my long-standing belief that she was somehow infallible. A belief that brought me some kind of undue comfort throughout my own anxious existence.”

“The inevitability of losing her has become increasingly real to me, and so has her dogged persistence to hold on to her sense of self, as her body and mind stubbornly slow,” he adds. “I wrote Thelma from this place of reckoning. I wanted to explore her fight for what’s left of her autonomy just as I was beginning to consider mine. She has always been larger-than-life to me, and I felt compelled to dramatise her story with the trappings of a genre that captures her powerful spirit and celebrates her grit and tenacity – action.”

Squibb portrays the unlikely action hero with grit and determination, demonstrating that Thelma is more than capable of taking care of business – despite what her daughter Gail, son-in-law Alan, or grandson Danny might believe.

2025 Emmy nominee Parker Posey (Victoria Ratliff in The White Lotus S3) plays Gail, with Clark Gregg (aka Marvel's Agent Phil Coulson) as Alan and Fred Hechinger (Quinn in The White Lotus S1) as Danny. The stacked cast also includes Golden Globe nominee Malcolm McDowell and multiple-Emmy nominee Nicole Byer. 

June Squibb as Thelma

Margolin describes Thelma as “a twist on the classic ‘one last job’ flick.”

“As far as I’m concerned, watching my grandma get onto a high mattress is as thrilling and terrifying as Tom Cruise driving a motorcycle off a cliff. Just in a very different way,” he says. “The story is an epic journey on a granular scale because, for her, the little things present great dangers. I want the audience to feel these challenges viscerally, never making light of the strength it takes for her to move through the world. The film shrinks down the tropes of the action genre to a very human scale and uses them to explore ageing, fragility, and anxiety.”

June Squibb as Thelma

He is full of praise for his star. “I couldn’t imagine anyone doing this but June, who I feel so lucky to have gotten to work with,” he says. “At 93 years old, she left it all on the field, bringing equal parts vulnerability and resilience (as well as doing the majority of her own stunts). Thelma centres and celebrates her as well as those who would see themselves reflected in a type of action hero we rarely see.”

Thelma has won 11 awards so far and was nominated for Best Comedy at the 2025 Critics Choice Awards.

Next up, Squibb will star in Scarlett Johansson’s upcoming directorial debut, Eleanor The Great.