What It Was Like When the Weed Nuns Went to Hollywood – Our Unexpected Role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another

Our participation in One Battle After Another started way back in 2022, when the pandemic was still casting its strange shadow over everything. Florencia Martin reached out to set up an appointment at our farm, explaining she was bringing someone along on a location scouting mission and she might have mentioned his name, but it didn’t register with me. The only thing that registered was an appointment to see our farm as a possible film location; my calendar said “Visit – location scouts.”

When the time came, I met them at the door, greeted Florencia face to face for the first time, and met the man she was with—me assuming all along that he was a location scout. I gave them the tour, answered questions briskly, and tried to get back to work as quickly as possible. At the end of the tour, the nice man—who I still thought was a location scout—said our place wouldn’t work for what they had in mind. I didn’t take it personally.

In January of 2024, Florencia called again—this time as the film’s production designer—to ask if we wanted to help with set design for Paul’s film. That’s when I finally looked him up and that’s when I realized that Paul Thomas Anderson had been at our farm, and I didn’t even know it. I received him, without knowing who I was receiving.

Florencia explained that when Paul makes a film, he tries to make everything as real as possible and that they wanted our medicines, our pots, our stuff there on site if we were willing to help arrange that. She asked what we would charge for two weeks of all our medicine and supplies being on the set and I had no idea how to price such a thing. The only number I could think of was the one hanging over my head: our state licensing fees for the year with the CDPH. So I quoted that number and we went forward with our agreement.

After that, Florencia called again. Paul wanted to know if we wanted to be extras in the film. I had her on speaker with another Sister in the room. I shook my head “no” immediately—the way you do when you assume something will be ridiculous or disruptive. But the other Sister shook her head “yes,” vehemently, so I asked more questions and ultimately agreed.

I would soon learn that being an extra is the most agonizingly boring job on the planet. Eight of us went to set: four orthodox Sisters and four novices. We were put up in a hotel along with the crew and the orbiting universe of production people who make films happen. We still didn’t know what the story was. In fact, almost no one did. Not the extras, not the crew, not even the people standing five feet away from the camera. All we knew was that it was loosely based on Vineland, a book I could never get through, but a book that Paul apparently loved.

We also had to keep everything quiet. Very quiet. Publicly, we called it a “retreat.” We visited monasteries and posted photos like we were having a serene spiritual excursion. When people asked if we were in the film, we denied it, even when it was clear to the hotel staff that we were part of it.  They understood.

Some locations couldn’t be kept secret—not when you’ve got Sean Penn and Leonardo DiCaprio in the project. People stalk film locations. They drive out and take photos and try to capture spoilers like it’s a competitive sport. But La Purisima Mission—somehow—stayed secret. It was the only location of the five that managed to remain under wraps until the film came out.

But what really struck us wasn’t the public star power—it was the quiet force of the people behind the scenes. We had no idea, as we packed our suitcases to leave for Lompoc, that we would be getting close and personal with some huge names in the industry. We had no clue that we would be working with Sara Murphy and Adam Somner—both dedicated professionals who worked tirelessly to hold the entire machine together. Adam, sadly, passed away before the film release but I want to pause and say clearly that he was a professional in the old-fashioned sense of the word, the kind of leader who makes chaos feel calm simply by walking into it.

La Purisima is a surreal place to spend so much time. It looks and feels like it belongs to another century and another world. It’s enormous and powerful and haunted in that beautiful way history can be. It also has no Wi-Fi, a lot of dust, and bumpy floors you must navigate like rocks.

We stayed at a big hotel near the mission and one of the funniest moments happened early on: I was in my robe and nightgown one morning at 5:00 a.m., wearing a nightcap, heading down to get coffee. A man held the elevator door for me and said politely, “You must be Sister Kate. I think I’ll be handcuffing you later today.” Then he disappeared. And I stood there thinking: what in the world?

We met the legendary costume designer Colleen Atwood, which—if you don’t know her name—trust me, you know her work. She has won four Academy Awards for costume design, including for Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha, Alice in Wonderland, and Fantastic Beasts. She’s been nominated a dozen times. Her fingerprints are all over some of the most iconic costuming in modern cinema.

When it came to outfitting the Sisters, however, Colleen admitted that she was just copying our style. Of course, we loved the clothes she presented. Yes, they were like ours, but more perfect, more intentional, more cinematic—like our outfits had been filtered through an elevated alternate universe where every seam was blessed by Colleen. Vogue even did a feature on her work for One Battle After Another, highlighting her subtle approach to realism and the way wardrobe can tell a story without shouting.

Then came the waiting. Every night we got a text with call times. For the first week, we weren’t called. Not once. And that sounds relaxing until you realize you’re trapped in a hotel, trained by habit to wake early, work hard, and stay busy. Sitting around while awaiting the Film Gods does something strange to a person. It made us all a little crazy, so we had to find ways to keep busy.

We went swimming, but realized quickly that there were film people everywhere watching us like we were part of some secondary documentary titled Nuns in Captivity. We made excursions, hikes in the wilderness, visited Solvang, and museums and monasteries. We did our first real acting—acting like we weren’t bored.

When we were finally called to set, we filmed one night after waiting for the owls to bed down, followed by one afternoon, and then back to waiting for the clouds to get right so we could film again.

While on set, we had the great joy of working with Regina Hall and Chase Infiniti, both of them humble, lovely, and exactly the kind of people that make the work sweet.

The most fun for me personally was hanging out with the “real” military guys. In a Paul Thomas Anderson film like this, not everyone you see in a scene is acting. Of the 18 nuns on set, eight were the “real” weed nuns, two were local women of Chumash descent, four were from the friends-and-family category (including Paul’s daughter and nieces), and four were stunt nuns.

On the military side, there were paid actors, but there were also real military given time off to be in the film. We were told the lead military coordinator and the real military guys spent a week together with Sean Penn (sharing the same place) in order for them to act like a team that knew each other well. Those are the efforts taken by PTA to make sure it felt real. That’s his craft, I think—pulling the best performances from people and doing it in a way that feels natural.

When it finally ended, we were thrilled to go home—but we were also sad, because when you spend that much time waiting together—eating together, standing around together, being ridiculous together—you become bonded. A surprising number of film crew members still keep in touch, still talk about a reunion on our farm.

We didn’t know what the story was until we finally saw the film on the big screen. Then we saw it again. And again. And again. Every time we saw more—a new background moment, a new layer, a different joke landing differently. Like Pulp Fiction, it’s one of those films you don’t get in one pass. It’s built to be rewatched.

We were surprised by how funny it was, and we are not surprised at all that it’s winning awards. When you’re on a set like that, you don’t have to be a film critic to know you’re standing inside something special. You can feel it in the seriousness, the patience, the precision. It looked like the work of a master even while it was still being made. And somehow, by grace, timing, and the strange twists of fate that keep life interesting, we got to be part of it.