Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley sat down with GH for a chat
It’s 10.30am on a Tuesday and I’m having a mimosa with Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. It was their idea, I should add. After three days of interviews to promote their new film, Wicked Little Letters, the pair decided that a tipple was in order to liven things up – and liven things up it certainly has.
‘Drink!’ insists Olivia each time I ask the pair a question. 'You're pretending to drink it!' she laughs when my sips don't quite cut it. It’s almost as much fun as the film itself. Based on a true story, the drama takes place in a 1920s English seaside town where residents begin to receive wicked letters full of unintentionally hilarious profanities. Deeply conservative spinster Edith (played by Olivia) suspects her former friend, rowdy Irish migrant Rose (played by Jessie) – but is Rose really the culprit?
It's even funnier than you'd expect - think epic swear-offs, oh-so-furious misogynistic men and of course, the comedy genius of its two leading ladies. Here, the pair share their mimosa-fuelled reflections on the film…
Congratulations on such a brilliant film! What made you want to be part of it?
Olivia: I read Jonny Sweet’s brilliant script and I thought it would be fun to go back to doing a little bit of comedy as that's what I started my career doing. And just the idea of Jessie doing it was too much fun. We spend our time together for free anyway!
Was it a challenge to play women at war with each other?
O: It was actually just really good fun to swear at each other all day!
Jessie: I actually think that while Rose and Edith are rivals, there’s a love there and there’s a friendship there. And I think by the end of the film, you see that there’s a lot more that they have in common than you might have realised.
O: And if Rose had appeared in Edith’s life 10 years earlier, we could have had the most fun!
J: I know, but I think Rose needed you in her life, too, because you were going to teach her how to be less chaotic - and how to cook. I think you’d teach her to make a good pie.
O: Well, that’s nice.
J: And then I’d teach you how to smoke and drink whiskey…while you were cooking the pie!
There’s a lot of swearing in the film, how did you find that?
O: It was liberating and quite cathartic - we’re both big swearers! I've never understood it when people get really upset about swearing, because it’s not hurting anyone. Unless you swear at someone really angrily, of course - that’s quite unpleasant. Jessie and I were staying in the same hotel when we were filming and we’d have a good old swearing match, then go, ‘What shall we have for dinner tonight? Shall we have the deep-fried mushrooms and a glass or rosé?’
J: It was brilliant!
It's very funny to watch - were there moments when you struggled to hold it together during filming?
J: Oh yes! There’s a scene in the square where Rose and Edith have this kind of war of words, both just shouting profanities at each other, and that was the worst one. Our whole crew and our director started laughing, and then it was game over. But it’s such a good feeling.
O: It really is. Do you remember that feeling when you were little and you were at school or at church and you weren’t allowed to giggle? It’s that and it’s joyous.
Is it true that you still have one of the letters from the film, Olivia?
O: I do – I’ve got in my downstairs loo, but no one has read it apart from my mum. She sat there and went, ‘Who’s written you that letter?’ I said, ‘It’s addressed to Edith, Mum!’ and she went, ‘Well why have you got Edith’s letter?’
One of the big themes in the film is female friendship, what have you both learnt about the importance of female friendship over the years?
O: You hear of some women who don’t particularly get on with other women, and I’ve never really understood that. I really love women; they’re the people who make me laugh the most, the people I can trust the most – well, apart from my husband who is my best friend that I fancy, which is quite nice. But I know that I could call any of my female friends and go, ‘I need you’, and that’s so precious.
J: I’ve got loads of female friends across generations, and I couldn’t live without them. We’ve all experienced different life moments together, where we encourage each other to grow and do that next chapter. And then sometimes, you have a little bit of a crunchy time and you come through that - and you’re better friends for it. Being able to talk about things with each other is really important.
O: That’s so true.
It’s also a film about female emancipation, has it felt like an empowering film to be a part of it?
J: Absolutely. It was so freeing to get to play somebody who was just this lifeforce - even though the rest of the world was condemning her because she was a single mother. And both Rose and Edith break free from the kind of shackles of what is a projected identity of who we are meant to be as women - the idea of us all being ‘ladies’ and having tea and talking about what we’re going to cook for our husbands. That's rubbish - I don’t know anyone like that my life now! It’s a reminder of how much we’ve grown in society, but I don’t think that conversation around female equality is ever fully finished.
Can we expect to see the pair of you sharing the screen again in the future?
J: Yes!
O: We have a plan that we’re going to work together every year from now on.
J: We’re going to be pirates next…that’s the dream!
Wicked Little Letters is released in UK and Irish cinemas on 23 February.
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