CANNES – If you’ve already read Graham Swift’s novel “Mothering Sunday,” you’re well aware of the sensual and provocative nature of many of the scenes. The description of young English housemaid Jane Fairchild and the relatively young lord of the manor Paul Sheringham’s coupling leaves little to the imagination. Still, for anyone watching director Eva Husson’s cinematic adaptation, just how naked stars Odessa Young and Josh O’Connor are is quite unexpected for a British period piece.
The trio sat down with The Playlist to discuss their new film which debuted at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival just a few days ago (Young actually joined via zoom on an iPhone as she’s working on a new project in the U.S.). Both actors insist they had no concerns about showcasing themselves for their roles. In fact, Young thought it was pretty obvious it would be a requirement from when she first read the script.
“I knew that the nudity was going to have a huge part in the film because there’s a really decent chunk of it where she’s just explicitly walking around the house naked,” Young says. “And I was just imagining how one would shoot that without showing anything. And it was clearly not going to be an option. And ultimately, what I saw of it in the movie was kind of like exactly as I imagined it. I had many conversations with Eva about it and about how she was going to shoot it and what would be shown. And there’s such a, I think, grace with which she treats the intimate scenes and then such a powerful kind of [symbolism] that those house nude scenes display.”
O’Connor, who will likely earn his first Emmy nomination for “The Crown” tomorrow, also had no trepidation about it. In his view, it was essential to telling his character’s story.
It’s so part of the film and it’s so part of like when you talk about the little hints and if you do get to see it again, the little hints of like, guides to where Paul is at, and where Jane is at,” O’Connor says. “And also later where Donald [Sope Disriu] is at and how he responds to nudity, and when he’s getting dressed. It tells so much of the visual story that I don’t think you could make the film without it.”
During a lively conversation, O’Connor, Young, and Husson teased each other while bluntly discussing the film, their co-stars Colin Firth and Olivia Colman, and more.
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The Playlist: Josh, before we start, the Emmy nominations are on Tuesday. How are you…wait, did you even know this?
Josh O’Connor: I actually didn’t know that.
The Playlist: Oh, wow. So maybe this will be a good question then. Are you looking forward to it? I guess you’re not even thinking about it?
Josh O’Connor: I honestly, I haven’t given a single… I honestly haven’t thought about it once.
Odessa Young: He’s lying. He’s lying.
Josh O’Connor: Yeah, yeah. I’ve been counting down the days.
Odessa Young: Before you got here.
Josh O’Connor: No, I haven’t thought about it once, but obviously awards are great. Super cool. And so now that I know I will set an alarm.
The Playlist: Let’s talk about this movie. The first question is for Eva, what made you want to bring Graham Swift’s novel to the screen?
Eva Husson: I think I connected very personally to the material. I’m a real nerd in a way. I have a very academic, literary background. I studied English literature, Spanish literature. And to be able to combine my love for literature with my love of filmmaking and my personal obsessions in life, sexting one of them. I know. It just felt like a dream thing. And then there’s also this… God, it sounds so dirty. But like when you know me, it’s so funny. It’s not that dirty. Like how do you manage to stay alive? How do you manage to survive life? Life is f**king brutal for everybody, no matter what class you’re from, no matter how much money you have. Like you can be miserable sailing through life, or not. From the outside, it can look like you are very lucky. And yet just thinking about Heath Ledger, for example, who… Like you can have all the fame you want and all the exposure and yet have a hard time surviving.
Josh O’Connor: Yeah.
Eva Husson: And it covers the big questions, like love, the meaning of life, the survival of life, sex, all the things, and there was this script.
The Playlist: It’s interesting that you talk about the survival aspect because Josh’s character obviously is going through something on the inside that he’s hiding from everyone around him. Josh, did you want to convey that at all, that there was pain beneath the surface? Or did you want to mask it like he was masking it to everyone else around him?
Josh O’Connor: I think people get really good at masking stuff. I guess I find it tricky. Sort of representations of people suffering from depression or people suffering on screen, it’s often like how can we signpost that they’re suffering? When in reality, my own personal experience is that people get really good [at hiding it] because they live with it. You live with it.
Odessa Young: That’s true.
Josh O’Connor: And what the key thing for us was that like, yeah… We are people… People who are hyper-sensitive, we’re very good at covering it. No one knows the sort of, like, the sadness behind someone’s eyes.
Odessa Young: Yes, that’s true.
Josh O’Connor: And so we were really conscious that we didn’t want to like tell Paul’s story too early on. But there are obviously glimpses when he’s looking out the window and stuff and telling his big, old story.
The Playlist: Speaking of masking, Odessa, your character has an incredible scene where she has to hide her horror at discovering her lover has died. It’s a very powerful moment. I know it’s sounds cliche, but can you talk about how you get to that sort of emotion as an actor?
Odessa Young: Actually, it’s different. I think it’s different every time.
Eva Husson: Hating the director.
Odessa Young: Hating the director because she put me through hell. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I think what really helped shot the scene outside when she finds out, we shot that before we shot that kitchen scene. I think that’s what I found so kind of emotionally charging about this whole project is that inability to express the grief. The brokenness that you are feeling in a moment. And I think that that’s kind of this through-line that that is true for every character. And especially in that scene, that was the thing. It’s easy to feel that need to get something off your chest, the emotional potency of a secret. And that kind of charges those moments when you have to get to a place like that.
The Playlist: I’m going to apologize in advance, but so much of this film finds both of you naked. When did you sort of realize, “Oh, I’m spending days in this film sort of undressed”?
Odessa Young: I think it was pretty obvious just from the script, at least for me. I knew that the nudity was going to have a huge part in the film because there’s a really decent chunk of it where she’s just explicitly walking around the house naked. And I was just imagining how one would shoot that without showing anything. And it was clearly not going to be an option. And ultimately, what I saw of it in the movie was kind of like exactly as I imagined it. I had many conversations with Eva about it and about how she was going to shoot it and what would be shown. And there’s such a, I think, grace with which she treats the intimate scenes and then such a powerful kind of [symbolism] that those house nude scenes display.
The Playlist: Well, what about you Josh? Was there any trepidation on your part?
Josh O’Connor: No, not at all, actually. I think I felt like from the novel and from the script [it was there]. It’s so part of the film and it’s so part of like when you talk about the little hints and, if you do get to see it again, the little hints of like, guides to where Paul is at, and where Jane is at. And also later where Donald is at and how he responds to nudity, and when he’s getting dressed. It tells so much of the visual story that I don’t think you could make the film without it. And so there was never any question, really.
The Playlist: The other thing I appreciated about the film is how it uncovers history for the viewer. I feel like over the past year, we’ve learned things about history that weren’t really taught in schools. Like the pandemic that happened in 1918. And then here, I don’t remember a film I’ve seen where you have such pain for such parents who’ve lost basically everything due to WWI. Eva, was that a surprise to you reading the book, and can you talk about working with Collin and Olivia and the actors portraying the parents in terms of like how important that was?
Eva Husson: Those are two very different questions. [Laughs.]
The Playlist: Pick one. Pick one!
Eva Husson: I was aware of the 1918 pandemic. But I agree with you, it’s not something that was taught in school. And during the [recent] pandemic, I was stuck in a place where there were books from like the seventies and the eighties. And one of them was the history of the century. And I went to 1918, 150 pages between 1918 and 1925, not one occurrence of the word pandemic. So, I think the collective trauma had been such that it got erased from history and historiography. And that was fascinating obviously to explore that time when a lot of people had died from the war but also from the pandemic. 100 million people is a lot of f**king people. And I just think it’s so bizarre that we went through a collective trauma at the same time that we were making that movie about a collective trauma. And I also think that’s what resonates with people, because it gives us the necessary distance, fiction, to process our current trauma. And it’s pure Aristotle. Its facets and it’s beautiful to be able to live that. I do think we need to address that. I do think that we need to acknowledge how frightening it is and has been, and how much of a trauma we all experienced because of it. And I think the movie helps to bring that to the surface. And it was incredibly fun to work with Colin Firth. That’s a seamless transition.
Odessa Young: Seamless.
Eva Husson: It’s seamless. I have to say, he blew my mind in the sense that I never had the luck to work with an actor with such [a legacy] in terms of like, you have a long career when I met him. And it’s frightening. I’m like, ‘Am I going to be decent?’ I was just terrorized of f**king it up and like having a fight with him or anything.
The Playlist: I can’t imagine Colin Firth having a fight with anyone.
Josh O’Connor: No.
Eva Husson: Never.
Odessa Young: They punched each other. [Laughs.]
Eva Husson: But the thing is, I didn’t know him like on a personal level. You just never know. It’s not because an actor shows one face on the screen that they’re going to be like that in real life.
Odessa Young: For sure.
Eva Husson: To start with, we had so much in common because he comes from an intellectual background. And like this teacher background really, I think, has bonded us. And there was just something about being very at ease with the world of books and having that in a familiar culture to all of us, that made us feel comfortable with one another. And I was very, very grateful for that. And he’s very kind and generous and a Stradivarius to work with. Like these two and Olivia, it’s the same thing. So when as a director, you get lucky enough to work with people like that, you just say thank you every time you get up, you wake up. And he’s also very interesting in the sense that I’m convinced he’s aware of his clout and his power, and he gently nudged every time he could things to help me out, whether on set or with producers or even like interviews and stuff like that. I see that. It’s obvious. And I think it takes an incredible person to get to that level and do that work the way he does it.
The Playlist: Since I have time for one last question for Odessa and Josh. What surprised you the most about the finished film? In front of your director, no less, which I’m sure isn’t uncomfortable to say. [Laughs.]
Josh O’Connor: This is, like, really hard to say because you can’t say it how you’re supposed to say it, so. What I was going to say was [regarding] Odessa’s performance. But to say that I was surprised implies that I wasn’t expecting what it was…
Odessa Young: Oh yeah, this is a back-handed compliment. [Laughs.]
Josh O’Connor: But I was obviously there to experience how brilliant Odessa is. Obviously, I’m like in a part of a chunk of that film, but there’s so much that when Paul’s gone. I guess seeing Jane’s transformation, the way Odessa transformed into Jane as an older woman. And then seeing that journey and all the pain of her relationship with Donald. And, Sope, I’m a huge fan of. But I think genuinely Odessa’s performance. But again, not surprised because I was expecting it. It’s just that it was a surprise because it was like a pleasurable surprise to see the rest of it. It was just like, transformational.
The Playlist: What about you, Odessa?
Odessa Young: It had to be that answer.
Josh O’Connor: Josh’s performance. No, I’m joking…[Laughs.]
Odessa Young: Josh’s performance. I thought he was going to be bad. [Laughs.] Oh gosh, that’s such a hard question. Nothing, actually, nothing stood out to me as a surprise because it felt very seamless. It felt very natural. The tone of it felt pinpoint accurate and Eva is a very deliberate director. She’s not a kind of throw it all up in the air and see what sticks. She has an idea of what she wants down to the second. I think my greatest takeaway from it is that it is kind of exactly the beautiful movie that I saw and more. And it’s rare for me to actually like a movie that I am in, that I’m watching, without being just horrified with my image of myself. But maybe that was the surprise. The surprise was that I wasn’t horrified by watching myself on screen.
“Mothering Sunday” will be released by Sony Pictures Classics later this year.