by Watch: The cast of Talking Women share their experiences on the austere shoot of the film.
Claire Foy, who stars in the Oscar-nominated film Women Talking (in select UK cinemas from Friday), spoke about the everyday things she and the rest of the cast had to give up when the film was being made.
Set in a remote and isolated Mennonite colony in Bolivia, the film explores the aftermath of a series of horrific crimes in which Amish women have been systematically abused by men in their community.
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Director Sarah Polley wanted to reflect the austerity of the place where the story takes place, so the actors did not wear makeup. Even natural looking makeup was not allowed. That was not all. As Foy revealed, “shaving our legs, plucking our eyebrows” was out of the question.
But the actress, best known for her Emmy-winning performance as Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix’s The Crown, saw it as part of the job.
“That’s acting, isn’t it? You have to imagine that they don’t have electricity, that they never learned to read and write. There is an intellectual leap that you have to take”.
She also admitted that it would have been a deal breaker if she had been asked to give up anything food related: “It’s the only thing that gets me through the day.”
Co-star Jessie Buckley felt the same way, particularly if she had been asked not to drink coffee.
“Especially in the morning. I wouldn’t get up at 3 o’clock without it!” And Ben Whishaw admitted that he would have “been upset” if a glass of wine had been discarded at the end of the day.
However, he added: “I think we all understood what this movie was about and understood what it was going to require of us.”
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The Oscar-nominated film arrives in the UK on Friday and is based on the book of the same name by Miriam Toews, inspired by true events in Bolivia. Between 2005 and 2009, women from the Mennonite religious community were drugged and raped at night by nine men from the neighborhood.
Watch a trailer for Women Talking
Both the book and the movie imagine events after the men are found guilty of their crimes. The survivors meet to decide their response to the verdict. They are faced with three choices: do nothing, forgive the men, or leave their homes forever.
Foy recalled how filming most of the scenes on a big sound stage helped create a sense of community on screen. “They took us away from everything most of the time, it was also Covid. So it was a very isolated and strange experience, which I think influenced her.”
And Polley explained how the cast spent a lot of time off set. “There was a big Green Room, where everyone was together, like a theater company. It was a whole world in that room. Sometimes I felt a little bad for keeping them in pretty austere circumstances most of the time, but it was really good in terms of building that community.”
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Women Talking has been nominated for two Oscars: Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sarah Polley. She was also nominated in the same category for her directorial debut, Away From Her, in 2008.
Jessie Buckley, an Oscar nominee last year for The Lost Daughter, will next be in theaters in Wicked Little Letters, which reunites her with Olivia Colman. Best known to all as the voice of Paddington Bear, Ben Whishaw’s latest film, Passages, recently premiered to great acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film’s impressive cast also includes Rooney Mara, triple Oscar winner Frances McDormand, Sheila McCarthy, August Winter and Judith Ivey.
Women Talking opens in select cinemas on February 10 and across the UK on February 17. Watch a trailer below.
