The Sapphires
The Sapphires was one of the movies that lit up the big screen when it was screened at the BFI London Film Festival last month - not to mention it has been warmly received wherever it has played.
Jessica Mauboy, Miranda Tapsel, Deborah Mailman, Shari Sebens, Chris O'Dowd and director Wayne Blair were at the LFF to promote the movie and we caught up with them.
- Just how aware were you of the story of The Sapphires before you started working on this movie?
Jessica Mauboy: I wasn’t really aware of it but I had heard the story back in my home town. I received the script and met Wayne Blair and that was when the journey began.
Miranda Tapsel: I had heard about the stage production that was first done back in 2005.
Chris O’Dowd: Well I didn’t know a sausage and I had barely heard of Australia. But then I looked into it a little bit and read about the stage play that Wayne and Deborah were in and before going on to find out more about the women themselves.
Deborah Mailman: I was in the stage show in 2005 with Wayne and that was when I first heard about the story. Writer Tony Briggs is a very old and dear friend and so I have heard about his mum’s story over the years.
Shari Sebens: I actually saw the stage show with Deb in it and I was so star struck and I turned into a mad Beatles fan going ‘I love you’. So it was a very special experience.
So it was so wonderful to get the experience to audition for the film and I was like ‘I get to be a Sapphire’.
Wayne Blair: It was the stage show back in 2004/5. Until then it was just Tony’s immediate family and the story had been unearthed after about thirty five years.
At that time I was just an actor paying the bills in Sydney and working with Deb and when the season sold out in Sydney and Melbourne it got offers from producers and that was when I saw it’s potential.
- It is based on a true story so can you tell me what happened to the girls afterwards - did they go on to have a career afterward as it looked like they didn’t?
Jessica Mauboy: They did have a career but it wasn’t in music as they came back home and for the last forty years they have been very active within health and education.
Three of the sisters run a medical centre and have been instrumental in bettering health and education in their community.
But I guess they didn’t come back t singing they came back and decided to do something different, which was change the situation in the their communities.
- Did you meet them while you were working on the movie?
Deborah Mailman: We met them prior to filming when we were in rehearsals. They came on set a couple of times.
One day in particular one of the aunties come in and worked with us on the indigenous language component of the film.
- Chris can you talk about the development of your character for the movie?
Chris O’Dowd: He is an accumulation of a few different people - I know that there was an Irish uncle as well that the character was also drawn from. But he was never based on anyone specific.
- Chris I was wondering what it was about this script that really appealed to you when you read it?
Chris O’Dowd: Well there were quite a few factors actually. I loved the world and I felt like I didn’t know anything about it.
We are very privileged in the acting world as we get to learn about things through our work. And so I wanted to educate myself in that a little bit.
I love the music so much and I was listening to it a lot coincidentally at the time. And for me it felt like something that was very different. And so it was a combination of all of those really.
- Some people will be shocked by the level of racism that these women faced at the time so how familiar were you with that?
Deborah Mailman: Indigenous Australians are very much aware of how… in a lot of ways we are still as racist as the 1960’s and the 1800’s even but definitely moving forward, and that is what this movie is doing.
It is a piece that has started conversations that Australians aren’t necessarily keen to have a lot of the time but it really brings it to the table in a celebratory way.
None of us are blind to the racism and we have all heard the stories from our mothers, aunties and grandparents and still experience it today.
- This has been the biggest film in Australia this year so how great has that been?
Miranda Tapsel: That is what has been so great as it has changed the perception of how indigenous women are portrayed in the media as well - I guess it happens with a lot of minorities around the world.
These women that were created by Tony Briggs are really three dimensional and so it was like candy for all of these indigenous girls and it was massive for us when it came along.
Deborah Mailman: There have been a lot of significant changes in the last five or ten years where there has been a lot of funding towards indigenous stories and nurturing our filmmaker through those initiatives.
Brand New Day and The Sapphires are just some of the movies that have been coming out over the last few years because there has been a significant shift and people want to embrace the stories.
- You are all very feisty in the movie so is that what the ladies were really like?
Jessica Mauboy: I remember when we had our first meet and great with the aunties, in our community we call our elders uncles or aunties, and we were all quiet and almost intimidated by them.
But just hearing them and observing them and getting the characters out of them was just….
Shari Sebens: The family dynamic that is on screen is very much there in real life and it was something that Tony really drew on in the script.
- So did have to go to family boot camp?
Miranda Tapsel: Me Shari and Jess all come from Darwin, which is right near Indonesia, so we would talk about the people that we know and the food that we love.
So we were able to connect through that. Deb is just so naturally lovely and down to earth and so we just naturally bonded.
And because we all loved the story so much we knew that we had to do it a good service and so we knew that that was important.
- Chris how did you bond? How did you fit into this sisterhood?
Chris O’Dowd: I thought they had known each other for years because there was so much bickering, even in the very early days.
I grew up in a house full of women and so I felt very comfortable in that sort of surrounding knowing that you could be loved and humiliated within a heartbeat - that is what it is like hanging out with these girls.
- Wayne can you talk about where you found the cast?
Wayne Blair: Well it was a process of a couple of years and we went everywhere in Australia and saw about a hundred to a hundred and twenty ladies who could all sing, act and dance.
It was a process of nailing it down to these four. So we ended up with three Darwin girls and a Mount Isa lady - yes, that was the process.
- How difficult was it working on those dance routines because they looked terrific?
Deborah Mailman: It was hard but it was fun. We had a great choreographer on board in the form of Steven Page who is the artistic director for a dance theatre back at home.
And we were pretty much locked away in a rehearsal room sweating every day just going through the songs until we got to the point where we were comfortable to take that in front of the camera. It was so much fun.
- How much of the piano playing was authentic?
Chris O’Dowd: Well I cam on board just three weeks before the film started and so I didn’t really have time to learn how to play the piano. And so I learnt how to play two or three songs…
Jessica Mauboy: That is pretty good.
Chris O’Dowd: It’s ok. It was really playing piano by numbers and so I knew it sounded right but I had no idea why.
- You filmed some of the movie in Saigon so I wondered how easy that was? And how easy was it to get a U.S. Army vehicle on the streets?
Wayne Blair: We were there for a few weeks but we did do a lot of preparation. This movie is big and ambitious but we were prepared and had made a few trips over there with the cinematographer and the production designer.
We had a great time over there and we had five or six locations over five or six weeks and it just worked beautifully to what we were after. We could work longer hours with a Vietnamese crew and so we were working fourteen or sixteen hours.
You think you are going to get it all in but it’s like you are cramming for an exam. We just worked our arses off. We had a great time.
I remember the last night we were there I slept like a baby, every other night I saw a little bit pensive. But I think these guys kept partying - I was in bed by ten.
- How did you all find working in Vietnam?
Chris O’Dowd: When we were being driven through in one f the American Army trucks I wanted to stand up and go ‘We’re back’ - but I suppressed that urge.
Jessica Mauboy: It was just really beautiful and it was just really beautiful culturally. Everyone was just really lovely.
Miranda Tapsel: It was so much fun and it was a world away from where we had been and the luxury of hotels and all that sort of stuff. It was great.
Deborah Mailman: It was the first time that I had ever been to Vietnam and I remember that scene that we did on the river bank with that mad weather coming in.
We were on a river bank and trying to get this massive scene in the can and we just had to stop and start because the weather was coming in sideways to us. But everyone was patient and we waited until the heavens closed up for us for a while and we got on with the job.
But these moments were really exciting. Am I right in saying that this is the first time that Vietnam has opened its doors?
Wayne Blair: Yes it is the first Western film for about ten or twelve years to be shot over there. It was such an experience and they welcomed us with open arms.
- You have talked about the dancing already but what about the singing - was it each to channel your inner soul diva?
Jessica Mauboy: Sings ‘oh yeah yeah’. I think it was pretty much like the dancing. Lyrically it was pretty full on and we went into every backing vocals and the leads. Again it was wonderful music to be able to do. Overall we did pretty good.
Deborah Mailman: Miranda and I had this motto WWBD - What Would Beyonce Do? We were just channelling her every single day and just went for it.
Miranda Tapsel: Yeah we would just bust out and do the hair flicks and everything - it was fun.
- I was wondering if there was a marriage between two of the characters or was that made up?
Chris O’Dowd: No, not in real life.
Wayne Blair: The original script was for an English character but when Chris came on board we though ’let’s make this guy Irish’ and we just went for it.
- Is it true that Harvey Weinstein has picked up the distribution rights in the States? And if it is true can you talk about the impact of that as it will take the whole thing to a new level?
Wayne Blair: Yes. He picked it up before Cannes this year so it has been a journey since then. He has been great.
It won the aspen Film Festival and it is opening San Diego, San Francisco and Hawaii so the Weinstein’s are running with it.
The Sapphires is released 7th November
The Sapphire soundtrack is released 12th November
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Chris O'Dowd