Nicola Wright
Nicola Wright has enjoyed a career that has seen her juggle film, TV and theatre roles and now she is back with Verity's Summer.
The film sees her team up with first time feature length filmmaker Ben Crowe to tackle some big issues in a domestic setting.
We caught up with the actress to chat about the movie, working with the director and the other projects she has on the horizon.
- Your new film Verity's Summer is set to be released next month so can you tell me a little big about the film?
I would say that it is a coming of age film for Verity, who is mine and my husband’s only daughter, and it is her first summer back at home from boarding school after completing her GCSE’s. She has come back home for the whole of the summer and it is a bit of an awakening for her.
So she comes back and grows up that summer as she sees her parents for all their flaws and the cracks in the marriage as well as having her first boyfriend and sexual encounter.
My character has had a very strained relationship with her husband ever since Verity went to boarding school at twelve - which was more her idea. He is seconded to Iraq, which I never wanted him to do, and when he comes back I never want to discuss - so there is this big elephant in the room about what went on and it has caused a big rift between them.
So that summer that Verity comes back another soldier called Castle also returns and that stirs up everything for the husband. It comes to a crux at a dinner party where through her own curiosity Verity digs and pokes in front of people so that her father explodes and has a hissy fit with her.
- You take on the role of Anne in the film - who is quite a complex character - so what was it about Ann and Ben Crowe's screenplay that really attracted you to the project?
It was the writing. To be given the opportunity to go for the audition in the first place for a leading role like that was really pleasing but when I saw how beautifully it was written I was thrilled to have been offered it.
It flowed the moment I started reading it and it just seemed very natural. When I met Indea (Verity) I knew that we would work together because we are very similar in the way that we came to play scenes - it was just easy.
My own son is the same age as her, I also have a teenage daughter, so we just came together in a mother/daughter and also friendship way - but I did have a material feeling towards her on the set.
- How do we see Anne develop throughout the film as she struggles to deal with the issues facing her and her family?
You hopefully warm towards her more, certainly verity does and so I hope that the audience do. She starts off by coming home as a daddy’s girl and Anne is more the mum that she doesn’t take a lot of notice of.
I am more the academic one and I have had a career and quite a good career. It is only as things begin to unravel that she starts to open up a bit more to me.
- This film is placed in a domestic setting but it does tackle wider issues of Iraq war and prisoner torture so what sort of research did you do as you prepared for this part?
I have to be honest I didn’t particularly research the Iraq war a torture side of it for my character and probably more came out when we were filming because we did use to discuss it. I didn’t have long between getting the part and starting rehearsals.
But it did promote a lot of talk as a group and so things were discussed. At the end of the film where Jim breaks down and tells me what he did we never hear that - so we did have lots of discussions about what he may or may not have done.
It is left very open; maybe he never personally does anything and he was just a witness but that is equally torturous for him to admit.
- Was there discussion when you were filming those final scenes to ever tell the audience what Jim actually did or was the end always written that way?
We discussed it but there was never an option that it would have been shown. I think it was because it was more of Verity’s point of view, most of the film is Verity’s point of view, and maybe they would hope that she would never know.
- I have mentioned Ben Crowe already and he is in the director's chair so how did you find working with him - as he is making his feature length directorial debut with this movie?
He is great to work with. He had a very strong vision of what the film would look like and because it was written so well I don’t think anything was rewritten - there were some cuts to do with editing but that was his choice.
Him and Sarah working together, Sarah Dean was the DOP, definitely had the same visual vision. He would always talk to us before but he trusted us and I think that he felt he had cast the characters and well and so, to a certain extent, he let us play out the dialogue as we naturally did it.
- Indea Willson plays Anne's daughter Verity in the film so how did you find working with her as this was her debut as well?
You would never know that this was her debut as she is just totally natural. It was a pleasure and a joy to work with her because we hardly needed to rehearse because we both knew the lines.
We were living together anyway and we might run it the night before to check lines but then we would just play it. She is just natural and lovely.
- I chatted to Indea yesterday and she said that there was a very family feel on set so how did you find working on the movie?
Yes there was. It was a lower independent film budget means that the crew isn’t huge. We were all together in that beautiful house for most of the shoot - that house that is Verity’s home - and there was fantastic homemade cooking all of the time.
So it was like living with a family because the cast isn’t very big and for the first ten days or so it was just me and Indea. The weather was really good to us and so we would just sit out in the garden at lunchtime and chat and the same for the evening meal, which was lovely.
- How have you found the early response to the film?
Very positive. There was the cast and crew showing but there was also the showing that we all went to at the London Independent Film Festival where Indea won the Best Actress award.
I have had quite a few friends that have been to see it and one, who I respect a lot, likened it to a European film; I think that that is quite accurate because it is a slow unravel of observing these people‘s lives.
- Beneath a Neon Tide and Malady are just a couple of the other projects you are working on so can you tell me a little bit about those?
Both of them are in production and I have just finished filming in Norfolk. Beneath A Neon Tide is another coming of age film but it is with a son this time.
He is on a downward path and his parents make the decision to send him away to live with his uncle in a town in Norfolk to try and get him away from what he is getting up to. So it is his story and another summer of development.
Malady is a very dark story and I play the mother of the central girl in that. But there is another mother of the boy that she meets and she has a very dark side. There are some strange goings on in that family and in that film.
But it is a love story between the man trying to get away from this suffocating family that he grew up in but he takes the girlfriend back to that house, and that probably wasn’t the best idea.
- Throughout your career you have moved between TV and film projects so how have you found that the two mediums compare/differ?
As far as an actor working they are quite similar but film usually gives you more time. TV seems to be working at a much faster pace with a much bigger crew and you definitely feel more like a cog in a wheel - a lot of the film projects that I have worked on have been more relaxed.
But it is more the different between theatre and television/film I think that is the contrast.
- Do you like the immediacy of theatre?
Yeah, I love it. I finished a play at the end of October called A Broken Road at the Cockpit in London and that was by a new writer.
I love theatre as there is a different feel every night. Again you build up camaraderie and a little family within your group - especially through the rehearsal period. I like it all (laughs).
- You have also done a little bit of work behind the camera when you served as associate producer on video Loser's Anonymous so how much does this area of filmmaking interest you?
I have to say, honestly, it is not for me. I was asked to do it by Kevin Smith the director; he is a very old friend of mine that I have worked with on past films. It was an independent film that he wanted to get off the ground and was literally a ‘let’s make a film together type of thing.’
I was in it as well but I knew by the end of it that my heart and my talents lie in front of the camera and I don’t think that I am cut out for the other side. I have done it but I don’t particularly wish to do it again.
- Finally what is next for you?
I have got a short film that I am doing in March called Shuteye and at the moment that is it. I am looking forward to Verity’s Summer premiering and I am hoping that something might come off the back of that. So, like all actors, I am waiting for the next job.
Verity's Summer is released 5th March.