Romola On Walking.

People  From The Guardian this week on the occasion of her appearing in Nachtland at the Young Vic.  It's about a decision to sell or burn a Hitler painting or as the interviewer points out, what Channel 4 did a couple of years ago.  On a lighter note:

"I go on very long walks, sometimes a whole day on my own. I walk around London, I walk around the Downs, I’ll sometimes just walk for miles in the countryside. Last year, I went to Paris and did a two-day walk. I just find it very soothing. Also, particularly as I get older, I’m feeling more communist!"

 

Romola on her career.

Film  As part of the BFI's Future Film Festival 2022, future Doctor Who Romola Garai gives some perspective on her career for anyone keen to follow in her footsteps, from her shaky first steps into acting school to diversifying her creativity beyond performing into writing and directing.  

Romola on Directing.

Film It would be remiss of me not to notice that while Romola Garai waits to play the fourteenth Doctor (or whatever - who knows how many incarnations there have been at this point), she's been directing a horror film, the really creepy trailer for which is above. Here's a short interview with Romola about directing with a "you don't look like the type who's into horror films" guy:



The film was at Sundance, so there are plenty of interviews and panels around.







Leonard Maltin!

Also a few written interviews:

Sundance 2020 Interview: Romola Garai on the Horrors You Can’t Shake with “Amulet”

‘Amulet’ Filmmakers Reveal the Secrets of Blood Effects: You Blow Into a Tube

‘Amulet’ Helmer Romola Garai Was Inspired By The Move Of “Female Filmmakers Into The Genre Space” – Sundance Studio

Sundance 2020 Women Directors: Meet Romola Garai – “Amulet”

From Dirty Dancing 2 To Director — Romola Garai’s Horror Movie Is Headed To Sundance

Eye roll on the final headline.  Not that I'm watching or reading any of them right now - I'll wait until after I've seen the thing.  But wow, this is really quite something.

Romola is Directing.

TV Future Doctor Who Romola Garai is making her directing debut on a horror film Deadline reports:

"The Hour and Suffragette actress Romola Garai is to make her feature directorial debut on upcoming horror Outside, I can reveal. Carla Juri (Blade Runner 2049), Alec Secareanu (God’s Own Country) and Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake) will lead cast in the movie, which is scheduled to go into production this fall. AMP International is handling world sales and will introduce the project to buyers in Cannes. Deals have already closed in German speaking Europe (Ascot Elite), Latin America (Imagem) and The Middle East (Front Row)."

She's also the screenwriter. Wow.

Romola on Measure for Measure.

TV Shakespeare Unlocked was a documentary series which ran on the BBC during the season of Stratfordian mayhem in 2012.  A later series was broadcast on Sky Arts and now a third run has been announced with the remarkable news that future Doctor Who Romola Garai will be presenting an episode about Measure for Measure (in which she played Isabella at the Young Vic in 2015):

"In addition to Hunt, Season 3 hosts and the plays they explore include F. Murray Abraham (The Merchant of Venice); Brian Cox (Julius Caesar); Simon Russell Beale (The Winter's Tale); and Romola Garai (Measure for Measure). A host has yet to be announced for an episode about Richard III."

The USA Today version of the story chooses to focus on Helen Hunt and Much Ado. It is a very good line up.

Romola on Sexism in the Entertainment Industry again.

Film Yes, again. It's still happening. From the New Statesman:

"Although she finds sexism doesn’t affect her career at this point, she’s had run-ins with directors and producers over misogyny in their work. Recently, a scene she was in had been rewritten with her character saying a line that minimised domestic violence. “I went to the producers; the argument they came back with was that domestic violence was ‘a downer’,” she grimaces, translating their attitude into: “We really didn’t want to make too much of a thing in the show when murdering women is much more interesting!”"

All together now, #ffs.

Romola on Everything.

Theatre The Stage has a huge interview with Romola Garai about her career, the challenges of being a mother in theatre and screen work and various other bits and pieces. On the West End revival of the RSC's Queen Anne:

“For me it is predominantly about a female friendship that is destroyed by politics, which is rare. Although its a historical play and you feel that Helen Edmundson has done a great deal of research for it, something at its heart feels very personal and leapt out at me. I found the portrait of two women locked in a highly dysfunctional relationship very moving. Because it has lasted since childhood, it has become quite warped in some ways. They could reassess their relationship in a positive way, but they don’t. Sarah, particularly, doesn’t have the strength of character to bring that about and so it explodes, and politics is the thing that initiates that.”

The play runs for thirteen weeks from the 30 June. Do we know what the shooting schedule for the next series of Doctor Who is?

Romola on Herself.

People Here's future Time Person Romola Garai in the New Statesman's Q&A slot. A few of her answers are especially Doctorish:

"What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?"

"If you’re about to get angry, ask yourself if there’s any way you could laugh instead. I try. Sometimes I end up just laughing in a crazy angry way. Either that or: “Anything you buy that needs ironing is like paying someone to shackle you to a radiator.”

Since I started staking sertraline for my anxiety disorder, I find anger difficult too. I can get angry, but it feels odd, like it's happening to someone else or how I imagine an sentient machine might experience it, as though this incomprehensible emotion is emanating from somewhere and they don't like it.  Most often it registers as a bland frustration.  I could try laughing in future instead.

Romola on Feminism. Lot's of other things.

Film Eve Wiseman talks to the next Doctor and recounts this horrifying anecdote about the filming of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights:

"Romola Garai was 17, standing in her underwear while a female producer pointed at her thighs and told her: “This isn’t good enough.” She was weighed in and out every day, with a dietician flown to Puerto Rico to make sure she stayed underweight. It was her first Hollywood studio film, a sequel to Dirty Dancing, and it would prove to be her last. “It screwed me up for years. Not only did it completely change how I felt about my body, but I felt like I’d failed because I hadn’t fought back. I felt complicit, because I didn’t say no. I signed off on Photoshopped images and felt terrible for perpetrating this… lie.”"

Romola on supporting Parents In Performing Arts.

Romola on Isabella.

Theatre BBC Radio 4's Front Row is running a series of interviews with various actors and experts about their favourite Shakespeare characters and Romola Garai has chosen Isabella from my favourite play, Measure for Measure, which she recently played on stage.



As she identifies, the character's situation is often misrepresented. Angelo is suggesting he effectively be allowed rape Isabella (even if the word is never used) and although the Duke then proposes a method for this not to happen, for the production to then end on the two of them leaving as couple as often happens when the director has decided this is the comedy it isn't, is to deeply misunderstand the action which has preceding it. There's a reason why Shakespeare ends the the play on the Duke's proposal but not Isabella's answer.

Other actors featured include David Tennant and Catherine Tate, which means I can add a Doctor Who tag to this post too.

Romola on the cover of the Radio Times.

TV For I think the first time since Emma. Churchill's Secret feels like something Channel 4 might have produced in the late 90s or BBC Two any time in the past few decades so it's quite odd to find it on ITV home of the psychological drama and cop show.  Presumably at this rate the next time Romola will be on the RT cover it'll be for the launch of the 2018 series of Doctor Who.

Romola On Directing.

Film Future Doctor, Romola Garai is interviewed on the above (two year old) podcast about directing her first short film and her favourite directors.

She says lots of nice things about Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady which puts that on the list.

Oh and spends two minutes talking about my favourite, favourite film When Harry Met Sally. Calls it a masterpiece.  Squee etc.

Also turns out I've been mispronouncing Romola's surname for years. I've been saying it to rhyme with aye-aye, but as she illustrates it supposed to rhyme with Gary. Which obviously makes more sense.

Romola on preserving film.

Film The (future) Doctor gazes into a hand-held time space visualiser at footage of the original suffragettes and comments on the implications of being able to see something as it happened rather than having rely on contemporary written reports.

Romola on women in the entertainment industry.

Theatre Romola Garai's appearing on the New York stage, at The Roundabout in Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink, and has given this extensive interview to The Interval (a virtual home for female voices of the theatre) about the play and more generally about women in the entertainment industry both in relation to the stories being told about them and how they're treated:

"The industry that I work in is incredibly sexist. When I got to about 26 or 27—when I got old enough to understand that was a problem and why it was a problem, and the way that at the earlier stage of my career it had enabled me and then was actually disabling me—I think it became very important to me to connect with other people who felt the same way. So I think it has inevitably drawn me towards writers who are writing strong female characters, to casting directors who want women to be at the center of narratives, and to people who have the same kind of concerns."

Her top five female characters is very, very correct, especially number four. Very much number four.

Romola on Morocco.

Travel Or rather Romola Garai in Morocco writing a travel piece for The Guardian. As ever, she's never boring as she navigates a luxury hotel with a "no outside world" policy in Marrakech with her diarrhoea inhibited family in tow:

"I finished off the day with one of the best facials I've ever had, and was floating back to my room, smelling like a rose garden hosed down with baby oil, when I was horrified to see a group of very stressed (though very cool) looking people all hunched miserably over their BlackBerrys like an Apple production line. El Fenn has no phones or televisions in its rooms, and although it does have Wi-Fi, it requests, very gently, that you don't spend your whole time on it. This "escape from the outside world" policy is especially welcome when you haven't worked in months, and the sight of people furiously emailing made me feel rather depressed. However, after a great deal of dedicated eavesdropping by violently shushing anyone who tried to speak to me, I discovered that the trendy/unhappy people were due to be on a fashion shoot with Mos Def that day, but he had hurt his hand and failed to catch his flight. These poor people's bad luck was my comedy gold, as I spent a very merry evening repeating the phrase, "So, what you're saying is… Mos def-initely won't be coming?"

Romola on Legacy.

TV Last night, in what's becoming a surprising routine in my dotage (I'm 39), I actually watched something while it was being broadcast on purpose, which was Legacy, BBC Two's cold war thriller based on Alan Judd’s novel of the same name, adapted by Paula Milne (White Heat, The Politician's Husband) and directed by Pete Travis (Vantage Point, Dredd). They worked together previously on Endgame the rather good apartheid film with William Hurt and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

 This came across like an episode of Spooks in which Harry had entered a coma and woken up in 1974 ala Life on Mars. Excellent performances from the cast and gorgeous candlelit photography (the contemporary blackouts creating a noirish feel) made it entirely watchable as an example of the kinds of single dramas which used to be the cornerstone of the schedules rather than rare experiments. Well worth catching on the iPlayer is you have ninety minutes to fill.

Romola Garai played one of the spies who was married to one of the other spies (Christian McKay in another one of his "I can't believe it's not Orson" roles on this occasion channeling Harry Lime) and has been around giving publicity interview. Here she is on BBC News talking about why she took the part:

"I want to play women with jobs, basically," Garai says of her own career criteria.

"It sounds like a very trite thing, but it's very easy to play female leads where the only thing you know about her is how she relates to the male. Whether or not she is pretty, or good in bed - she has no world of her own.

"If a writer is invested in a character enough to talk about what they do for a living, I think that's a good sign," the actress continues.

She told Digital Spy that during filming she met a real spy who gave her advise on how they make sure they aren't followed:

"There's a very easy way to do that, which is to constantly get to a road crossing, a natural place where you would look for cars," she said. "So you have to constantly cross the road as much as possible. It must be quite weird if you're crossing the road but you're looking behind you, and he said that as if it was an obvious thing.

"There were quite a few times afterwards where I went up to a road and looked left and right for traffic, but was also looking behind me. I thought, actually, it's very hard to do that in a natural way. And I'm not very observant!"

Oh there's wonderful quote at the Radio Times about her approach to acting. In general:

"It’s absolutely hilarious that I would be cast in a role like this. I’m really indiscreet and incredibly stupid and I can’t understand the plot of anything – even this script I was reading, saying, “I don’t understand”. I spend my whole life pretending so the idea of doing something where you'd have to pretend all the time is not appealing to me. We do enough made up stuff anyway. "

Doctor Who's going to be really fun in four years time...

Romola on Doctor Who.

TV It's Doctor Who day then. Thank goodness and the riches it brings amid the mass of content on the BBC News website we find this voxpop:



"I have to say that, like, of all the Doctors I really love a lot of the recent ones and I think that Matt Smith was amazing as the Doctor and I think that it's great that they've gone with Peter Capaldi, he's an actor I've worked with he's really brilliant, and to have a sort of variety of different ages is really important and maybe one day they'll have a woman and would be good too."

And maybe it'll be you.  Please?

Romola on her new t-shirt.

Feminism Romola Garai, future Doctor (Capaldi's not going to be there forever) has an interview in today's Observer about participating in the campaign to stop certain magazines from being displayed and sold in supermarkets and the media's treatment of women in general. Obviously the topic of her own past photo shoots materialises and her answer is just right. People have the capacity to change their minds:

"I am very aware that I have at times in my career been part of the problem and not part of the solution and as I have got older I have tried to correct that. But it is very difficult because I believe the media in this country is inherently sexist. And so if you do a job which involves you interacting with it, that does inevitably lead to some difficult choices, and I am sure that very often I haven't made the right choice.

"But, you know, this is an attempt on my part to support a campaign which is encouraging people to think about what is acceptable in terms of media sexism."

The comments beneath are predictably horrendous and often misogynistic in and of themselves almost all of them missing the point. As Garai says, on the one hand Tesco says it doesn't sell pornographic magazine, but on the other will sell magazines which are as close to the wire as possible.

 Magazine sections in general are weird places anyway even in WH Smiths, where the children's sections are often opposite the "lifestyle" area which includes the lads mags. In some supermarkets its even more acutely obvious because everything is crammed in.

The government are desperate to foist porn filters on computers to stop children from straying onto "adult" sites yet they're quite happy, presumably because of personal connections somewhere up the chain, to allow those same children to see images on magazines and newspapers.

Romola on Pussy Riot.

Feminism Future Doctor Who, Romola Garai writes in The Guardian about Maria Alyokhina's hunger strike and its implications:

"... they embody a real feminist anger and uncompromisingly scornful attitude to the patriarchal values that women have been taught to accept as the status quo. They reject the pantomime of equality in which we are expected to perform. Women in the public eye who can genuinely be called nonconformist are vital for expanding the horizons of other women. It was figures such as the musicians Kim Gordon and PJ Harvey who taught me, when I was 14, what a truly independent spirit looked like. When I see what my daughter will be told a "strong woman" looks like, I see women in their underwear sucking in their tummies with a look of terror on their faces. This isn't what I want for her and I celebrate the obvious, unadulterated "fuck you" that lies behind Pussy Riot's eyes."