Berlin: Saoirse Ronan on Addiction, Recovery and Sheep in Drama ‘The Outrun’
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While filming The Outrun, Saoirse Ronan delivered lambs, swam with seals and communed with her fair share of flora and fauna.
The four-time Oscar nominee plays Rona, a young woman who leaves London and returns to her small hometown on Scotland’s Orkney Islands as she charts her course to sobriety while experiencing all the harsh realities and natural wonders that a tiny, wind-swept isle off the coast of Scotland has to offer.
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The film, directed by German helmer Nora Fingscheidt (System Crasher) and based on the Amy Liptrot novel of the same name, will screen in Berlin following its premiere at Sundance, where it garnered rave reviews (THR’s David Rooney observed that Ronan “puts herself through the physical and emotional wringer”). Ahead of the film’s Berlin bow, Ronan talked to THR about why she connected with Liptrot’s book, the advantages of also producing the project and how the unique culture of the Orkney islands informed the film.
How did you discover Amy Liptrot’s book?
It was Jack Lowden, who produced as well, who introduced it to me. He’s a very proud Scot and he had spent a bit of time up in the Orkney Islands. Whenever he goes to a new place, he tries to read a book by a writer from that place if he can. So, he had already fallen in love with The Outrun, and when we were in lockdown — going through books left, right and center because we had all the time in the world — he recommended I read it. He said, “This is the next role that you should play.” So of course, typical actor, I was chomping at the bit. I think almost everyone’s had their own relationship with addiction, whether that’s been something that you’ve gone through yourself or you’ve watched a loved one go through it. It’s an illness that has affected all of us, in one way or another, and I’m no different. It’s an illness that shaped my life quite dramatically, having not gone through it myself but being on the receiving end of what can come with that. I always wanted to understand it more, because it was something that caused so much pain. I finally felt at a place where I wanted to dive into the other side of it, trying to understand it better.
When it comes to onscreen addiction stories, few follow young women. Was that something you were thinking about when developing the project?
That was one of the first things that we picked up on. Not only was this going to follow a young female who’s in recovery, but following someone who suffers with alcoholism where the torture, the heartbreak, the spiraling isn’t being motivated solely by her relationship with a man or with her partner. You could even take the addiction element out of it, and it would still be this very relatable story about a period in a woman’s life when she’s moving into her 30s and you’re having to examine your life in a way that you never really did before. This element of the addiction amplifies the journey that we already go on as women at that point in our lives.
Did the book being so internal help you in crafting your performance?
We knew that the central performance was really going to be the beating heart of the film, because even in the book, you’re very much following this one person. Nora, when she read the book, she really grabbed on to this nerdy element of Amy’s psyche. She’s really fascinated with niche topics and goes into such great detail about the current in the ocean or a jellyfish’s DNA or how ethanol affects the brain. Nora really wanted to include that in our overall story in the film. From the producers’ point of view, we really wanted to capture the energy of Orkney. It’s off the mainland, and it very much feels like it only belongs to itself. If you’re an Orcadian, you say you’re an Orcadian, you don’t say that you’re Scottish. We really fell in love with the mindset of the people who live there, a very can- do, get-on-with-it attitude, which is really admirable to be around. But to pair that sort of mentality with mental illness and the emotional turmoil that someone might be going through, Jack and I always felt like that would be really interesting.
You filmed on location on the islands, correct?
We started in London, which was so intense because that was like the highest highs and the lowest lows that the character experiences. Then we went to the Orkney mainland, which was about focusing on the relationships with the parents and reintegrating back into the community. The we ended in Papa Westray, which is the island that she ends up on. We were progressively isolating ourselves more and more. This was the perk that came with being a producer on the job: I was like, “Listen, this is how I want to shoot it.” I’ve been working with myself for 20-plus years. It’s an instrument — you know what you need to do when it comes to your work.
How do you think being on Orkney influenced the film?
By the time we got to Papa Westray, there was a real contentment. This was at the tail end of COVID — we had all come out of multiple lockdowns — so to be able to reconnect with a smaller community, to be around friendly faces, we were grateful. All of that just very organically inspired the performance. We shot in [Amy’s] home, and we shot on her farm. We got to know her father, who still lives on the farm. When Stephen [Dillane] and I were shooting scenes between Amy and her dad, her dad was around, so that was quite a surreal experience. I think it was very helpful for the cast to be reminded that it is a real story and that it belongs to real people.
I had done two other films [during the pandemic]. One was in Australia, and we were still very much in lockdown when we were there. It was a film Paul Mescal and I did [Garth Davis’ 2023 sci-fi drama Foe], and we actually both got COVID, one after the other. We were in a very barren, dry desert, and it was essentially just the two of us. The interesting thing about doing Foe first and then doing The Outrun is that Foe is 100 years, 150 years in the future when everything living, any organic material, has died. So, I went from being in that environment, to then going into this film where I was tackling ewes to the ground. It went from no life at all to so much life over the course of a couple of months.
Was there a lot of infrastructure on the island?
We were the first movie ever to shoot in Orkney. In general, it’s just not a place that people even know about, so all of that infrastructure was being brought into the island. In a small community, there’s a lot of effort to really keep everyone busy and occupied with something to do. So, there were a lot of amateur actors, a lot of young people in particular who were really into drama. I’ve shot in smaller towns before, where there will always be that one person that’s a little tricky or makes your shoot day really difficult. We didn’t experience one ounce of that. I hope it’s inspired them to keep doing more because there’s just a romanticism to the place. It’s a real sort of amalgamation of Celtic and Nordic culture. It’s Viking country, essentially.
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