Olivia Colman would have been 'rather cross' if anyone else got her role in Empire of Light
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Director Sam Mendes' '80s-set drama Empire of Light (out tomorrow) stars Olivia Colman as a theater employee with mental health issues named Hilary who begins a relationship with a new colleague, Stephen, portrayed by Micheal Ward.
"Fundamentally, it's a love story," says Mendes, who also wrote the film's screenplay. "It's a relationship between a single, middle-aged white woman and a young Black man who comes to work in this cinema. She's struggling with mental illness and he is struggling with the outside world and the fact that, in the early '80s, under Thatcher, it was a time of high unemployment, and great racial tensions and riots. That inner crisis, which is hers, and his outer crisis — they sort of collide at the same time as they share a relationship and a bond. It's also a hymn to the sort of healing that is possible through movies and music and popular culture, which is something that I believe [in], romantic that I am."
Colman agreed to appear in the movie before reading the script.
"I just heard Sam Mendes was interested in me playing a part in his film and I went 'Yes, please.'" says the actress. "Then [I] went, what if it's shit? But it was wonderful, and [I was] thrilled that he entrusted me to play this part, and nervous about it, which is I think a good feeling. It was one of those films that was sort of a gut feeling. You know, I want to do it and I'd be quite cross if anybody else did it."
Below, Mendes and Colman talk more about the film, why this is a personal project for the director, and the magic of 2-tone music.
Parisa Taghizadeh/Searchlight Pictures Olivia Colman in 'Empire of Light'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: As a Brit myself, one old enough to have been seeing films in English cinemas in the early '80s, I was horrified to discover that Empire of Light needs to be called a period piece.
SAM MENDES: It's not even a period piece, it's a distant period piece. If we were now in the '80s, this movie would be taking place in the late '30s. Yeah, it's 41 years ago.
OLIVA COLMAN: No!
When I was writing about the film I thought: historical drama?
MENDES: Actually, the word "historical" makes me feel there's going to be corsets and I don't want to put people off. There's no corsets in the movie, but Olivia Colman does wear Spanx at one point.
COLMAN: Yeah, no one sees that. [Laughs]
Olivia, tell us a little more about your character.
COLMAN: Well, Hilary, we find her shortly after she's been released from a mental hospital, and she's on lithium. Hilary's loosely based on Sam's mum, so I had Sam there every second of every day to ask about, what's it like, and how do they feel when someone's coming off lithium, because back then it was pretty unsophisticated, the medication that was offered, and the feeling of numbness. And then suddenly this sort of light comes in to her world, which is this new employee, Stephen, who's beautiful and vibrant and learned, and she starts to feeling something, and comes off the lithium and then we follow her having her, well, extreme joy and then spiraling out of control.
Searchlight Pictures Micheal Ward and Olivia Colman in 'Empire of Light'
I interviewed Micheal Ward, and he said every time he did a scene with you, you were "spitting fire."
COLMAN: Well, I could say the same of him as well. He was so just joyful, and energetic, and loved the process, and a reminder every day that, my God, yes, you're right, we're so lucky to be doing this. He was just a beautiful little ball of fire on set every day, and we had a wonderful time together. We got on very well, and Sam is the best leader of people. I think every member of cast and crew would have followed Sam off a cliff if he'd told us to, and we just had the best time.
Sam, you wrote the screenplay and, as Olivia said, it's quite personal to you. What prompted you to tackle this?
MENDES: It's something that's been around in me for a long time, you know, memories of my childhood, [I was] trying to find a way to articulate those. But I always knew I never really wanted to write a film with me in it, as a character, so I had to find a way to create a Hilary. In some ways, it's a film about loneliness and about how difficult it is to make connections and sustain those. So I found that other story, which was the connection with Stephen, during lockdown, when it was a time when there were a number of things floating around: the epidemic, mental illness, a big racial reckoning in the world with what was happening in the U.S., and our general concern and fear that cinema was gone, that our idea of all being in the dark was just something that would never happen again. All those things went directly into the script. I think [the film] came about also because I'm a parent of young kids, and I had time to reflect on how it was for me when I was their age, and the heroism of my mother at bringing up a child on her own with no help when she was struggling with this illness.
Olivia, there are some very intense scenes involving your character. What was it like to shoot those sequences? Are you somebody who can brush that off at the end of the day or does it linger with you?
COLMAN: No, I'm not that sort of actor. I feel if you can let rip, and let it all out, it's very cathartic and actually quite healthy, and so I don't take it home with me. In the moment, I feel you've got to be truthful, and feel it honestly and deeply, but as soon as you shout "Cut!" it's gone for me. I don't think I could cope with taking stuff home. I don't know how people do that.
Parisa Taghizadeh/Searchlight Pictures/Everett Olivia Colman and Sam Mendes on the set of 'Empire of Light'
Sam, you have this remarkable supporting cast: Colin Firth, Toby Jones, and so on. Could you talk about assembling them and what they were like to work with?
MENDES: I was aware I was putting together a sort of ad hoc family, the sort of family that I have found in my life in cinemas and theaters. In a way, the only sort of functional families I met when I was a kid were those little groups of friends. [The characters] are a bunch of eccentrics and outcasts and they needed to be all shapes and sizes. Colin Firth turns up as the manager of the cinema giving a wonderful, beautifully-judged performance as a terrible person [laughs] but never overplaying it, and Toby Jones plays a projectionist, and Tom Brooke, a wonderful actor, plays Neil, who's the assistant manager, and there are all sorts of other wonderful actors, Hannah Onslow and Tanya Moodie, playing Stephen's mother.
For me, one of the joys of working in the U.K. was knowing that there were actors who could pull it off. I've known Toby for 35 years, I worked worked with Colin Firth in 1917, these are all people I already had existing relationships with, so it was lovely to be able to bring them all together in this literal bubble. We were in a bubble down in Margate on the south coast of England during the tail end of Covid, which was hard, but in a way made everybody a bit closer and a bit more like a family.
COLMAN: If you've worked with someone and they still say yes, they'll come back, it's a very good sign. [Laughs]
Searchlight Pictures 'Empire of Light'
Viewers of The Crown will know Tom Brooke from playing the man who broke into the Queen's bedroom during your time on the show, Olivia.
COLMAN: I love Tom. Weirdly, when we first met on The Crown, he said his daughter has got this little mate, and I went, "Oh, my God, that's the same name as my daughter, and her mate's got your daughter's name." It turns out we lived on the same street and our kids were in the same class and were best mates.
MENDES: No! You didn't know that?
COLMAN: No.
MENDES: How bizarre.
COLMAN: So Tom and his wife, who's an actress as well, we ended up having curries at each other's houses. Working with Tom is an absolute dream, everything's in his eyes, you don't really have to do any work when you're working opposite Tom, because he gives everything to you, you just have to react to him. And so, yes, it was so lovely to know that he was going to be playing Neil in this.
Micheal Ward's character is a big fan of 2-tone music, which, again, is something I grew up listening to. The Specials, Madness...
MENDES: Did you have a suit?
I did not and if I did have one, I wouldn't be able to fit into it now.
MENDES: Well, I can't fit into mine either. I could fit my entire suit on my right thigh.
Could you explain what 2-tone is, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with it?
MENDES: 2-tone is really a rebirth of ska, which [originally] came from Jamaica and West Indies, but in the aftershock of punk. So it's kind of ska seen through the prism of the Buzzcocks and The Clash and The Damned and the Sex Pistols. It has that energy of punk but it's also great dance music. It was called 2-tone for reasons. The label that made most of the early records was called 2 Tone and also the bands were both Black and white and there was a great healthy diversity: working class bands coming from Coventry and Birmingham in the late '70s, early '80s.
Weirdly, at a time when there was a very divisive racial politics in the country, there were these amazing examples of great diverse bands making popular music, and I mean No. 1 in the charts music, about things like inner cities, unemployment, youth pregnancy, etcetera. It was an incredible time in music. They were incredible bands. The Specials. The Beat. The Selecter. Madness was probably the one that survived the longest. I miss that time and I wanted to try to give it a bit of a shop window. And Clark is now doing a 2-tone dance, ladies and gentlemen.
Very poorly.
MENDES: No, that's about as well as I would do it!
Empire of Light hits theaters Dec. 9.
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