Florence Pugh's New Period Drama Is Out Now
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Florence Pugh is returning to period dramas. After a trip into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Yelena Belova in Black Widow and Hawkeye, the 26-year-old British actress is traveling back to the 19th century.
Pugh is set to star in The Wonder, a tale of a religious girl who supposedly stops eating but remains alive and healthy. Pugh will play nurse Lib Wright, a veteran who is hired to observe her—and make sure she's not actually eating. As the tagline asks: Is the village harboring a saint "surviving on manna from heaven" or are there more ominous motives at work?
Here's everything we know so far about the film.
What is the plot of The Wonder?
In the Irish Midlands in 1862, an 11-year-old girl stops eating but remains miraculously alive and well, so English nurse Lib Wright (Pugh) is brought to observe her. Tourists and pilgrims travel to witness the religious girl, Anna, who is said to have survived without food for months. The doubters come, too—like journalist Will Byrne (Tom Burke), who believes that someone is secretly giving food to Anna.
In October, Netflix released the first trailer (watch above), where an unspecified character tells Lib, "It's not your job to question us. You are here only to watch." After fourteen days, Lib and another woman are meant to give separate testimony. "I'm here to find out the truth," Lib says later in the trailer.
The British & Irish cast is star-studded.
Alongside Florence Pugh and Tom Burke, the cast features Niamh Algar, Elaine Cassidy, Kíla Lord Cassidy, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Dermot Crowley, Brían F. O’Byrne, and David Wilmot.
The entirety of the cast hails from Britain or Ireland.
Chilean director Sebastián Lelio directs the Irish period drama.
Sebastián Lelio will helm The Wonder. In a statement, he shared "Bringing the powerful novel The Wonder by Emma Donoghue to the screen not only offers me the chance to portray the collision between reason and faith, individual and community, obedience and rebellion, but also to explore my own interpretation of what a 'period' film can be."
"I couldn’t be more thrilled that the magnetic and courageous Florence Pugh will play our fierce female lead," Lelio added.
You may know Lelio from Gloria (2013), A Fantastic Woman (2017), or Disobedience (2017). When A Fantastic Woman won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2018, it became the first Chilean film to win that honor. Lelio's work often examines religious faith and the pull between individuals and community; for example Disobedience, starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, was set in North London's Orthodox Jewish community and focused on the illicit relationship between the two women.
The Wonder is based on a book by Irish writer Emma Donoghue.
In Donoghue's 2016 book, the plot is the same as the film: Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off "manna from heaven," and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a nurse and veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl.
Donoghue also wrote Room, the bestselling novel about the captivity of a woman in a small shed that was adapted into a 2015 film staring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay.
Is it a true story?
Kind of—the story of Anna in The Wonder is more an amalgamation of cases based on the phenomenon of the "fasting girls" in the Victorian era.
As Donoghue explains: "I came across the Fasting Girl phenomenon back in the mid-1990s, so long ago that I can’t even remember where I first read about these girls and young women (and very occasionally older women or men). I was instantly intrigued by these cases, which seemed to echo medieval saints starving as an act of penance, and also modern anorexics, but weren't exactly the same as either.
It seemed to say a lot about what it’s meant to be a girl—in many Western countries, from the sixteenth century right through to the twentieth—that these girls became celebrities by not eating. But I never found one real case that rang that little bell in me, telling me this was the story I had to tell in a novel. Some were too tragic, even for a writer with my dark tastes; Sarah Jacob, for instance, a little girl who died while being ‘watched' by nurses in 1869. Some were low comedy, such as the case of Ann Moore, exposed as a cheat in 1813.
Finally it occurred to me that if I was still so fascinated by the Fasting Girls, two decades on, I should drop my usual method of writing a historical novel based on a real case, and let myself invent a story. I’d set it in Ireland, of course—not just because that’s my homeland, but because ever since the Great Famine of the 1840s, we’ve defined ourselves as a people intimate with hunger."
The Wonder filmed in Ireland.
Netflix production for The Wonder took place largely in and around County Wicklow, in eastern Ireland, in August and September 2021. Pugh posted on Instagram in August 2021, "We’ve been traipsing around the Irish hills for the last week and it’s truly been a magnificent start to a beautiful and exciting film."
She also shared it was a "different kind of Hollywood":
"We shot it last summer, through thick mud, surprising sudden mountain rainstorms and just as surprising brief sunny spells," Pugh wrote ahead of its premeire. Thank you to all those who helped us while we were there. Fans who waited and cheered. The locals who let us turn their quiet village into our 1860’s film set. We appreciated your support hugely. It truly was a dreamy way to spend our summer- Ireland we loved you."
When does The Wonder premiere?
The period thriller made its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival; its European premiere will be held at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.
It will be available in the U.S. in select theaters beginning November 2, 2022.
Where to watch The Wonder:
The film is streaming on Netflix now.
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