All Of Us Strangers star Claire Foy tells some harsh truths in director Andrew Haigh’s supernatural love story

Actress Claire Foy is prepared for a lot of personal reactions to her latest film We are all strangers. Adapted from the novel by Taichi Yamada StrangersIn writer-director Andrew Haigh’s emotional reimagining, gay screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) creates a screenplay inspired by a devastating personal tragedy: both his parents died in a car accident in the early 80s, when he was just 12 years old. wash. . Adam travels back to the neighborhood where he grew up, where he meets his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) – who not only still live in his old house, but also look exactly the same as the last time he saw them.

DEADLINE: How did you first hear about it? We are all strangers?

CLAIRE FOY: It actually took three or four months before we started filming. One of my agents, Billy Lazarus, had a very emotional reaction to it and I knew it was very special. Then I met Andreas [Haigh] and he is as open and humble as a person in what he does, which is very encouraging because what he does is so tender and honest and in no way precious. I just thought it would be really special to be a part of this film.

DEADLINE: Did Andrew tell you if your role as a mother was loosely based on that of his own mother? Or was it less specific?

CLUE: I don’t know if he based it on his mother or on a generation of parents who were children of war babies in Britain. And this is a very specific generation of people. You have a set of specific values ​​and beliefs that come from the war generation, about how they were raised, what you do and don’t do, how you express yourself, what you talk about and what you don’t talk about. And then it is as if someone like Adam is the fruit of these people.

I come from a family with many women. I have so many aunts in my family that “mother” to me has become a mix of many different women at many different times.

DEADLINE: Once you knew Jamie Bell was going to play your husband, did you spend time with him and work on the relationship we see on screen?

CLUE: Not really. I had never met him in my life and when he signed up I just knew it wouldn’t be a problem. I think I’ve loved Jamie Bell ever since Billy Elliot, like everyone else in the world, and feel some kind of deep love for him. He is so involved all the time and his feelings are so close to the surface. It is the most beautiful thing you can see in a man who always has access to it.

DEADLINE: It sounds like all the family moments between you, Jamie and Andrew came naturally to photograph.

CLUE: I can’t say exactly what it was, but it was the meeting of three people who have known each other for a long time. And it happened immediately. We’ve all been there. In this parting scene, we kissed each other on the lips to say goodbye. And it might have been weird if Adam kissed his parents on the lips as an adult, but it just didn’t feel weird. It just felt so good. And I just don’t think you can fake something like that. I just think it’s an incredible casting by Andrew [Haigh] in the sense that he knew we would all get along. But we’re also pretty similar to Andrew, to the point that we had very little friction on set.

DEADLINE: Is it true that this is the first film in which you don’t act with an accent?

CLUE: I really wanted to be Irish. My family is Irish and I have always said that I would use an Irish accent in a film. There wasn’t a lot of preparation time, but I thought, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. So I talked to my friend who’s a dialect coach and I said, “Here’s my Irish accent.” And he said, “Okay, so the problem is that you’re speaking with the accent of someone who lived in Ireland a hundred years ago and was a farmer there.” I think my accent was inspired by Barry, my grandfather, who is now 94 [laughs]. But the great thing about this film is that it ignores everyone’s reality. Adam moved back to Ireland with his grandmother after his parents died, which is why he is Irish and she is not.

DEADLINE: The moment when Adam comes out to his mother is pretty hard to watch. She does not respond as he had hoped.

CLUE: It is not sentimental. Andrew Haigh wrote it so intricately. I feel that Adam’s journey does not follow an arc in the film. He experienced a great tragedy. His parents died early in his youth. Losing your parents in any way is devastating, but for Adam, who is about to step into the world and not have them at a formative time in his life. That alone is so heartbreaking.

It was really interesting to be invited into this scene from a position where the two Andrews were talking about their own experiences. I think Andrew Scott didn’t want it to be an exit scene. He didn’t want him to go to his mother’s house and think he had to get out. Because he is a man in his 40s and has insight into himself and his sexuality. For him there was no unsolved problem.

I didn’t want my modern sensibilities to get in the way of him feeling judged just based on what she says, even though everything she says is full of love. I think it would underestimate both the audience and the characters if she said the right thing. I think it had to be this scenario where you had to see the difference in a time they didn’t have together.

DEADLINE: At the same time it processes the information.

CLUE: When we try to understand thoughts and emotions, people get hurt because they come out before you have absorbed them in your brain. I think she was angry because she missed so much in his life. She didn’t know what her teenage years were like. She didn’t know how she was in her twenties or thirties. She knew nothing about it. And then when your son says something so basic about who he is and she doesn’t know it, I think she’s deeply hurt and defensive in everyday life.

I had a strong feeling that she felt she was being criticized. Everything about him as a person indicated that she had not done her job as a mother properly. Everything is an exclusion from his life because she died. Because if she had lived, she wouldn’t have had a gay son. She would have a son who was married with twenty-five children and lived in one house. It was really interesting because I really felt that everything Andrew did was crucial.

I didn’t want to make her more beautiful either. I didn’t want her to say the right things. I wanted it to be true. When I made the film, I knew that people would react emotionally to my portrayal of this person, and they have every right to do so. In fact, it’s very accurate how these interactions play out based on what I’ve learned.

DEADLINE: Has there ever been a scene that was too emotional for you?

CLUE: The last scene in TGI Fridays with me, Andrew and Jamie. Sometimes something happens in a scene and you think it’s going to be one thing, you do all the preparation, you have in your head what you think the character of the scene wants, and then an actor does something and it changes everything.

So Jamie just sat down and we shot this damn scene, and at the end Andrew and I were just crying. All three of us wept in tears and thought: This is wrong. We shouldn’t be like this. It was really amazing. I think I believed everyone so that I was just there with them. And in the end I just worship them and bow down to them. That’s what I do.

DEADLINE: I have to ask: What’s it like when Andrew Scott gets into his parents’ bed in his kid’s pajamas?

CLUE It didn’t feel strange. (laughs) The way Andrew played it was so childish and I think Jamie and I have kids so we were so used to that dynamic of, okay, come in. The only thing about it was that Paul Mescal was also in bed, because the scene then cuts to Andrew lying in bed with him at home. And so the question arose: “What is going on here?” I lie in bed with these three men. What happened to my life?”

DEADLINE: This is a photo that many people want to see.

CLUE: There is a photo! I hope no one ever sees this because I look like a pageant winner and I couldn’t be happier to be there. They look really cool and they’re like, “Yeah, whatever.” And I’m like, “Ahhhhhh!!!” This is such an embarrassment. No one ever sees this photo. I’ll just have it for the rest of my life. I’ll have it framed. (laugh)

DEADLINE: What’s it like working under Andrew Haigh?

CLUE: He looks a lot like Sarah Polley, who I worked with [on Women Talking]. Like Sarah, he doesn’t pretend to be the big, omniscient director. He often says, “I don’t know.” He is very human and you feel like you are really having a conversation with him. I love how he notices the little things you do. He is very observant. He’s also just a very nice person, very funny, very cynical, but also full of hope and love, and that’s what made him a great director. As someone who is interested in people, I feel that he wants to get to the bottom of most things in a frank and honest way.

DEADLINE: The film is very subtle in its depiction of the ghosts that haunt Adam and the way his denial of the past catches up with him.

CLUE: There is a scene in the movie where Adam tells his new friend Harry [Paul Mescal] about his parents dying. And I think it’s the most brilliant piece of acting because it can be, “My parents died when I was twelve.” But he’s like, “Oh no, it’s not a big deal,” because the trauma and the pain and the loss that’s so deep in his body, in his muscles, in his bones that he can’t touch it . He is insensitive to it. This is what I project onto him in the film. He doesn’t have access to it, and the film is about how he somehow tries to access that sadness so that he can love someone again.

I can’t think of anything braver than losing someone you love and then being brave enough to try the whole thing again because what a terrible idea that is. You have to live in denial or live every day knowing that they might disappear because you can’t deal with them in any way. It’s too much, this human connection. And the only thing that makes humans special is that we have the ability to do that.

The smells, the textures, the feeling of having parents, of playing – I think that’s what he misses all his life. He didn’t have her, and then suddenly he has her, and he doesn’t want to let her go.

Ultimately we all go to the same place. We like to pretend it isn’t, but we all die. And that inevitably means that people are left behind. And that, in my opinion, is the most incredibly painful idea of ​​what it means to be alive.