How he's done that I don't know.
It isn't really natural.
Boy, who took direction from Ken as if he'd been doing it all his life.
He he'd been here half an hour.
You know, he's he's just lovely.
Oh, good, good. I'll look out and see them.
I'm sorry, guys.
We must do one more thing and then we're going to go in and talk through.
So it's obviously an autobiographical work.
How close to the reality was that and why did you want to tell the story now
through the eyes of a nine year old boy?
It's whatever that does to an objective truth, but I hope there's
an emotional truth there and the lockdown just sent me back to another lockdown,
which we experience in the film, which is where this very sort of
violently changing period of uncertainty had a big impact
on our home and our family and our street and our country .
And it felt like this was a story that was starting to have some resonance
for people further afield.
So I felt as though there might be some recognition, which it seems
people seem to be finding it in.
What was it like searching for the right fit to play?
And especially for the right fit.
What was it like searching for the right fit to play members of your family?
I think, again, all the actors took it on a little in their own direction, I think.
And that was good. As always, we always try to open things up.
It wasn't easy, the sort of piece of personal therapy for me.
It's an attempt to tell a story that you think may have some resonance elsewhere.
So it needed the contributions that she writes us
and the others to not make it some sort of directly
autobiographical thing, but to bring some of their own imaginations,
sometimes to their own lives.
Judi, Jude [Hill] Jamie [Dornan], all improvised in ways that were really excellent.
Dame Judi, you're the grandmother what directions
was he giving you to play the part again, many directions.
I relied on fostering.
I thought it was funny
that you need me.
You have to the way you have to.
I mean, I'm tired. I'm tired.
You rely on being told what to do, but also responding.
We would sometimes run the film and improvise and keep it running.
And after minutes, minutes of minutes,
I don't talk about different lines and alternate lines.
And Judi was like they all were really excellent
at being in that moment, determined to just try and find that moment
when some piece of life is caught , nothing is prepared.
But the sort of the sort of interior life that they've been developing
is there and present. And then what comes out is sort of gold.
And she did that so many times.
She's a master whether she likes it all.
Poignant and important.
And when it's ready to begin, you know, he said this,
you know, you'll need to be able to.
The accent, how did you get the accent so
good? And with difficulty
brings together nostalgia, but also a nightmare throughout
the course of the film. What do you hope people will take away from it?
I think, you know, maybe
a more sort of reflection, whatever they'd like to take away from it.
But that's a sort of mixture of
the sort of the value, the sort of the pains
and the joys of family life, if you're lucky enough to have one.
Even even when it's under threat and how sometimes
this is a very Belfast thing, how gallows humor at times of extreme
sort of difficulty can necessary to allow us
to sort of put one foot in front of the other,
that sort of sharp witted
grim gallows humor.
I think Belfast has a particular kind of handle.
What was it like working with Kenneth on set and this incredible cast?
It just it was just like a family from the very, very beginning.
And of course, we were in a moment
that people weren't going out, weren't going to have lunch.
And we thought this little space and and and we mean maybe just business to make.
If you're taking critical care of everybody, we were all tested every day.
And, you know, to come
I mean, to suddenly go to work during that time and see other albeit
masking everything until the moment that you had to go and do a scene.
I mean, it can be incredible, really incredible, especially when
so many of my friends didn't get the chance to work during that time.
And, you know, now,
you know, you all think about it affects me so much.
And all the people in the theaters at the moment, all these people
who've been at the stage door for two years, they didn't have a job, but
they didn't know that.
That is, crews and people work backstage
and people in the audience don't see much
, absolutely essential, they're not.
You have to do this in that kind of thing.
So it hasn't been quite so long for all of us.
Everything is we know, which it seems now.
It's really it's going to get to be good.