In Darkness, the new thriller from director Anthony Byrne (Peaky Blinders), is released this weekend and it marks a first for star Natalie Dormer. Not only is she starring in the film but she has co-written and produced the film as well and says that it was Byrne, her partner in real-life, who suggested she collaborate with him, saying:
“In 2009, Anthony had had this idea in his head for a while about a blind musician hearing a murder above her… He looking for a co-writer and was frustrated that he hadn’t gelled with people he had been speaking to and I was frustrated at the time as none of the scripts I was getting had fully-fleshed out, three-dimensional characters and it was Anthony who said ‘Why don’t you write this with me?’ and it started there.”
After starring in The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, amongst others, Dormer was looking for some more rounded, interesting characters and the chance to mould one with Byrne was something she was excited about especially as it was in a world that she had always wanted to explore, saying:
“These are complex, three-dimensional, unorthodox women. There is a heritage of that in cinema that got lost along the way, invariably those sort of anti-heroines always ended up punished at the end which is maybe the difference now in our modernity… Physically I loved Audrey Hepburn’s performance in ‘Wait Until Dark’ which was a reference for us when we were pitching the film.”
As you can imagine, Dormer is always keeping her busy and recently she wrapped The Professor and the Madman which is due this Winter in which she co-stars with Oscar Winners Mel Gibson (Braveheart) and Sean Penn (Mystic River) and she says both from an acting standpoint and a producing/directing one that is was great to watch them in action, saying:
“I’m not privy to when the film is coming out, it’s a little above my paygrade!… When you’re on a set like that you just shut up and you watch. When your standing with your director and two more directors in Mel and Sean then you just stay quiet and watch them.”
IN DARKNESS on DVD & Digital from 9 July. In select cinemas from 6 July.
