IR Interview: Claire Foy For “H Is For Hawk” [Roadside Attractions]

The Inside Reel

Actress Claire Foy talks to The Inside Reel about process, characterization, primality and movement in regards to her new drama from RoadsIde Attractions: “H Is For Hawk”.

Transcript

00:00life's real serious and beautiful remember smile

00:24within helen there's you know the balance of academia but

00:27in dealing with mabel there's almost a primality so the thought versus the instinct the technique

00:33versus the instinct could you talk about finding that within helen but then also looking at helen

00:40as the inspiration within it yeah gosh that's such a good observation um yeah i mean i think

00:47that there is like a visceral addictive quality to the relationship that helen has with mabel

00:55especially in the sort of hunting sequences which is so out of the realms of what a cambridge academic

01:01would seem to be doing with their time but that's helen as a person there is this sort of poetic

01:09romantic academic side but there is also this totally passionate um dynamic humorous energized

01:23person and um i find that so appealing that both of those things can be true in one person

01:30i feel like particularly at that point in helen's life the immediacy the um the sort of ferocity

01:38and and hugeness of what it means to hunt with a goshawk is what they're desperate for and what

01:46they run towards i don't think that's necessarily true of their entire experience of being alive

01:50but at this particular um period of their life for sure dad i just saw a pair of hawks a pair yeah

01:58they were sort of gliding around each other beautiful my dad he was a quiet man with a camera

02:04watch carefully so you remember what you've seen and he was the only person who understood me

02:11and now he's gone i miss him terribly well looking at you as an actor though approaching this i mean

02:17you're dealing with a an animal i mean a trained animal at times but you know there's that primal

02:23element you know of how i mean watching you in the scenes you can see you sort of watching it but also

02:30anticipating and trying to interact could you talk about the challenge of that for you since it's

02:35it's unusual to do uh and it takes a lot of sort of back and forth i would think and trust yeah a

02:42huge amount of trust i think that was the thing that i learned early on was that i had to trust

02:47these creatures and they had to trust me otherwise the film wasn't going to work and in my experience

02:54of developing trust with another living creature so much of that is quietness and presence as opposed to

03:02anything declamatory or anything spoken so much of what builds trust is day-to-day patience understanding

03:10and love not um sort of lots of blah blah blah blah blah blah and so um i felt like you know i had a

03:21a big job to do in the sense of accurately portraying helen's journey with mabel in the journey of manning

03:31mabel whilst knowing that i had by that point garnered enough experience to make that possible

03:38um so knowing that i was relatively comfortable i suppose but at this stage helen may not have been

03:46um but also the emotional gauge was all down to me because mabel mabel was doing what mabel was doing

03:55and um it was up to me to respond and engage like you say um and to to listen and be aware but whilst also

04:04navigating what the story needed to happen for the story to be told

04:10there'll be a time when all this seems like a bad dream but dad wouldn't want us to mope

04:16you're not mope now are you no

04:22i do my research and i teach a bunch of undergrads at cambridge hi everyone but i'm not dealing with

04:28things very well at the moment professor sorry yeah great well of course the movie is about grief but

04:35it's about how society it's about perspective and perception in many ways how you perceive your life

04:41how people see you you know you looking outward there's all these things of perspective and

04:46perception especially after the death of her father could you talk about looking at perspective

04:51and perception in terms of the character because she removes herself from society and yet it's part of

04:57what makes her who she is yeah i think that what can happen in these real emotionally wrought moments

05:06in life is that your perception is destroyed what what you believe to be how the world works you know

05:13your place in it um is totally shattered because it no long the world sort of seems the rules of the

05:21world no longer seem to apply to you nor do they seem to work very well because this person who

05:27was your reason you know for so much of your life um your you know you know your stable place your

05:37kind of mentor but also your father the love of your life is now no longer here um and i think that

05:45what i sort of loved about helen's approach to mabel and also this the whole grieving process was to

05:54be unconventional and that unconventionality is innate in helen's personality that's not put on that's

06:02not show that's just their their perception of the world is so unique and we need people whose

06:09perception is that beautiful and different to be able to crack open all the different aspects of

06:16what it is to be alive and i just loved the the unpredictability and unconventional approach to

06:23this emotional kind of landscape i just thought it was beautiful i need something different

06:29i want a gostholk gostholk's the world is the maddest of raptors

06:39when i call her then you let her go

06:41i'm gonna call you mabel

06:49now you know obviously a book versus the person is very different and of course

06:54some of the greatest moments i've found in the film um i mean at one point when you're looking

06:58out of the side almost at the box there's almost like a silence and a primality sort of a feral thing

07:03going on um but can you talk about using motion and using body rhythm to sort of reflect emotionality

07:12because that's where this you know sometimes you're just not talking for a long swath of time

07:17and it's important to sort of relay that but not overplay it could you sort of talk about the challenge of

07:22that yeah i learned quite early on i remember when i worked with the director stephen dauldry

07:28he said to me i want to feel your heartbeat i want to be able to know when you're breathing

07:36that's what's going to make a difference about how we feel about this person is how much the audience can

07:43can feel you um and that was never more true than it with this character and also with working with

07:51the gos hawks i had to be able to moderate my internal rhythm to be similar to theirs or at least

08:00invisible to allow theirs to exist because they're quite frenetic and they are quite um they are on

08:07high alert all the time and i couldn't be and as a human being i am quite on high alert um and so i had to

08:14make sure that my internal rhythm was totally different but also that was really helpful for

08:20me with the portrayal of the grief and the depression that helen was sliding into because

08:26there was a quality of being submerged it felt like a lot of the time like everything was sort of like

08:32moving through very viscous water very thick water like everything every day was a struggle except these

08:41moments of pure aliveness which was when i was out in the countryside with mabel um and so i had

08:46to sort of that had to live in my body as well helen human beings can't live this well

08:59are you feeling that you're a failure well that's just a matter of fact don't be so hard on yourself

09:05it's just working out your place in the world this is very much a real world i mean you've

09:10existed in characters in heightened worlds as well could you talk to me how does that modulate the

09:16energy that you need to bring in terms of looking at the psychology of what people are going through

09:22because sometimes it can you can push it for dramatic effect but keep it grounded where did this lie

09:28because psychologically it's a it's a strange place to be in with this kind of character yeah it really

09:34is i think that there was no sort of hyper realism in the film there was no like fantastical elements

09:41which were um moments where you could zoom out and you could see that that reality was distorted or that

09:52life was had taken on a different hue it was all real and so that made it quite difficult because it

10:00it had to be entirely truthful but like you say the reality of the internal experience of this person

10:06is so uh unreal and so distorted often that um that was difficult but i i did trust that the

10:20the way in and the way out of this character and of this emotional experience of this character

10:28was to go headlong into the reality of it and not try and make my performance a dramatic version of

10:36what grief is or a dramatic version of what depression is purely own self-preservation in the sense that

10:43i believed that the audience would appreciate that more than me doing something that would have been

10:52out of character for helen or doing something that i don't identify as something that having in my

10:57experience of being alive that i have witnessed or seen or felt myself i felt like i needed to drill

11:03down into whatever my human experience was and what helen's experience was to make it communicate with

11:09people i always thought dad taught me to be detached but being with mabel it's an honest encounter with life

11:19and now i see how engaged with life dad was

11:39you

11:49you

11:56you

11:58you

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