Wicked Little Letters stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley as two women caught up in an obscene poison-pen letters scandal in the 1920s. Screen speaks to the film’s director Thea Sharrock and producers Ed Sinclair and Graham Broadbent.
With all due respect to the London Review Of Books, the fortnightly literary journal is probably not top of the reading list for screenwriters, producers and film development executives searching for story ideas. But it was a 2018 article in this highbrow publication — concerning history professor Christopher Hilliard’s book The Littlehampton Libels — that gave inspiration to writer/actor Jonny Sweet (UK TV series Chickens) for his debut feature screenplay Wicked Little Letters.
The comedy-drama — which premieres today (September 9) as a Special Presentation at TIFF — stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley as two women caught up in an obscene poison-pen letters scandal that grips the small town of Littlehampton on the English south coast in the 1920s. Film and theatre director Thea Sharrock, whose features include hit romantic drama Me Before You (2016), directs from Sweet’s original screenplay based on real-life events.
Colman became attached after Studiocanal, which developed the screenplay with Sweet, sent it to her and her writer/producer husband Ed Sinclair at their London-based production company South of the River. “I think the projects you feel most certain about tend to be purely instinctive,” explains Sinclair, who created and executive produced TV mini-series Landscapers (in collaboration with Sister Pictures’ Jane Featherstone), a true-crime story also starring Colman.
“With this one, firstly, we were just laughing our heads off when we first read it. But it wasn’t just that it was funny — it was funny in a way that enlivened the story,” he says. “Jonny has a superb and hilarious eye for human absurdity, especially among people who think of themselves as better than anyone else. He does a great job at presenting people whom we would love to see their downfall, but whom we nonetheless feel are human and not caricatures. There were huge laughs, but there was a real emotional impact too.”
For Colman, the project offered her a first full producer film credit and the chance to play “a prim, uptight, rather reserved Christian woman in 1920s England, who was hilarious for all those reasons”, says Sinclair. Her pious Edith Swan appears in contrast to the chief suspect behind the letters: Buckley’s fiery and unconventional Rose Gooding. Anjana Vasan (TV’s We Are Lady Parts) plays real-life police officer Gladys Moss, who can see beyond her male colleagues’ inept investigation to get to the truth.
After Colman and Sinclair boarded, the next step was to assign a director, as well as broaden out the producer roster with a more experienced partner for South of the River. The team came together with Sharrock and Blueprint Pictures’ producing partners Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin joining around the same time. Sharrock was then in post-production for Blueprint’s Netflix-backed feature The Beautiful Game, a drama about the Homeless World Cup soccer tournament starring Bill Nighy and Micheal Ward.
“We loved Thea’s previous films and heard glowing reviews of her from her time in theatre,” explains Sinclair. For her own part, Sharrock responded to the “freshness of voice”, “confidence” and “innocence of youth” evident in Sweet’s screenplay. “He is not somebody who had, you know, 25 rewrites — it was its own thing,” she adds.
Wicked Little Letters has resonance for modern audiences in the age of internet trolling — “receiving anonymous abuse from people you don’t know,” in the words of Sinclair. The phrase “Be careful what you post” has emerged as a possible tagline, explains Broadbent, who leads for Blueprint. “This is the analogue version of social media, and that’s quite relatable.”
For Sharrock, “The film is as much about female friendship as anything else, and that’s partly the evolvement. That’s partly Jonny’s script in the beginning, but it’s also a natural evolvement with the casting and the journey that it took. It’s a discovery of what friendship really is.”
The film is anchored in the relationship between Edith and Rose, and the casting of Buckley — who played the younger version of Colman’s character in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter — sees the two actresses share the screen for the first time. Buckley was “a really obvious first thought” for the role, says Sharrock. “Olivia was desperate to work with her,” adds Sinclair.
The challenge was that Buckley was attached to Christos Nikou’s Fingernails, which was set for an October 2022 shoot in Ontario, Canada. Fingernails producer Coco Francini did her best to help on Buckley’s filming dates, says Broadbent, but ultimately the seven-week shoot for Wicked Little Letters was locked into a September/October window, at Pinewood Studios and in English south-coast towns including Worthing and Arundel, both adjacent to the real-life setting of Littlehampton.
“It meant we were shooting in sunny autumn, and the world looks great,” comments Broadbent, “but it put enormous pressure on the production.” The producer pays tribute to the film’s “very experienced” heads of department — including cinematographer Ben Davis, whose work includes Marvel titles Captain Marvel and Eternals as well as Blueprint productions with Martin McDonagh — for helping the film through the accelerated pre-production. (“I’d walk over hot coals for that man,” is Sharrock’s take on Davis.)
Something, however, had to give. “I remember being in cast and location conversations about Wicked Little Letters, and we were still mixing The Beautiful Game,” recalls Broadbent. “I was like, ‘Thea, I think we need to pause the mix — we’ll pick it up after we finish shooting Wicked Little Letters.’ And Netflix were very supportive of that.” Sharrock pivoted between the two films, completing post on the Netflix drama (which is set to launch in 2024) after the Wicked Little Letters shoot.
Strength in depth
Reteaming with The Beautiful Game casting director Jina Jay, Wicked Little Letters was able to pull in an impressive supporting cast, including several whom Sharrock had directed before on stage, such as Joanna Scanlan, Gemma Jones and Paul Chahidi, as well as those she was keen to work with for the first time, including Timothy Spall and Eileen Atkins. Hugh Skinner, Lolly Adefope and Malachi Kirby round out the principal adult roles.
Visiting the set (where Broadbent led the day to day, with support from fellow producer Jo Wallett), Sinclair was struck by Sharrock’s “collegiate approach, as theatre directors tend to have, but without ever giving a sense that she’s not totally on top of everything”. For her part, Sharrock characterises directing as “a bit like parenthood — you always have to have the answers. But you always have to be honest that if you don’t have the answer, you say, ‘I don’t know… but I will know.’”
Colman and Buckley also shared that approach, says Sharrock. “They are both incredibly experienced, but neither of them will present as knowing everything. I could feel they are both still on their own journey. With each project, they’re still learning about themselves and what their own process is.”
The director also found that “Jessie and Olivia work completely differently, and what they need from a director is completely different. And their process, how they get from being cast to being on set, is very different.”
Despite Wicked Little Letters being based on a true story, the team’s shared assumption is that most audience members will not be familiar with the real events, and so one big consideration was the placing of the reveal: who is writing the poison-pen letters. “Telling a mystery story, and sustaining the mystery, and revealing the answer at the right time is always a tricky thing to get right,” admits Sinclair.
At test screenings held by Studiocanal — which co-financed the film with Film4, distributes in its own territories, and sells worldwide — “the audience shows a surprising variation in what they understand from the reveal”, he adds. But that’s all to the good. “There’s not anyone saying, ‘I wish I’d known sooner, or later.’ They’ve all enjoyed it in its own right. I think the work we did on how and where to place the reveal has paid off, because people find it very satisfying.”
Broadbent likewise sees Wicked Little Letters as a crowdpleaser, and a good fit for a Toronto launch, even though cast — out of respect to the current actors’ strike — will not be present on the red carpet.
“We are a European-financed film, but everyone wants to be supportive of SAG-AFTRA,” he explains. “I have a feeling this film will play really well with a large Toronto public audience. And while we’ll miss our cast, I don’t think we’re going to miss them when we enjoy the film.”
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