Its a film that sublimely explores what constitutes the makeup of family in our era.
So its my first period drama, set in 1894 London.
Im really looking forward to it and filming in London, she adds.
Olivia Colman and John Lithgow in ‘Jimpa’Mark De Blok
But I want to focus onJimpaand its stunning performances.
I just couldnt get it to her.
And so we put it aside, and we put it aside for a few reasons.
Olivia Colman (Getty Images)
We had another film we were going to make and then some health crisis in our family.
So the film got pushed around and we waited.
And she just sent it straight to her.
And within a week, Olivia and I were on a call and she was signed on.
It was so fast.
Olivias response is very instinctual to everything, I think, that she does.
She has an instinct about it.
And she goes for that, and thats what makes her so watchable and so empathetic.
I nod in complete agreement because Colmans Hannah is the heart of the movie.
It just shone through.
I wonder how similar Hannah and Hyde are.
Parts of her are like me, Hyde responds, laughing.
Parts of her, I think, are very Matt Cormack, whos my co-writer, interestingly.
But he gets to hide a little bit more than me.
But Olivias so warm, and so this kind of combination happened.
I ask Hyde if Colman studied her at all during the films shoot.
I thought she didnt, honestly.
Id think, Oh my God, shes literally doing me there.
Shes literally just making a joke to me about myself.
… She was just very me.
Colman captures tender moments of Hannahs underlying sense of pain about her parents.
And I think Olivia really understood that from the first conversation that I had with her.
Shes just tapping into something about this and really unjudgmental about it.
And I mean, Olivias emotions are right there on the surface.
Sometimes shed say to me, You dont want me to cry, do you?
And Id be like, No, dont talk to me about it yet.
Because things just trigger for her really quickly.
I think that is true, says Hyde.
He still raised us.
Hyde argues that there is a lot of drama without conflict.
I think things can be dramatic and tense and under the surface.
Its like conflict is the thing that will shift everyone.
But funnily enough, as we started to write the film, conflict just kept coming up.
How the characters deal with it is interesting, especially with that family thats just inherently full of conflict.
So these things were there.
But my parents made a very strong decision to co-parent and to raise us together.
Like my dad was sometimes here and sometimes away.
And they made a very clear choice to not speak badly of each other and to raise us together.
So my mom would say that my dad was like her brother after a while.
Its part of your family, but youre not romantically involved.
They stayed together a long time.
It was like, What does this look like in our life?
How does this work when weve made a commitment to have children?
Trying hard not to reveal any spoilers here, but lets just say that LithgowsJimpaisnt a shy bloke.
He was like, Ive been naked forever.
The thing about John is hes so enthusiastic in a way thats incredibly freeing.
He walks into a room and hes like, tThis is a wonderful room!
This is how they would do this.
Im not going to shy away from something.
She adds, He gets his claws right inside.
Aud Mason-Hyde is seated beside their mother during the chat on Zoom.
I ask Mason-Hyde whether they contributed to the script that Cormack and their mother penned.
They say that they were quite involved in its development.
I feel like I grew up with Frances in some strange way.
When have I actually been too much trying to appease everybody and not stand up for my child?
How do I put that into a story?
it’s possible for you to talk about it.
And I think its this great moment.
Mason-Hyde notes the numbers by King Princess, a wonderful queer artist.
They turn to their mother, observing rather touchingly, and you put it in the movie.
Hyde responds with equal warmth, We could never replace it.
The director tried different songs and it was always just that one.
Everythings just chaos, and Aud just with Zoe just homed in and just sang it.
And thats the take thats in the film.
Hyde says: Auds been in our filmmaking world for their whole life.
And so we are natural collaborators.
We talk about everything.
We build things together all the time.
So to do that on such a huge scale was not difficult at all.
This is normal life, this is my life, Hyde allows.
Theyre our loved ones, our neighbors, ourselves.
We are all here living this life.
In flashbacks, the film focuses on the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s.
That was a very important part of the story for us.
