Currently starring in Dune: Prophecy as the Mother Superior of the mysterious sisterhood that becomes the Bene Gesserit, Emily Watson earlier this year scooped the Silver Bear Best Supporting Performance award at the Berlin Film Festival for her role as a different sort of formidable Mother Superior in Irish drama Small Things Like These.
The Cillian Murphy-starrer is directed by Tim Mielants and based on Claire Keegan’s acclaimed eponymous novel which has been adapted by Enda Walsh. Watson plays Sister Mary, whose convent is concealing a Magdalene Laundry, businesses run jointly by the Church and the Irish state where unwed mothers were consigned to repent of their sins, do hard labor and ultimately deliver their babies for adoption.
Although Watson doesn’t have much screen time, her impact is spine-chilling. In her review for Deadline, Stephanie Bunbury wrote that Watson “brings an urgent sense of high stakes… she seems to vibrate with menace.”
The story takes place in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1985. Murphy’s Bill is a devoted husband, father of five daughters and coal merchant living in the traditional Irish town of New Ross in County Wexford. During his delivery rounds, he discovers that the local convent is in fact a cruel institution that takes in so-called ‘fallen girls and women.’ His reaction to this discovery forces him to confront some hard truths about the convent, his hometown — and his own life.
In a key scene, Bill is essentially trapped into taking tea and cake with Sister Mary. It’s a two-hander that Murphy has previously told me is “so bloody powerful because of what Emily does in that scene.”
Deadline recently spoke with veteran two-time Oscar and three-time BAFTA Film Award nominee Watson about her experience on Small Things Like These, which she says was sparked when Murphy had “a sort of dream” that she should play Sister Mary.
Small Things Like These is produced by Murphy and his partner at Big Things Films, Alan Moloney, along with Artists Equity’s Matt Damon and Drew Vinton; and Catherine Magee. Exec producers are Ben Affleck, Michael Joe, Kevin Halloran and Niamh Fagan.
Lionsgate released Small Things Like These in the UK, Ireland and the U.S. in November, with over $6M in global box office so far as international rollout continues.
The conversation below has been edited and condensed for clarity.
DEADLINE: How did you come to be involved in Small Things Like These?
EMILY WATSON: Cillian wanted to have all Irish actors, and then, I think they were having a bit of trouble casting the role, and he said he actually had a sort of dream that it was me, so they called me up and offered it to me, and I was absolutely sold.
The book is so brilliant, and obviously anything with Cillian is. I didn’t know Tim’s work at the time, but I’ve become his number one fan since. It was a great experience. I mean, Cillian — I’ll say something quite controversial, but I think he’s even better than in Oppenheimer; his performance in this is so profound.
DEADLINE: Were you already familiar with the book?
WATSON: I wasn’t actually, no, but I went out and bought it straight away, and, you know, sort of swallowed it in one take, as it were. It’s like a poem, it’s like a breath, it’s just all perfect story.
DEADLINE: And what about tackling this character? Oftentimes, we hear actors say they try to find some empathy or understanding for the character they play and not judge them. How did you approach that?
WATSON: She is obviously very powerful and very influential in that community and doesn’t really have to do very much to destroy people. I unfortunately kind of grew up around people a bit like that.
It’s not a direct parallel in any way, but I have a sense of that — people who have such certainty that it makes them kind of emotionally dead, and a bit stupid, somehow.
It’s the most unholy, un-Christian thing that she presides over, that is within her grasp. And yet, she gets up and says, “The Lord is compassion and love” and those two sit in her heart without conflict, or if there is, it’s so buried, or she’s probably so angry… I don’t know, I think if you start to lift one little tiny bit, the whole thing is going to explode. So you have to be sort of emotionally hermetically sealed.
DEADLINE: When Cillian’s character comes to the convent and is sort of cornered by Sister Mary for tea, it’s such an intense scene. How did you work on that?
WATSON: I called Cillian before I took the job, and said, “Look, where can this woman come from? Where can she be from in Ireland? Is this how I could do it?” Once we got to set, we were fully in it, and Cillian, having been absolutely gorgeous and affable and lovely off set, was completely sort of holding himself, protecting himself from this woman. He’s holding his breath for as long as he possibly can. And it was thrilling as an actor, to go into a scene that’s that meaty. But nothing was on the nose, there was nothing kind of overt about it. There were no kind of big hitting swings to play. It was like a dance, I guess… We did it with two cameras, so we were both working concurrently. (It’s) that sense of the small people don’t matter, you don’t matter. When I saw the film in Berlin, I wanted to smash somebody out. It made me so angry. I was so enraged by it.
But it’s also because of that sense of young people being sequestered and taken away from their lives, and that’s that. I did a film about a social worker, long time ago now, but I remember the woman I played came to a Q&A, and she said, “When you make a decision about a child, it’s for life.” And that sense of power over these babies and these young women and the cruelty of it, and that it was all about shame, it’s sort of monetizing shame in a way… This powerful institution that just controls everything and there’s nothing you can do.
That’s what makes what Bill does dangerous. I mean, after the final frame of the film, what’s gonna happen? There’s something about not being a bystander.
DEADLINE: As he’s walking the girl from the convent into the house to meet his family, there’s a little tiny smile on his face and, I thought, something slightly hopeful there.
WATSON: But also this sort of slow build of that, there’s a sort of suppressed euphoria in it. And I love the fact that Cillian, of all the things that he could have done after Oppenheimer, this is where he chose to shine a light.
And watching all the relationships around him, like his relationship with Eileen Walsh (who plays Bill’s wife) is so lovely, they’ve been friends for decades. And, you know, you can’t buy that, right? It’s real, it’s right there on screen. And so many of his collaborators are people that he’d known and cherished for a long time.
DEADLINE: Speaking of time, you cast a long shadow but you’re not actually on screen that much.
WATSON: It was like two, three days’ work. We shot that one big scene in one day, which was like a massive mountain to climb, and really thrilling and a kind of terrifying thing to do, but was kind of great. And then there are other bits and pieces around it, in the town and in the church and stuff. But my visit was brief. It was just a really lovely thing that landed on my desk and I went, “Oh, what a gift.” I was on hiatus from Dune and I was thinking, “I’m gonna go mad.” And then this beautiful pearl of a piece arrived.
DEADLINE: And then the movie not only opened the Berlin Film Festival, but you won a big prize there…
WATSON: It was bit of a shock. I wasn’t expecting that, but it’s very nice to see that — to have that personally, but also to see the film recognized, because it doesn’t feed you what to think, and it asks a lot of questions.
