by Gill Pringle
With Reese Witherspoon producing and Taylor Swift volunteering to contribute a song, Where the Crawdads Sing has quickly became the most hotly anticipated romantic thriller of the year.
Based on Delia Owens’ 2018 best-selling novel, this mystery-soaked Southern drama centres on a young woman, Kya, who has been abandoned in the marshlands to raise herself, and now finds herself a suspect in a murder case.
Directed by relative newcomer Olivia Newman, she quickly assembled an almost all female heads of department to shepherd in a faithful rendering of this beloved story.
A film graduate from New York’s prestigious Columbia University, Newman is an alum of the prestigious Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs, going on to direct short films as well as several episodes of popular TV series, Chicago Fire.
Making her feature film directorial debut in 2018 with sports drama First Match starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Newman was wondering what she would do next when the pandemic struck.
Here she tells FilmInk how she came to direct the film adaptation of this best-seller.
“So, it was in the middle of the pandemic July 2020, and I was sent the book and the script and I read the book in two days, which I’m sure a lot of people say, and it felt like something that I just had to be involved with. I just fell head over heels for it and so I put together a pitch and I met with Hello Sunshine’s Lauren Neustadter and Sony’s Erin Siminoff. And then from there, I started pitching up the ladder and got the job.”
Was Daisy Edgar-Jones already attached for the lead role of Kya?
“No, she wasn’t, but she was the first person we cast. She’s British and has an incredible knack for dialects and accents.”
What is it about Kya that resonates with audiences?
“Kya is incredibly resilient and resourceful. I think what I love is that even though she’s vulnerable and very sensitive, she also has an incredible strength at her core and I loved watching her develop this sense of self-worth and, through her own artistic skills and scientific studies, really discovering who she is and what her voice is. I think it’s a character that is very universal in that journey.”
Did you film in the same area as the setting of the book?
“The book takes place in North Carolina, and it’s set in the ‘50s and ‘60s. When we were looking, we wanted to make sure that we could capture similar landscapes. And we did shoot some of the coastline of North Carolina because you can’t replicate that. But it was actually hard to find some of the landscapes that are in the book that haven’t yet been developed. And there’s been a lot of development in North Carolina. So, we actually ended up finding the marshes and the swamps in and around New Orleans where we got to have all those textures of big wide marshlands, the moss-covered trees and the old oak trees, many of which had been cut down in North Carolina.”
Did you know what Crawdads are?
“Now I do! I’ve eaten them! We had a lot of crawfish in New Orleans.”
How was it shooting this during the pandemic?
“That was actually the least of our challenges. I mean, it was hard, and it changes things for sure, but we followed all the most stringent rules and we never got shut down because of COVID. We got shut down because of rain; torrential rain and floods and lightning storms and all of that – but never COVID.”
On top of the flooding, we hear that the creepy crawlies were out in full force too?
“We shot in May and June in New Orleans, and we chose those months because May is supposedly one of the drier months. And it rained an unprecedented amount. I mean, it broke records for how much it rained in May. So, all of our cover sets got pulled up. And then we headed into June where I had hoped that we’d be indoors. We headed into the hottest month and we had all these exteriors to shoot and many of them completely flooded where we built Kya’s house. It rained so much that you couldn’t walk to her door – it was like a lake around it. So even when the sun finally came out, we had to shut down production for five days as we waited for the waters to recede enough so that we could actually reach our set. It was quite challenging. And then of course the bugs come out at night, and we learned about this great netting that you can wear to keep the bugs away from your skin and we discovered an amazing natural bug spray that’s made in Florida that for whatever reason keeps off the Louisiana mosquitoes so we survived.”
Is Daisy an outdoorsy kind of girl? Was she good with all that stuff?
“She loves doing all the work. She learned how to drive a boat; she learned how to fish. She did a lot of movement work to get comfortable walking around the marsh barefoot, she loved doing stunts. We were so shocked – because whenever we had a stunt sequence, we’d have our stunt double at the ready and Daisy would always nail it on her first take and we really wouldn’t ever need the stunt double to come in. She was a diver in high school and does a lot of swimming and diving and underwater work. She was just incredible, doing all of her own stunts. I don’t know that there’s anything Daisy can’t do. Truly.”
Directors always say it’s hard to work underwater?
“Actually, it’s hard to work on boats – and it’s hard to work on boats in scorching heat where you have no shade and it’s slow. And you have a fleet of boats. It’s not just that the actors are on one boat and the cameras on another boat but then hair and makeup is on another boat and props, so to get anything to set, which is floating, means bringing boats in and out. To get to the bathroom, you have to go onto a boat and then come back, so it’s just slow. But we did a lot of planning to know exactly how we were going to shoot in the most efficient way possible. But it was hard. I mean, luckily the actors all learned how to ride boats, even our young actress JoJo Regina [as young Kya] who was 10 years old, was amazing in her boats, so they could get around and they could move positions and they didn’t need help, so that was really great.”
How did you shoot the underwater parts?
“We shot those in a tank and that was actually very simple compared to everything else. I mean, Daisy dives into the water, water that had alligators in them and she was ready and willing. Of course, we had animal safety, to make sure that it was safe, but she dove into that swamp!”
How did Taylor Swift come to write and record the finale song, ‘Carolina’, for the movie?
“She had read and loved the book so much that she felt compelled to write a song for it. And it was before we had even shot the movie. And when I heard this song, I couldn’t believe it – it was tonally so perfect and beautiful. And every time the movie ends and that song comes on, it captures the feeling you have at the end of the movie where you need to sit and digest what just happened and the song is like the perfect transport for those feelings. It really sets exactly the right tone, but it was very serendipitous in that way because we hadn’t shot the movie yet. And so, for it to be such a perfect match, was like a gift.”
David Strathairn bring so much class to any project. How did he come on your radar for this?
“Oh my gosh, I mean, David Strathairn has been on my radar forever. I think he’s just a legend and everybody felt that when he arrived on set. He arrived towards the end of our shoot, when we did all the courtroom and jail scenes. It was interesting because when we had the courtroom, we had our galleries filled with extras, playing the members of the town that were at the trial, and every time he would give one of his speeches and I would call cut, everybody would start applauding and it just became a thing, where it felt like you were at a play because you are watching this incredible actor just captivate, and you’re doing take after take, the same thing over and over. You just felt completely captivated. A friend of mine even said, ‘David Strathairn can shift in his chair and you’re glued to the screen’, because every moment is so real and he’s so present. So, for all of us, it was like working with a legend.”
What does Reese Witherspoon bring to this as an executive producer?
“She had a passion for the book from the beginning. And that passion carries all the way through. She’s so smart and was incredibly supportive. From the very first meeting I had with her, she said, ‘It’s one of our missions to give women opportunities that they haven’t yet been given’. This is my first studio movie. And she said, ‘How can we support you in making that leap?’ And that was the stance from the beginning. Her whole team at Hello Sunshine, they’re there for you every step of the way and really had my back. And it’s because of who’s at the top!”
And she was supportive of you having all female heads of department too?
“It’s not something I go into making a movie thinking about, but it often happens naturally. When I’m looking to hire my crew and my heads of department, I make sure that the list we’re looking at is diverse. From there, we hire the people who share the same vision. It just happened that all of these people I hired happened to be women – it may be that these women were all attracted to the project and shared the same vision for that reason; I don’t know, but they were the best for the job.”
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
“I hope that it’s transportive. I think that Kya is a character that anybody can relate to. There’s something very universal about her struggle to survive and to find her voice and to really claim her self-worth and it’s an epic romance as well. I know that people are going to fall in love with Kya and Tate. Also, it’s such an ode to nature which is something that people love about the book – Delia’s love for nature is palpable. I hope that Kya’s relationship to the marsh and all that it brings her, is really special. I also hope that it’s the kind of movie that people can go and see with their families and with loved ones. I sat in the editing room for a year with this footage, and I miss it. It’s like a world that you just don’t want to leave because it’s so unique and she’s such a specific and unique character that I hope people will want to come back and revisit her.”
Where the Crawdads Sing is in cinemas July 21, 2022
