by Dov Kornits

“I’m just making you want me more…” says Ruth Wilson over zoom when we tell her that our interview was meant to take place 24 hours ago, but that she was a no-show. In truth, everyone got their wires crossed about the time difference between Australia and the UK, and her comment is a direct reference to the film that we are discussing today, True Things, in which she stars and also produces.

In True Things, the actress best known for TV shows Luther, The Affair and His Dark Materials, plays Kate, a thirtysomething office worker who falls for Blond (Tom Burke), who proves elusive, which makes Kate want him even more.

“There are so many people in my life who are still in those experiences, they still have endless relationships with men that don’t seem right for them,” says Wilson. “And they can’t quite extract themselves from those dynamics. And it’s like, ‘okay, obviously he’s not treating you that well, but why are you engaging in that?’ And that’s really what I was fascinated in, why do men and women find themselves in relationships that they’re blind to the realities of? And what is it that drives you to stay in that relationship or keep pursuing it? Is it expectations? Is it societal pressures? Is it the need to conform to what everyone says is right? Is it actually just a beautiful hope and imagination that humans have, that everything will be good in the end and the Disney dream of what life should be?

“For Kate, she’s definitely projecting onto this guy something that he can never give her,” Wilson continues. “She’s projecting a future. She’s projecting marriage, relationship, all sorts with him and they barely know each other. I mean, she calls him Blond. He’s only ever referenced as Blond. So, she slightly objectifies the man in a way. I always felt like, even though she appears a victim and she appears passive in many ways, she’s actually the driving force of some of these dynamics. She pursues him, she gets his number and she eventually let’s go of him when she no longer needs him.

“But nothing is that simple… Everything is, many things, many reasons why you do something and yes, this woman has a sexual appetite, and we didn’t want to negate that or shame it in any way. And that’s certainly part of her interest in having connection and having intimacy with someone. But all those other things that then project onto who this man could then be for you… maybe the initial instinct is ‘I want connection. I want to feel wanted, I want to feel connected to someone’, and then you start projecting something onto him that he can’t possibly offer you. That’s a very familiar territory and I think that’s common, and what we were exploring in this film.”

Was the book something that you found and how did this project come together?

“I was doing a play with Jude Law back in 2012/2013. This was quite a while ago. And his agents were bringing him lots of material. One of which was this book, True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies. And he said to me, ‘Ruth, I think there’s something in this. Can you read it and see what you think of it?’ I read it and we both said let’s buy the rights together.

“I ended up driving [the project] alongside Jude’s producer, Ben Jackson, who is brilliant. And then we got on Tristan Goligher, who is a producer at The Bureau, which is a production company in the UK. And he was the one that started bringing on Harry [Wootliff, director].”

Can you discuss the difference between the book and the film?

“The book goes in quite more violent territory towards the end and the relationship is much more violent and abusive. When we were in development of it, Harry and I both found the character really interesting and the character didn’t change that much, but we found we were much more interested in the initial stages of a relationship; of those is infatuation stages where it almost feels like obsession or it feels like addiction. And that’s definitely in the book. Harry used to describe it as the Midsummer Night Dream effect, that sort of magic dust of romance that you fall in love with a donkey and then you eventually wake up and you realise he’s just a donkey.

“The book’s really brilliant, the atmosphere and the very subjective lens of the book. That’s what to me really stuck out. I hadn’t felt like I’d seen much of that on screen before, a very female subjective lens on this moment in a relationship. But if we had gone down the route of a more abusive, violent relationship, it would be a completely different film. We were interested in telling a more universal story of relationships that you indulge in and five years later you realise why on earth should I get myself involved in that? And it feels like a very universal experience or a rite of passage.”

Your performance is exceptional. Did you have a particular process of getting into character?

“We’d been working on it for so long in a way, with Harry and the writing of it, she was inside me. And actually, a lot of the film came from our own anecdotes or stories about ourselves or our friends or people we knew. By the time I got to filming it, I understood her inside out, and so did Harry, and Harry also understood me and she wrote some of the character towards me. I feel like this was the most me I’ve ever been, in terms of, I didn’t feel I was putting anything on. And also, because the film exists in her subjective lens the whole time, it’s very internalised. It’s about being observed as much as anything else. It wasn’t about dictating a journey to the story. It was actually just being watched…

“And I think it’s just being this person. You’re watching this person in her own space. You’re watching this person exist on her own as well as amongst people. And so, there are intimate moments. The most intimate moments for me is her at home alone. They’re when you see the truth of who this woman is. I think it’s a very intimate film in that way. And it required me to be very honest and raw and vulnerable to being watched. At first it felt quite vulnerable, but after a while it felt really liberating.”

That’s the actor’s journey, isn’t it – you have to lose all self-consciousness?

“Most of the time, but some roles are more plotty, they’ve got more plot drive that you are telling a story in a way that’s driving to a crescendo at the end of act one. Or they’re crime thrillers. You’ve got to tell a story somewhere. The storytelling is about plot rather than about character. This felt very specifically about character and about an individual. It felt more intimate in that way. But yes, it is the job of the actor to try get to a place of unconsciousness. But that’s pretty hard…”

Have you ever had those moments?

“It’s what you always are attempting… The place you’re attempting to get to. And of course, it’s only beautiful because it’s so rare… I think on stage, I find it sometimes and on film occasionally, but it’s about trust I think. It’s like finding a place where you trust yourself, but also the people you’re working with and that’s quite difficult in any scenario. It’s rare, but when it happens, it’s beautiful and it is what you’re searching for.”

You produced this, so is this the kind of work you want to pursue?

“I think the stuff that I’ll produce will end up being fairly personal, but I don’t know, I’ve got lots of other projects which are more commercial, like playing mafia women. It’s about identifying women stories that haven’t been told and really getting into the female experience.

“That’s what my company will be doing. I feel that there are so many female stories that have happened that haven’t been told. They’re there. They’re written down, they’ve been identified. They just haven’t been told yet. And that’s part of what myself and my producing partner do is to find material that’s already existing, that people haven’t really jumped on or taken advantage of or told that story.”

True Things is in cinemas September 1, 2022

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