The British actress produced and stars in the Venice Horizons title True Things, Harry Wootliff’s adaptation of the Deborah Kay Davies novel that Le Bureau Sales is shopping worldwide. Wilson plays Kate, a bored and alienated woman who starts up a passionate relationship with a stranger, known only as Blond (played by Tom Burke, who portrayed a similarly toxic male in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir).
On why she wanted to adapt the Deborah Kay Davies novel
I was working on a play with Jude Law, and he gave me the book because he saw something in it. At the time — this was 2012 — while there were female-led stories, it didn’t feel like there was something like this: a truly subjective, really intimate, truly feminine lens into an experience like this.
On Tom Burke becoming the poster boy for bad boyfriends…poor Tom.
I’ve known Tom’s work for a long time. I saw The Souvenir, and he was extraordinary. Initially, he wasn’t my first choice because he comes across so intellectual, and I was thinking of a more two-dimensional, typical bad boy. But Harry wanted the character to be as messy and as complicated as Kate.
On the impact of more women behind the camera
More women getting behind the lens and more female influence on the actual process of cinema is creating different work, and that’s what’s exciting. There’s more parts, more subjective viewpoints, more feminine viewpoints, there’s more truth as to what it means to be a woman.
This story first appeared in The Hollywood Reporter‘s Sept. 3 daily issue at the Venice International Film Festival.
