Emily Watson Talks New Psychological Drama ‘God’s Creatures’

Moviefone speaks with Emily Watson about ‘God’s Creatures.’ “This feels incredibly authentic about a place and a way of life,” Watson said about the film.

Opening in select theaters and available on demand beginning September 30th is the new psychological drama ‘God’s Creatures,’ which was directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer (‘The Fits’).

Set in a small Irish fishing village, the movie follows Brian O’Hara (Paul Mescal) as her returns home after spending years away. His mother, Aileen (Emily Watson) works at the local fish factory and is delighted to see her son return.

But when Brian is accused of a horrible crime by his mother’s co-worker Sarah Murphy (Aisling Franciosi), Aileen decides to protect her son, rather than tell the truth, which tears their close-knit community apart.

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Emily Watson about her work on ‘God’s Creatures,’ her character’s codependent relationship with her son, working with two directors, and shooting in Northern Ireland.

Emily Watson as Aileen O'Hara in A24's 'God's Creatures.'

You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Watson, Paul Mescal, Aisling Franciosi, and directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer.

Moviefone: To begin with, what was your first reaction to reading the screenplay and what were some of the aspects of this character that you excited to explore on screen?

Emily Watson: I first read it and went, "I can smell this. I can smell the sea. I want to know who these people are because this feels incredibly authentic about a place and a way of life, but it also feels like a highly poetic Greek tragedy."

What excited me about the character was that it is based around a terrible, moral dilemma that is entirely of her own making. You see her go from a place of joy and certainty, that God has blessed her with the return of her beautiful adored son into her life, to putting herself into a place of perpetual torment because she lies to protect him in the case of sexual assault. She's like an animal, and it's an animal instinct.

I also love the fact that it raises very profound questions about a community that closes ranks and protects an aggressor. The woman is cast out. That, in different forms, is happening the world over, in terms of sexual assault. There's a moral hole in the teaching of children, and in the teachings of the church. We have to have that conversation about consent because otherwise, it's a very dangerous structure.

MF: Can you talk about Aileen’s codependent relationship with her son and how that clouds her judgment?

EW: At the beginning of the movie, he's been a son in exile. He's been gone and outcast. She, at the beginning of this movie, you see her; she prays for his return. It's the most important thing to her. You can see a desperate, deep down wish. Then she opens her eyes, and he's standing there in front of her. It's as if God has granted her wish, or by magic, she's manifested Brian. There he is.

So, she comes alive. He can do no wrong. He's absolutely given her, her life back and her joy. She lies, and she steals, and there are all kinds of things that she will do for him. Then suddenly, somebody says, "Was he home with you on the night of?" Like an animal, she just instinctively says, "Yes, he was." She lies. That sets up a chain of events that really destroys the community in which she lives. An act of sexual violence doesn't destroy one life, it's a lot of repercussions all around.

MF: Can you talk about the guilt and shame Aileen feels when she discovers the truth?

EW: I think she puts herself on a spike of moral torture. It's so conflicting. She gets to the point where she is, by the end, in perpetual torment, pain, loss and guilt. She will never get over that.

MF: What was it like working with Paul Mescal on that specific mother and son relationship?

EW: The joy, the light and the love was so easy because we all fell in love with him watching ‘Normal People,’ and he is adorable. He's the full actor package. He's really very talented and with incredibly good instincts. I didn't feel like there was any way that I wasn't working with someone who didn't have a wealth of long experience.

So, it really felt like going into play with somebody who was very experienced, very knowledgeable and talented. Going to work every day was challenging and great in the best way. Then it was very painful to go through all that very upsetting difficult stuff. But in a way, those are the reasons you get out of bed as an actor. To crunch through those things, and to do it with him was truly thrilling.

MF: Can you talk about Aileen’s relationship to Sarah before Brian returns home?

EW: They're very close. Sarah's parents have died, but the families were very close. Sarah and Brian had a relationship as teenagers, young people. She's my daughter's best friend, and we work in the same fish processing plant. I have a motherly eye over her because she's an orphan.

At beginning of the film, she's having a relationship with someone who we, as a family, don't like very much. He's not a particularly pleasant character. So, it feels entirely at odds with my relationship with her, when clearly something bad has happened to her. I go to her to comfort her, and she just bats me away. She won't see me and won't speak to me. That's just the beginning of it. I have it in my power to destroy her life, and I do.

Aisling Franciosi as Sarah Murphy in A24's 'God's Creatures.'

MF: What was it like shooting the movie in Ireland? Did it give you a real sense of these characters and the community they live in?

EW: We shot it actually in Donegal, which is astonishingly beautiful. They call it the Wild Atlantic Way. Because of lockdown we had it pretty much to ourselves. Part of the character very much came from being in that place. It's being a person who's animal and instinctual, and not intellectual, not in her head space in any way. It all felt very informed by the place where we were, and obviously the sea and how dangerous it is, and how full of fish it is.

MF: Finally, can you talk about your experience working with co-directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, and have you ever worked with two directors at the same time before?

EW: No, I haven't. I was nervous about that. How would that relationship be? But actually, you couldn't find a space between them. They had so profoundly considered and thought about every single thing and they knew what their intentions were. So, they didn't really have to confer very much about if something was working, or if it wasn't, or what they wanted to change.

After every take, one of them would go to the actors, and one would go to camera. But it was never the same one. It was utterly interchangeable. So, you never felt like you were having a conversation with Celia and then Anna would come over. It didn't matter. I didn't really notice who I was talking to.

We had a relationship that was very intense, and in the sense that I felt we were all telling the same emotional story together. It was emotional between the three of us. They really trusted me. They let me tell the story. They let me play, let those emotions that the three of us were all talking about and experiencing, they let me then have that, to play it out on my face. I's a great privilege to be in that position, to be that trusted, and to trust them. It felt like a very precious thing.