‘We are nothing without stories’: The Wonder in Wicklow

It’s September 2021, the global plague is still raging and, negative Covid tests secured, a set visit has been arranged to go behind the scenes of the movie adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s acclaimed novel The Wonder. Rain hammers down on the roof of a vast aircraft hangar at Dublin’s Weston Airport as a giggling Florence Pugh dashes, in period costume, to capture some selfies with cast members who have filmed their final scenes.

Shot during the pandemic, the joy emanating from Pugh and her colleagues offers a bright contrast to the grim weather and the film’s compellingly claustrophobic themes. The Wonder tells the story of deeply religious “fasting girl” Anna O’Donnell, from a tiny midlands village in Ireland, who mysteriously is still alive after refusing to eat since the day of her 11th birthday, four months ago. The story takes place in 1862, around ten years after the famine ended, with the shadow of the Great Hunger hanging over the village. Recently widowed young English nurse Mrs Lib Wright (Pugh), who worked alongside Florence Nightingale in the Crimean war, has been charged by an all-male committee in the village with the task of watching over the girl to gather evidence. This is the gothic puzzle they want the nurse to solve: after four months without food, during which she claims to be surviving only on “manna from heaven”, is Anna a medical wonder, a devious hoaxer, or – the preferred outcome of the priest on the committee – some kind of religious miracle?

[ The Wonder review: New room, much the same view ]

The film, directed by Oscar winning Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, is a domestic psychodrama dripping with religiosity, patriarchal oppression and family secrets ,all set against the backdrop of a country that’s still reeling from a national trauma. Donoghue, in an explanatory note in her 2016 novel, wrote about her fascination with history’s real life “fasting girls” and her decision to set the book during this period. “It seemed to say a lot about what it’s meant to be a girl – in many western countries, from the 16th century right through to the 20th – that these girls became celebrities by not eating,” she wrote. “I’d set it in Ireland, of course – not just because that’s my homeland, but because ever since the Great Famine of the 1840s, we’ve defined ourselves as a people intimate with hunger.”

Quiet descends on set as we watch, via a monitor, Pugh taping one of the movie’s final scenes from Anna’s bedroom in the cramped O’Donnell homestead. As part of her watch, Nurse Lib has banned all visitors to the home – people had been arriving from all over to marvel at the fasting girl and drop coins in the charity box. She has also forbidden any touching of Anna (acted with astonishing maturity by 12-year-old Kíla Lord Cassidy) by family members, including even her mother Rosaleen O’Donnell who, in an inspired piece of casting, is played by Kíla’s real-life mother Elaine Cassidy.

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Nearing the end of her two-week mission, Nurse Lib has come to care deeply for Anna and realises that her surveillance has exacerbated a potentially fatal decline in the girl’s health. Lib becomes consumed with thoughts of saving the girl, having discovered the reasons behind both the fast and the ritualistic prayers Anna offers up several times a day in the hope of getting her recently deceased brother into heaven. Without giving too much away to those who have not read the book, the brother’s death and a related family secret gradually emerge as crucial drivers of Anna’s behaviour.

At one point on set the action is paused by Lelio because of the noise from an aircraft passing overhead, the modern world momentarily crashing into the mid-19th century. Lelio, who won an Oscar for his movie A Fantastic Woman and widespread praise for films including Disobedience, adapted the novel for the screen with Donoghue and Alice Birch, one of the writers of Normal People. The movie was produced jointly with Element Pictures – who also adapted Donoghue’s novel Room for the screen - and House Productions.

On the monitor we watch Anna’s father Malachy O’Donnell (Caolan Byrne) and Sister Michael (Josie Walker), the nun charged, alongside Nurse Lib, with watching Anna in eight hour shifts. With the scene finally in the can, and Pugh now free to go on a selfie spree with fellow cast members, we’re led by production designer Grant Montgomery into the O’Donnell house set, a rough-hewn, two-storey famine-era cottage full of the religious paraphernalia of the day, cards hand painted with images of saints, crucifixes and candlesticks modelled on icons.

[ Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder marks new chapter for Netflix in Ireland ]

We learn that this is the first Netflix production shot entirely in the State. For the exterior scenes, the O’Donnell cabin, surrounded by bog, was built from scratch in Co Wicklow’s Sally Gap, where, apart from some scenes in Dublin, much of the filming took place. The flat, featureless bogland depicted in the novel was deemed a bit too boring to sustain the entire film and so there are also heart-stopping cinematic views of the hills and valleys of Wicklow which no doubt Fáilte Ireland will be thrilled about. While filming, Pugh posted photos of the county on her Instagram account contrasting her usual Hollywood stamping ground in LA with Hollywood, Co Wicklow: “Less traffic, greener hills, great Guinness.”

A modern cafe in Redcross Co Wicklow was transformed into Ryan’s Spirit Grocery – the grocery/bar/shop/lodgings where Nurse Lib is staying. It’s there that she becomes close to journalist Will Byrne (Tom Burke) who is trying to get to the bottom of the fasting girl story for his newspaper. (In Donoghue’s book Will is an Irish Times journalist but disappointingly in the movie he is reporting for the Daily Telegraph.)

We’re standing on the dirt floor of the O’Donnell house, as Montgomery explains that for a movie such as this, the props would normally be sourced in England. In this case of this movie each element, from the thatched roof and the “creepie” log chairs, to the religious pictures and iconography, has been found and in many cases handcrafted here.

An O’Donnell family portrait hangs on the wall, a key plot point in The Wonder. Montgomery explains that during this period of history, when somebody in the family died, they sometimes took a family portrait with the dead body, propping them up for the photograph and painting eyes on the eyelids of the deceased person. An early photographic “wet plate” method was used to recreate the chilling photo on the wall of Anna’s dead brother Pat posing with the family.

We hope the audience go along with us on this journey, this story we’re telling

Having explored the upper level of the house and Anna’s bedroom, we’re brought to meet some of the cast. Niamh Algar plays Kitty, a “slavey” in the O’Donnell house. In Lelio’s adaptation she also becomes a narrator. In a bold move, the opening scene of the movie reveals the actual sets we visited inside the Weston Airport hangar, pulling the curtain back and allowing the audience to go behind the scenes. In this film about the tales, real and invented, the characters are telling each other, Lelio uses this device to remind us how we all put our faith in stories in various ways.

“We are nothing without stories,” Algar’s voice is heard telling the audience as the camera pans around the airport hangar. “We invite you to believe in this one”. The camera then moves to the interior of a boat where we see Lib travelling to Ireland as the story of The Wonder begins to unfold. At the end of the film, Algar stands in front of the sets, addressing the audience directly once again.

This is Algar’s first period drama. The Virtues and Raised by Wolves actor was “deeply moved” by the script and sees the O’Donnell family as representative of Ireland at the time, “people not wanting to go through change and meanwhile Anna’s character wants to hang on to any shred of control and integrity. It’s very poignant”.

The Mullingar woman cuts turf in one scene. “I got a lesson. It’s actually very therapeutic and satisfying,” she says. “It cuts like butter”. She has enjoyed Lelio’s “stripped back” approach to filmmaking. In his work, she observes, “you’re just drawn to people’s faces… a lot of these characters are putting up fronts or putting on masks, trying to conceal what they hold dear to them, especially Anna who’s carrying around this big secret. Sebastián is very delicate, I think, in letting the audience get drawn into the story in that way. And even the way in which he starts the film… we hope the audience go along with us on this journey, this story we’re telling. He’s a true filmmaker, a true storyteller.”

When we did the table read over Zoom, Kíla blew us all away, she was that good

She talks about a sort of “trickle down kindness” that was in operation on the set. From Lelio at the top through to Pugh and her fellow actors. She is an admirer of Pugh, star of Midsommar, Little Women and more recently Don’t Worry Darling. “I’m such a big fan of hers, and she really set the tone on set with this incredible energy of kindness. Her talent seeps through in every single frame and she is in every single frame. When you’ve a player like that, it’s a real joy to come to work.”

While filming she found it “heartbreaking” to see the control religion had on families at the time. “The need to be cleansed of your sins… how after the trauma the country had gone through, religion was the thing they grabbed on to in order to survive such a horrific situation.” The story shows, she says, “how religion in some ways, gives hope, but can be used to control”.

She describes Kíla Lord Cassidy, who plays Anna, as “a little superstar”. “When we did the table read over Zoom she blew us all away, she was that good,” she smiles.

Later, Elaine Cassidy takes up the story of Kíla being cast as Anna and how she, Kíla’s real-life mother, ended up playing Anna’s mother Rosaleen O’Donnell. Now 12-years-old, Kíla grew up with two actor parents in London. Her father is Stephen Lord who has starred in EastEnders, Shameless and Coronation Street. Elaine, who got her break in 2001 playing Runt in Disco Pigs, explains that Kíla has been mucking in with the family business since the age of five, helping her parents do self-tapes when roles came up.

To stand in front of a committee of men and not express any sort of opinion or anything, when you are wearing the costume, there’s no acting required

“I’d be saying, Kíla you’re coming in too late with the cues and she’d be like ‘sorry mum’.” She grew up pressing record and reading lines but never went to drama groups or schools because, as Elaine says, “you can easily pick up bad habits”. Kíla’s training all happened at home and she was a natural, it turned out. Elaine had read The Wonder when the book was first optioned for a movie and originally hoped there might be a role for her. She also suggested to her agent that her daughter, who was only nine years old at the time, might be suitable for the role of Anna. Kíla had already been in a film, The Doorman, and had a manager by the time the call came for a self-tape for the role of Anna in 2021.

All that at-home drama training clearly paid off because a few weeks later, based only on that tape, Kíla was offered the part. Not long afterwards, Lelio asked Elaine if she would like to interpret the part of Rosaleen, Anna’s mother. “He told me if I had any personal or creative reasons why I didn’t want to, that was okay. But I was like, ‘you’re an incredible director. This is an incredible story that I really believe in. And I get to work with my daughter. It’s a no-brainer’.” She describes the experience of working with her daughter as “surreal”. “I was so excited for Kíla and that was enough. But to be thrown into the mix with her and to watch her work was a privilege”.

Lelio was clearly delighted to have both mother and daughter on set saying “…the mother, in the film, is really protective and territorial about the girl. And who better to defend the character of the daughter in the film than her real mother? So, yes, that was a gift. It was a precious thing to have in front of the camera.” The rest of the cast comprises some of this country’s finest character actors. The committee that hires Lib to conduct the watch includes Ciaran Hinds as Father Thaddeus, Toby Jones as Doctor McBrearty, David Wilmot as local publican Sean Ryan, Brian F O’Byrne as landowner John Flynn, and Dermot Crowley as Baronet Sir Ottway.

Musical theatre veteran Josie Walker, the daughter of Roy Walker of Catchphrase fame, plays Sister Michael. The Wonder was not her first nun rodeo having played a postulant in The Sound of Music early on in her career. The starched linen of the costume she wore as Sister Michael was a challenge: “It was oppressive and uncomfortable and, dare I say, a bit depressing really”.

“To stand in front of a committee of men and not express any sort of opinion or anything, when you are wearing it, there’s no acting required. You just sort of go into that mode. Internally, you’re thinking ‘I can’t say anything. I can’t express anything.’ Nuns are just a blank canvas and we project so much on to them don’t we? People kept saying to me when I appeared on set, ‘are you an evil nun?’”

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Walker did intensive research in preparation for her role, including visiting a Sisters of Mercy convent. It was difficult because of Covid restrictions but “they finally got in touch with me and said, if you are still interested, you can come and have a look at some of the rooms, the chapel and meet a couple of the nuns. So I just talked to them. And, there is a great deal of goodness there. Unfortunately, as we all know, there’s been some terrible situations within the Catholic faith and among nuns in particular…”

As part of her research, she uncovered a more favourable view. “I don’t think anyone’s intention is to set out and abuse people who have been through the famine to start off with, and people who had not been allowed to practice their own faith, because the emancipation of Catholics was quite fresh as well… so there was a great need for nuns and there were many reasons for people to cling so tightly to their faith.”

The Wonder is in cinemas from November 2nd and on Netflix from November 16th