Carey Mulligan Tackles Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd

While most Americans first learned about Carey Mulligan from her starring role in An Education, and she was even nominated for an Oscar for it, she had been working for years doing British theater and television. The attention she got from that movie has helped her to rack up quite an impressive array of films working with some of the top directors like Steve McQueen’s Shame, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Talks, Nicolas Refn’s Drive, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis.

In most of those cases, Mulligan has taken on a number strong and determined women that don’t take crap from anyone, and that theme continues into Mulligan’s latest role playing Bathsheeba Everdeen in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, directed by Denmark’s Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt). Unlike what we normally see in period costume dramas, Bathsheeba isn’t the type of woman to swoon over every suitor who seeks her hand in marriage. In fact, her demeanor is quite the opposite, as she finds herself being sought after by a rugged shepherd (Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts), a soldier (Tom Sturridge) and a wealthy but socially awkward landowner after inheriting her uncle’s farm.

ComingSoon.net sat down with Ms. Mulligan earlier this week for the following interview, in which we spoke about her current movie, her next movie Suffragette and her now Tony-nominated turn on Broadway with Bill Nighy in “Skylight.”

ComingSoon.net: When I sat down to watch the movie, I read through the notes and I realized, “Oh, no, it’s going to be one of THOSE movies.” I was a little nervous but was then surprised how much I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

Carey Mulligan: Oh, good.

CS: There have obviously been a lot of costume dramas about women torn between multiple suitors, but this is different somehow. Can you talk about what interested you in it? Did you know Thomas Hardy’s book before getting the script?

Carey Mulligan: I knew of Thomas Hardy and I’d read “Tess” and I’d read “Mayor of Casterbridge,” I’d never read “Madding Crowd.” I knew an outline of the story. No, I read it after learning that Thomas (Vinterberg) was making the film of it, because I was a big fan of Thomas, but I read the book and then I read the script. I think it was that I had been pretty determined not to do a costume drama for a while. I had done a lot of period films and I’d done a lot of Victorian British literature when I was coming up, when I was younger, I did lots of TV and stuff, and I wasn’t really interested in doing it, but I did find this story different and I loved the book so much. I thought she was such a great character and I love that the story starts with her turning down a proposal of marriage. All the Austen novels start with a girl wanting to find a husband, and this story doesn’t start like that and that’s sort of what I was drawn to.

CS: You mentioned Jane Austen, and there have been decent adaptations of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility,” and those feel like the barometer for these kinds of movies and this feels different. Bathsheba is a strong woman who shows that she can hold her own without a man.

Mulligan: Yeah, it’s just something that hasn’t crossed her mind. She’s just completely outside of her own social convention and she’s just doing her own thing, and marriage isn’t something that isn’t in her worldview at the time

CS: Thomas is your third Danish director, so how did you end up working with all these Danish directors? Have you been following Danish cinema and creating a checklist of those you want to work with?

Mulligan: Ha! No, I was a massive fan of Nic Winding Refn, which is why I ended up in “Drive,” because I was sort of determined to work with him, and Lone (Scherfig, director of “An Education”) is obviously brilliant, and then Thomas, I was a big fan of his work and I loved his films. That was a thing. “Far from the Madding Crowd” on its own with some directors would not be as interesting a prospect but Thomas directing was the reason that I wanted to do it really, because of “Festen,” because of “The Hunt,” particularly “The Hunt,” because I also knew it was the same director of photography. And then I liked that they all have a similar sensibility in a way, which I’m quite drawn to, because they’re very blunt and straight-forward, the Danes, which makes working really easy but I also trust them because they don’t bullsh*t, which is a nice way of working. They’re really straight up and say “This is good and this is bad.” I remember doing “An Education” with Lone and she would come up to me after a take and say, “That wasn’t funny. Can you do one where you’re funny?” and just walk away and be like “Yeah, cool.” I like that. I don’t like being like (puts on an American accent) “Yeah, that was great but let’s try it…” Arrrgh! We’ve not got very much time, so let’s just do it, and all of them are like that. They’re really straight up.

Mulligan: I feel the same way, yeah. (laughs) Who knows? 

CS: This movie shows off a lot of your different skills. I have to imagine that horseback riding is something you learn while in drama school.

Mulligan: No, I think it’s one of those things that everyone says they can do on their CV and when you have to do it, you quickly kind of learn it. No, I rode horses once or twice but I had never done it properly so I had to learn it properly for this film to sort of feel comfortable to come in and out of scenes on them. I obviously had a double for the really, really fast riding, but yeah, that was a cool thing to spend some time on and all the rest of the stuff—the farm skills and sheep dipping, I kind of loved. I’ve got a friend who is a sheep farmer so that was all particularly familiar. 

CS: I wanted to talk with Thomas about the amount of animals he has in this movie.

Mulligan: Yeah, it makes for a lot of ADR when you have that many sheep.

CS: Let’s talk about the three men in this movie. Michael Sheen is a great actor and I love everything he does. I guess the other two may not be as well known, so can you talk about working with Matthias and the others?

Mulligan: Yeah, Matthias, I had seen in “Rust and Bone” right before we started talking about the boys in the film. I signed onto it I think November-time and then sort of in the New Year, we started talking about the boys. I saw “Rust and Bone” and thought he was so extra-ordinary and so this great presence as well, and also, an actor who doesn’t need to say very much to convey a lot. And so I went into the meeting with Thomas and said that I thought Matthias was incredible, and he was like, “Well, he’s #1 on the list, he’s the guy we want.” It’s just such a hard role to fulfill, because he has relatively little to say but he has to be this very present character the whole way through, and with such integrity and honesty. I think Matthias is really honest in the way he portrays his characters. They all feel very real. He doesn’t sort of act. And then Tom (Sturridge)… yeah, Tom and I have been friends since we were 18 and we’d never gotten to work together before. He has this sort of dangerous quality that I think is so extraordinary in Troy, and he looks so different from the other two. He looks like a toy soldier in his outfit, and he always felt like what we all imagined that character to look like when we read it in the book.

CS: What about Michael? He’s a charming guy and he’s playing almost the complete opposite of charming.

Mulligan: Actually, the first thing I ever saw Michael in, I think I was 17, and I saw him in this thing called “Dirty Filthy Love” where he played somebody who was struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder, and he was unbelievable, extraordinary, and ever since then, I’ve wanted to work with him. But yeah, though I’ve seen the film once, I was totally heartbroken by him, because I think he just does so much with that character in a relatively little amount of time on screen, you really see him descend from being this strong, proud character to kind of losing his mind. I think he did it amazingly, but yeah, he’s so great to work with. 

CS: Later this year, you also have “Suffragette.” I don’t know if you’ve drawn to these strong women roles and won’t consider other things or it’s something you end bring to the characters from your own personality. Even the women in “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Drive.” So is that something that you always look for?

Mulligan: Yeah, it’s sort of what I look for really. I mean, it’s not necessarily that they’re particularly resilient people necessarily. They’re not heroines. The character that I played in “Shame” was an incredibly damaged person, but she was real and felt like sort of a real human being and she had a strength to her and a love for her brother that she was trying to save him in a way. I think a strength is great and it’s good and I feel strongly about representing strong female characters on screen, but it’s more about them feeling like real people, because so often, women are just represented as sort of bizarre two-dimensional versions of themselves and not actually real women. These three—well, “Skylight” I’m doing on stage, but “Suffragette” and “Madding” all just sort of came along in quick succession, but they all do seem to have a pretty strong feminist theme. Especially “Suffragette” obviously.

CS: I was just reading that it was the first film shot at the House of Parliament. I was surprised because I felt like I’d seen lots of movies there, but I guess they always rebuild it on soundstages.

Mulligan: Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s the first film in like 60 years that’s been allowed to film there and we recreated this famous riot called Black Friday where women marched to Parliament because they had another petition to get the vote rejected by Parliament, and they marched down there and there were huge amounts of reports about police brutality and women beaten and kicked by policemen and taken to prison. We recreated that riot in Parliament and it was amazing. 

CS: You mentioned “Shame” earlier and you do sing in a lot of these movies. I was listening to Josh Horowitz’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast earlier and you said you didn’t like singing, which I thought was strange, because you’ve had a number of really memorable singing moments in movies.

Mulligan: Yeah, it’s an interesting thing that’s just come up in these scripts that there’s always a singing moment. I liked it in this one because it was with Michael, and it was sort of an interesting moment because it was the first time she and Boldwood had any connection. No, I never relish it or look forward to it. I always feel slightly nervous but it’s always fine.

Mulligan: Yeah, I do. Theater was what I wanted to do when I was growing up so theater’s always fun. But I think the theater, you have to find that the writing has to be amazing and the character has to be one that you really love to be able to do it for a long, long time, because after a certain period of time, you go through phases of finding them really hard. You are doing it 8 times a week, especially “Skylight” is incredibly emotional and full-on, so you do it eight times a week, it can get exhausting, but the writing is so good that you always have something new to do. I enjoy it for that reason.

CS: I know I can never be a stage actor because I think after 20 or 30 performances, if I knew a popular line was coming up, I would just throw it out there then put my arms up waiting for the inevitable applause.

Mulligan: Yeah, yeah. It’s a surreal thing. We had a week off because I had to go to London to promote this film and when we came back, it was so weird, because I never had a week off a play before, and it’s such a bizarre thing actually, standing up in front of a thousand people and putting on a costume and acting live. It’s odd. If you think about it too much, it’s weird.

CS: But it’s also doing the same thing for an extended period of time, but are you able to make changes and develop the character as it goes along or is it always the same after working it out in rehearsal.

Mulligan: There’s a certain amount of consistency you have to have for it to work, but yeah, within that, you can try different things all the time and sometimes they don’t work and sometimes they do, which is sort of what keeps you entertained through the run when it’s a long, long run. 

CS: Last time we spoke was for “An Education” where it was still fairly new to do all this press so how has that been since then doing this part of the job, which is not the most fun part of being an actor I’d assume.

Mulligan: (laughs) It’s actually funny. I think back when we met when I was doing that stuff, I had no idea what was going on. I was pretty freaked out by everything and I found red carpets terrifying and I found all of it a bit overwhelming, but I think with a bit of growing up and I’ve done it a more, I find some conversations about film really interesting so I enjoy those parts of junkets and when they ask me about my exercise regime or my make-up, then I find them less interesting. But there’s definitely things to enjoy, and it’s always great talking about films that you’re proud of and I’ve been lucky to work on a string of films that I’m kind of excited to talk about. I don’t worry about red carpets because I don’t care. (laughs) In a way that I used to be so worried. Now I just think it’s tomorrow’s chip paper. The news cycle is so fast, it doesn’t matter what you look like ultimately in the grand scheme of things, so I think I found a place where I sort of do the job and get it done.  

CS: Any idea what you’re going to do once you’re done with “Skylight”?

Mulligan: No, not really. “Suffragette” comes out in October.

CS: I think it’s pretty good odds that will be at Toronto.

Mulligan: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, we’ll see, but I’m excited about that and it will be fun to hang out with all those guys. We have such a cool cast. Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Marie Duff and Meryl Streep and all these amazing people, so it will be fun to do that. And I think other than that, I’ll just wait for the right thing to come along, which it hasn’t yet. So, holiday I think…

CS: Nice. I think some actors feel like they have to work constantly, but when you’re in a play for so long, you have to feel like taking a couple months off.

Mulligan: Yeah, there’s gotta be a light at the end of the tunnel. I think just that and maybe something interesting will come up hopefully.

Far from the Madding Crowd opens in select cities on Friday, May 1 and expands to more places on May 8. Look for our interviews with director Thomas Vinterberg and Michael Sheen soon.