Carl Marsh speaks to Stephen Moyer, of True Blood fame, and one of the two leads in the tense, unconventional and newly released film Confession, where a priest working late finds himself confronted by an intruder with a gunshot wound… and a gun.
So, your new film Confession: with a cast of just five, and filmed entirely in a church. If there ever was a film that could be made using the pandemic to its advantage, it might be this one.
Well, a lot of friends – filmmakers and writers – were trying to work out the best way of making productions during that period of time. [Confession writer and director] Dave Beton got in touch with me and said, “I’m writing something for you. It’s going to be one location and a super small cast with a splinter crew – are you around?” It was a really weird time – I was doing homeschool with the kids at that point, and we’d [Stephen and wife and former True Blood co-star Anna Paquin] given up the idea that anybody was going to be working.
So, yeah, it was sort of constructed for me by Dave – bless him! – and perfect for it. We did it in 12 days, which was insane – in hindsight, if he’d asked us whether we wanted to do it that quickly, we would have definitely said no! But it worked really well, because you’ve got everybody masked up, and everybody’s just in that one section of the church – you could all be separated by distance.
What was the most challenging part of filming over those 12 days?
There were a few scenes where, because it was a full script and we only had those days, I’d never done them before filming, and neither had Colm [Meaney, who plays the priest confronted by Moyer’s intruder]. We had a 17-page sequence which was all one story arc scene – it was three scenes over 17 pages, but we shot it as one because of time running out. That was a 27-minute take. And you’ve got one camera on you, then you’ve got a wide, a medium, two close-ups and maybe some reverses if you’re lucky.
I’ve just described six setups, right. So if you then times that by 27 minutes, and then you’ve got the reset, the makeup and all of that, right? That is your day. So you’ve got one take, basically. Things like that were really making you feel the pressure; with most movies, with a proper budget, you’re doing two and a half pages a day, or television, where you’re doing four pages a day. We were doing 17 pages! It was intense, man.
Probably 90% of Confession is scenes with you and Colm – were such lengthy periods acting with someone taxing? Had you worked together before?
I hadn’t, but we knew of each other. We just had a lovely time. We were together for 15 days, and film sets are like separate little lifetimes – when you’re in that bubble of activity, you’re surrounded by those people. It feels like its own universe.
We were on this closed-down golf course, and it was the second lockdown – October, November 2020. Everything was locked down, we had these little wooden cabins that we were living in, and me and him would make dinner for each other every night and go through our words. It was sort of like rehearsing, not that we got a rehearsal, but it was like putting a play together.
So, are you tempted to do something like this again?
Yeah, yeah, 100%! I loved it. The only thing I’d say is that I’d ask for a tiny… little… bit… more… time. And the money would be nice. It’d be nice to be paid. [Laughter]
Confession is out now on all digital platforms.
words CARL MARSH