MORFYDD CLARK | INTERVIEW
On the up and up this year and with the movie Saint Maud – where she features in her first cinematic lead role – hitting cinemas this week, Penarth native Morfydd Clark talks to Carl Marsh about her world as it is right now.
Hailing from Penarth near Cardiff, though born in Sweden to a Scottish dad and a Welsh mum, Morfydd Clark crashed out of school after her GCSEs and didn’t know what she wanted to do. Fast forward to today, and she’s been in King Lear at the Old Vic in London, played Sister Clara in BBC’s His Dark Materials, and Mina Harker in Dracula, another BBC production. This year alone she has been in three cinema releases, playing two different roles in Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History Of David Copperfield.
She’s played a younger version of Sally Hawkins’ character in Eternal Beauty – which, Hawkins being one of the world’s greatest actors, itself speaks volumes. And now, with Saint Maud, Morfydd Clark also has her first lead role. A multi-award-winning future feels like a cert.
I am told that I’m not to make any mention of the Amazon Prime TV adaptation of a certain J.R.R. Tolkien’s books – the show that Morfydd Clark is currently filming in New Zealand – when I’m granted a Zoom audio interview with her; psychological horror Saint Maud is the subject of the day. Also the feature debut of writer/director Rose Glass, both were very nervous on set, Clark explains. “Jennifer Ehle [who plays the role of Amanda] took us both under her wing and kept giving us calming and motivational advice. This made it better for both Rose and myself, knowing that neither of us was the odd one out.”
Maud, Clark’s character, is a slightly unhinged figure, a private nurse recently converted to Christianity and under the impression God is talking to her to save her patient from her sins – drink, sex and the like. How would one prepare for such a role?
“I came straight to this film after shooting [Craig Roberts’] Eternal Beauty, and that character [the younger version of protagonist Jane] had schizophrenia, so it was great having that performance first before coming into this movie.” I tell her that I had interviewed Craig Roberts recently, with Eternal Beauty released just a week before Saint Maud, and he had nothing but praise for her – relatively small – role in his film.
“I love Craig. He’s one of the most talented people I have met. It’s good to know that we are both flying the flag for Wales when it comes to film around the world, and that we got to shoot Eternal Beauty at home.”
What, then, drew Clark to the role of Maud in the first place? Her performance is one primed to make the viewer feel unsettled. “I only ever get to play strange characters! That’s the truth. I have always only been offered roles that depict somebody different.”
The film isn’t all about the horror scenes, but it brings home more of the scare factor for me in a part of the movie where her character is raped. It shows Maud as a vulnerable, naïve person, preyed upon by an eventual rapist. The scene, Morfydd tells me, was quite difficult for her.
“I found the rape scene very hard to do. I was playing a woman who was not only just being taken advantage of, but has a mental health condition, and it was important I portrayed it right seeing as stuff like this goes on all the time around the world. I had to act in that scene by not showing any real emotion when it was happening, just like somebody in that position would, with or without those mental health conditions. That was hard.”
To conclude, I ask her if she was more at home filming smaller productions than bigger ones. “I’ve only ever worked on smallish scale ones,” Clark says, “only I can see this changing in the future.” I took this as my cue to ask what the weather was like in New Zealand, with a cheeky ulterior motive of a Lord Of The Rings mention; she laughs and says, “It’s starting to warm up a bit.” Well, I had to ask, I had to, didn’t I?
words CARL MARSH
Saint Maud is released in cinemas on Fri 9 Oct
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