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Kerry Nolan: This is All Of It. I'm Kerry Nolan in for Alison Stewart. At this year's Oscars, writer and director Sarah Polley won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for her film, Women Talking, adapted from the 2018 best-selling novel by Miriam Toews. The story follows a community of Mennonite women who must make a decision after they've learned about women's suffering sexual attacks from men in their colony. Back in January, Polly joined Alison to discuss adapting the novel to the screen.

We also heard from actor Jessie Buckley, who stars in the film as a woman who's uncertain whether or not to leave the community. A heads up, listeners, this conversation deals with sexual assault. If at any time you feel you need support, please call the National Sexual Assault hotline. That number is 1-800-656-4673. To start, Alison asks Sarah when she first read Women Talking.

Sarah Polley: I read it shortly after it came out. It was given to me by a friend who said, "I think I just read what your next film has to be an adaptation of," and I just fell in love with it. I read it in one inhale, I think, like so many people did, and really knew immediately I wanted to make it into a film.

Alison Stewart: Jessie, when did you come to the book or the story?

Jessie Buckley: Well, I came to the book after the script.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Jessie Buckley: I had never read anything like this. It felt like a foreign prospect to the point where I was like I've no idea how to even embark on this or who's this brave warrior who's going to undertake this. Then I met Sarah and watched her documentary, The Stories We Tell, and I was sure that if anybody was going to do it was going to be her.

Alison Stewart: Sarah, the cast is so strong, Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Jessie, Judith Ivey, of course, Frances McDormand, who's a producer on the project. What was the casting process like?

Sarah Polley: It was really long and really intricate because we had to figure out the dynamics and specific chemistries between all of these characters and how they fit together. It was almost like casting a giant organism and everyone was a tentacle of it. We really couldn't cast one person until we cast everyone, but it was an amazing experience to be casting this community, really.

Alison Stewart: Jessie, what drew you to Mariche?

Jessie Buckley: I felt like she was a woman I knew but I didn't completely understand. I guess I felt immediately drawn to her, and I felt a lot of love for her and a real kind of-- I guess I wanted to understand where the source of that pain and wound might come from somebody who's internalized so much violence throughout her life and also from her past life, the legacy of violence and an education of violence and how that might make somebody very afraid to imagine a place better for herself in the life that she was living.

Alison Stewart: Fear is is what I'm hearing you say that is underlying for Mariche. Even though she's tough on the exterior, there's a certain core of fear.

Jessie Buckley: Yes, I guess there's points in all of this story where we're afraid because ultimately, we're having to find courage within ourselves and within our community and within a new language, which all these women are creating for themselves to step into an unknown. None of these women have ever seen a map. They've never left the bounds of where they've grown up and what they've always understood about themselves and each other, so really, it takes so much courage to be able to imagine and allow yourself to leave the place that you've always lived and understood. I guess I'd be afraid. I'm always afraid. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Sarah, when I interviewed Miriam Toews, she said Salome's voice is the one that came to her most clearly. For you in the adaptation, which voice came to you very clearly, and which one took a little extra work?

Sarah Polley: I think I would say the same as Miriam. I think Salome's the one that's easiest to grasp at first because as Mariam said in her interview with you, it's initially your first response to this. It's one of such anger and grief that expresses itself as anger. I think I found Ona the hardest to write in so many ways but ultimately the one where by the end of this process I probably connected most with Ona's voice. I found Mariche the most exciting character to write. Jessie's character has the furthest to travel. She is so transformed to this conversation and ultimately, leads the way at the end.

I found them all challenging in certain respects, and also, I found it interesting. We all talked about this, how we had a metamorphosis from one character's point of view to another, and we were like, "[unintelligible 00:05:31] Salome star sign but with an Ona [unintelligible 00:05:34] Ona aspirations." Everyone got themselves into [unintelligible 00:05:39].

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I was really interested in the look of the film, and I read in an interview Sarah, and please correct me if I'm wrong, because you know, the internet, that you were inspired by the color palette of a photographer that you like. Who is the photographer, and what was it about the palette that you thought this could be really useful in telling the stories in Women Talking?

Sarah Polley: Sure. The photographer is Larry Towell, and he's done the most amazing-- He's an incredible photographer generally, but he has this incredible series on Mennonites. There's some of my favorite photographs I've ever seen, and I saw them long before I read Miriam's book. I wouldn't say the palette was inspired by his photographs, but a lot of the imagery did inspire imaging the film. In terms of the color palette, we did desaturate by about 75%.

We had this idea of wanting this idea of this spaded postcard of a world that's already passed. Even by the very act of having this conversation, these women are already consigning the world they live into the past. It's such a brave and transformative thing to have this conversation. The ideas were looking back at something, and the voiceover is a voice from the future.

Alison Stewart: Jessie, Mariche is often physically apart from the other women. She has her back turned, she has a very specific body language, especially in the beginning. I was wondering what your conversations with Sarah were like about the physicality of your character, especially in the beginning.

Jessie Buckley: With Mariche, she felt a bit like an armadillo to somebody with this hard shell on the outside and was desperate to belong but terrified of being that vulnerable because she's been somebody who's had to survive every day. If you ever show any kind of vulnerability who knows where that might lead? I guess we spoke over email. We spoke constantly throughout filming. Compared to any acting experience, this wasn't something where you will go and-- you never really want to do that, but you will go on to do your performance.

We were working with such incredible people, but Mariche especially, I didn't want to judge her too much because I wanted to get to know her. You could just really stand in front of all these incredible people like Claire and Ben and Rooney and Shayla and Judith and Kate and all of them and be changed in real-time, and little by little, this armadillo shedded skin by the end could be held and hold and loved in a way that she probably never had been allowed to.

Alison Stewart: Sarah, what did you want to explore about forgiveness, possibly the limits of forgiveness?

Sarah Polley: I think Miriam asks so many interesting questions in her book about forgiveness. For me, throughout the course of this film, I think the meaning of forgiveness changes. I think at first in the clip we just heard, it's introduced as an almost simplistic notion that we can just jump ahead, do no work, and forgive when harm is still ongoing. I think what the women ultimately unpack throughout the course of this film is the idea that for forgiveness to be meaningful, there might be quite a process in getting there.

Part of that might be getting out of harm's way. Part of that may be looking towards what kind of distance you need to create between yourself and that harm before forgiveness is truly possible, and not just misinterpreted as permission for the harm to be ongoing. I think what's been really interesting is looking at this idea of forgiveness, which I'm very intrigued by and very compelled by, and addressing the complicated nature of it.

Alison Stewart: So much of this film is about the different ways people cope with trauma. Sarah, some women are angry, some have panic attacks, some have internalized it, some have gotten hard or try to be hard like Mariche. What was something that you read or learned about trauma that helped you make this film?

Sarah Polley: One of the things that I love about Miriam's book is there are so many different responses to the same set of events, and no one is more valid than the other. I love democracy of that and the equality of that. One thing I learned about trauma very recently that I found really helpful in the making of this film is that the thing about trauma is it's always just about to happen. If you've had trauma, what the experience of that is and how it manifests if you are traumatized and there hasn't been a recovery process is that thing that happened to you, some part of you subconsciously always believes it's on the verge of happening again right now.

That's what the experience of being in trauma is. I found that enormously helpful, both in my personal life and in understanding the characters in this film, is that what they're dealing with isn't something that happened. It's something that might happen again in seconds, whether that's the reality or not. In their case, it is the reality. In the case of a lot of people walking around, it's a subconscious sense.

Alison Stewart: Jessie, what was the rehearsal process like?

Jessie Buckley: Well, it was in the middle of COVID, first of all. Once we'd arrived in Toronto, we had two weeks of rehearsals mapped out. The first week was on Zoom, which is really weird, but it was useful, I guess, just to talk and to get to know each other's families and the different dynamics that might appear as we got into shooting it. Then we had a second week where we were allowed to go on set and go into the hayloft. There was still COVID, so we had masks and visors. As an actor, it was like, "Oh my, God, this is really weird. I can only see somebody's eyes. What's happening beneath? How am I going to do this?"

It was [unintelligible 00:12:03]. It was such a huge canvas. It almost felt like you were speaking a foreign language because the language that was there was something-- People keep saying, "This is like a theater. It could be a theater piece in some ways." I've been thinking about that a lot. I just did a piece of theater. The thing about theater is that you have those intense relationships with an audience. You could meet one person in the audience and feel you could fall in love or broken up or something, but you equally are sharing to 1,500 people.

I think with this piece is that actually you are exploring the most intense, immediate cataclysmically changing relationships, but the context of it was so much broader. It was beyond the bounds of that hayloft. What we were discussing was way bigger than anything that we could have actually contained or articulated or be objective about as people or as actors in that situation. I think in a way to act it, it allowed you to just stand and step into the water of it and be taken. When you get to work with such incredible people like we did on this job, it was a thrill. You never knew where you were going to go, and in real-time, you were being changed by people in that hayloft.

Alison Stewart: Sarah, I understand that you were able to have a certain limitation on hours of the days on shoot days so that you could have time with your family. How did having those limitations and also just time to be with your people, your people, people? How did it affect the film, and how did it affect how you worked as a director?

Sarah Polley: I don't think I would've come back to directing if I hadn't been able to work shorter hours. By shorter hours, I mean 10-hour days. They're still long days compared to most people's jobs. I think the industry standards of 15 to 17-hour days at least in North America are so absurd. I think in general, the idea was to create a safe, healthy, nurturing working environment. You can't do that if people are not able to see their loved ones. People who they have caregiving responsibilities for whether that be parents or kids or a dog, people have to have some access to their connections and their lives.

I think in terms of creating a space at work where people felt like they could take risks and they could be daring and could be brave, I think feeling taken care of was a really big part of that. While we probably weren't always successful, we put a lot of energy into trying to make sure we had a working environment that felt healthy.

Alison Stewart: Have either of you gotten to see the film in a theater with normal human civilians, not just industry peeps?

?Jessie Buckley: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What have you observed or even heard?

Jessie Buckley: I think lots of things. What you always hope for doesn't always happen is that it genuinely affects people. Whether that means that it starts a conversation or a debate or emotionally connects something to someone that they haven't really had time to do or haven't wanted to do. Also, one of the most inspiring and beautiful things about this is to hear the younger women in this and the younger actress whose first job was at the age of 17, 18, to be able to articulate and know things and to want things and expect more from the world that they're stepping out into having had this experience on this film.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is Women Talking. I've been speaking with its director and writer, Sarah Polley and Jessie Buckley. I want to also point out that Sarah has a book out, a memoir called Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory after she had a pretty traumatic concussion. Jessie, last time you were here, you were sitting right across from me in the before times for Wild Rose. For people who don't know, Jessie Buckley has an amazing singing voice, has been in Cabaret, released an album earlier this year. We went back in the archives and we dug up the performance that you did.

Jessie Buckley: Oh, no. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Yes. Let's listen to Jessie. This is Glasgow (No Place Like Home). Let's take a listen [unintelligible 00:16:38].

[music]

I've worn out the stones in front of your doorstep

Coming and going, coming and going

You kept the lights on, I always knew that

I should have said thank you a thousand miles ago

But I pushed you away, put a pin in a map

Then I got lost in the storm

Kerry Nolan: That was actor Jessie Buckley and the now Oscar-winning Sarah Polley talking about their movie, Women Talking, which is in theaters and video on demand. Next, we speak to author Regan Penaluna, whose new book is all about the history of some of the great female philosophers.

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