In the new movie joyride, plays an excellent young Charlie Reid Mully, a boy on the run after taking the money his father stole and trying to return it. While the father, played in desperation by Lochlann O’Mearáin, chases after him, a woman gets caught between them – Joy, played by Olivia Coleman. Colman is the Oscar-winning actor who seems unable to misstep these days, from her work in the dark comedy The favorite and The father to that of last year The Prodigal Daughter and this year’s rich in light. She is as well-known as she is well-awarded.
However, what her co-stars (and director Emer Reynolds) didn’t know was that Colman has a very specific acting process. After extensive pre-production talks, research, and thought, Colman prefers to dive straight into a role without too many shoots or even rehearsals. It’s an approach that can easily be unnerving for both actors and directors, and while promoting joyrideher co-stars and director explained how the awkward style was worth it in the end.
Olivia Colman acts in the moment
“Olivia doesn’t rehearse, so we don’t know what’s going to happen when we’re in front of the camera,” explains O’Mearáin. “That was a little scary for me, but it was quite liberating […] You are on the edge, there is no safety net, you really have to let go and make something happen. That’s really exciting.”
“It came as a little surprise to me that she doesn’t like to rehearse,” Reynolds said. “I understand that now when I see her, because she’s so direct, she wants it to be live in the moment, with real reactions. So our rehearsal periods were really just us getting to know each other, chatting a bit, feeling things.” Reynolds, who has only directed documentaries (after an extensive career as a film editor), is actually just the type of director to make something like this work even better than you might think. After all, most documentaries don’t get rehearsed and you don’t get multiple takes of the truth. “I approached it the same way I do documentaries — you try to get the heart out, you try to get to the truth.” Reynolds explained:
We were just in the moment and everyone was in that space […] everyone just trusted each other and we lived in the present for every scene. It’s kind of scary, but very quickly it seemed to be really good. It was really organic […] really fresh and vibrant. It felt good, like we’re here, it’s really happening. Olivia does all that work for it, all that thinking time, all that chatting, the work on the accent, and then just wants to be really fresh on the day.
Joyride takes Colman and Charlie Reid on a road trip on December 23
Reid spends almost the entire movie with Colman’s character, and so he experienced these organic interactions more than anyone else. As the two lonely characters traverse the beautiful Irish countryside, they open up to each other in a way that is very vulnerable for an actor, especially a then 14-year-old like Reid.
“You go straight into the scene with her, and she doesn’t work with rehearsals, she just asks you to go right in,” Reid said. “I think it’s a weird approach for me because I’m always used to rehearsing first and then going into it. She just wanted to go right in and see what it was like, see how it flowed, and if it wasn’t, work, do the second take. When I look back on it now, I really love it, the way she did that. I really enjoyed it, because it just helped me be more natural. Almost instead of trying to figure out what I’m destined to do, and instead of trying to focus on words, it led to us just being natural. She just gives a natural effect on you. She’s such a fantastic actress, but she’s able to convey it to other people as well. .”
The result is a trifecta of beautifully realistic yet complicated performances in a visually stunning film. A Subotica production, in collaboration with Embankment, Joyride is presented by Magnolia photosIngenious and Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, and will be released in theaters and on-demand on December 23.