Sarah Gavron Talks About Her Newest Film Suffragette

TYF: Could you talk a little about getting the cast together, from the starring roles like Carey Mulligan to the more, supporting players, such as Ben Whishaw (I diverged here to gush about the mini The Hour reunion, which I’m glad to be able to edit around because I’m embarrassing.) 

Well it was great, we wanted this collective range of actors, female actors,  who you don’t normally seen on the screen together, and the great actors of our day. It was really exciting to me because we had Carey [Mulligan] in mind from the beginning, we really went after her, but only after we got a script that we felt happy with and thankfully she very, very quickly said yes.

Then we built the cast around her so then we went to Helena Bonham-Carter, who had a funny connection to the story because she’s the great-granddaughter of the Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith who at the time who was opposed to the vote and our main antagonist, so it was funny having that connection. Then Anne Marie Duff who’s a theater actor, then Meryl Strep playing a small role, but an important, charismatic leader role. And then we went to the men. It was more difficult casting the men. We got a great cast in the end [with Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson] but initially some agents did bring up and say ‘they don’t have much to do’ and it was like welcome to the world. We got the men we wanted but we wanted the male parts to be nuanced and complex.

TYF: Was there anything on this shoot that you found more difficult than in your past films?

The scale of it was challenging. Because the women of Suffragette were women of deeds not words, and there were these action set pieces that happened on a big scale we needed a lot of supporting artists and stunts and visual effects. There were good things, like we got access to the Houses of Parliament, and we were the first ever film crew to get access.

TYF: Did it give you an extra sense of scale by being able to shoot on location like that?

Definitely, we wanted it to feel very real and not heightened. Being in a real location was great because it gives you an added sense of what it was like to be there at the time.

TYF: What was one of the most rewarding days on set?

Definitely being at the House of Parliament. There’s the kind of irony of being there as an all female cast and crew, staging an anti-government protest…being able to recreate that moment in history and having these descendants on the set with us all felt very exciting and satisfying and very thrilling actually.