Jodie Comer. The End We Start From is in cinemas from 19 January
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Jodie Comer has spoken up for the importance of independent film and why women taking up space is so important – and has shared the advice she received from her Killing Eve co-star.
Comer, who also starred in Help and Doctor Foster, is set for a huge year on the big screen in 2024 – starting with Mahalia Belo’s startling, brilliant new British indie film The End We Start From and continuing this summer with Jeff Nicholls’ The Bikeriders opposite Tom Hardy and Austin Butler.
For the first time on The End We Start From, Comer was an executive producer and involved at every stage of the film. If she is being wooed by the Marvel Universe, as rumours suggest, that’s not where her focus is as 2024 begins.
“With independent film, when there’s so little money, there’s so little time, you’ve created this [and] it feels like your baby, because you’ve been in the trenches with it,” Comer said in a new interview with The Big Issue.
“Being witness to how this film was made – and developing my own taste, being comfortable with putting my hand up and saying, ‘Guys, this is what I’m thinking, you know, this is my instinct’ – it makes the experience so much richer.
“Learning to take up space in that way, especially as a woman, I feel is so important.”
Comer also shared which independent films she has been watching.
“I’ve so enjoyed dipping into independent film, watching so many films out this year that have really resonated with me. Because they’re so rich and explorative of the stories of everyday people,” Comer said, in a wide-ranging interview in which she also talks about dancing in the moonlight with Benedict Cumberbatch and her future plans as a producer.
“All of Us Strangers just absolutely broke me. And I watched a beautiful documentary called Tish that was so inspiring and insightful. These films explore things on a very human level and move people and provoke conversation in a different way to something on a bigger scale.”
Jodie Comer on the set of The End We Start From with director Mahalia Belo
The End We Start From is adapted by Alice Birch from Megan Hunter’s novel. The new film, released on 19 January, is an exploration of motherhood in the midst of an environmental catastrophe, as floods hit the UK. It is frighteningly believable and all-too relevant.
“I felt the exploration of that environmental crisis was unique,” Comer said. “We were exploring on a very human level, which really moved me – a lot more than a lot of films we’ve seen that maybe depict these kinds of happenings.
“The relationship women have with their body after they have a baby and how they feel transformed – we really explore that. And she’s going through all this in the midst of an environmental catastrophe.”
As Comer moves into a new stage of her career, she said she is taking advice from a Killing Eve co-star – especially when it comes to picking a follow-up project on stage after her Olivier and Tony Award-winning role in Suzie Miller’s play Prima Facie in the West End and on Broadway.
“I’ve been speaking with Fiona Shaw a lot,” she said. “She’s someone I admire greatly and who has such a wide breadth of knowledge of material. So I’ve been asking her advice and asking what I should be reading.
“That role stuck with me,” continued Comer. “After the second run of the play, I just had this real desire to come home. Your actual personal life is non-existent.
“So when I came back from New York, I was like, I want to be a better friend, I want to be a more present sister, I want to be a better daughter, you know? And now I feel I’ve got my vitality back.”
The issues Prima Facie raised, however, remain close to Comer’s heart as she looks ahead to 2024.
“It feels very personal to me,” she says. “I would like to see a change in in the attitudes towards women reporting sexual assault cases and a change in the system of how that’s dealt with in the courts.
“I’ve explored sexual assault in a couple of my projects now and every year it’s like, ‘Oh, this is so timely, you know?’ It would be so nice to get to a point where it’s not. I find that infuriating. I’m over that being an excuse.”
The End We Start From is in cinemas from 19 January. Read Jodie Comer’s full interview in The Big Issue magazine, on sale until January 14.
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