James blurted out that we weren’t doing anything here. He was right!
Seána Kerslake was happy to spread her wings in the Sundance hit The Hole in the Ground even if she did get pulled up by her child co-star
SEÁNA Kerslake stands in a ramshackle old farmhouse somewhere in Wicklow and stares wildly at a pre-teen child. Her eyes bulge with fear as she stares down the child baring his teeth in an act of defiance; his green woollen school jumper the only tell-tale sign of his age.
‘You are not my son’, she blurts out, backing away from the boy in fear. ‘You are not my son’. This is the basic premise to The Hole in the Ground, a new psychological thriller and horror flick made in Ireland by rookie Irish director Lee Cronin.
The movie was a smash hit at this year’s Sundance festival, securing a distribution deal which will see it go on general release in cinemas in America, Europe and Asia. It is a visual masterpiece, using the bleak wilds of Wicklow and Meath as the canvas for an altogether eerie production.
At 27, it is Seána, however, who lights up the screen. Moviegoers will immediately understand why she has been dubbed the Irish Scarlett Johansson; the camera drinks in her presence and she looks every inch the international movie star.
Seána may look like a red carpet A-Lister, but until recently she lived at home in Tallaght with her parents and two sisters, Amie – a make-up artist who has recently returned from Vancouver – and Niamh, who is studying science at Trinity College Dublin. At 19, while studying English and music at Maynooth, Seána was snapped up for the lead role in Kirsten Sheridan’s experimental drama Dollhouse, for which she got a nod for best actress at the 2013 IFTAs.
Flying high on such critical acclaim she enrolled in a screenacting course at the Factory and the rest as they say, is history.
The Hole in the Ground, however is another level cinematically and will ultimately catapult her into the hearts and minds of the Hollywood faithful. With expansive, sepiatoned shots of wild landscape, an old creaky house, spiders and a whole host of things that go bump in the night, a weird old lady, and a rather strange child Chris (played by the unsettlingly good James Quinn Markey), Seána finally puts paid to the old adage that you should never work with children or animals.
‘I don’t have any kids’, she says in her Dublin brogue. ‘It is scary thing when you don’t recognise someone that you live with. And you will never really know who you are sleeping beside. You are never in someone else’s head and no matter how long you are with them you never know 100% for sure who they are.
‘That is what is terrifying about this film. It takes that premise and ramps it up. You walk the streets with monsters. We ended up missing out on the first heatwave in Ireland that I can remember. That was a bit of a bummer. But it was all for a good cause. But I had a great costar in terms of James. They say never to work with children or an animal, that’s what they say. But he was great.
‘Lee facilitated us and helped us get to know one another. We did a lot of hanging out and we would rehearse a couple of the scenes but not overdo it because it is important to have that freedom and it doesn’t become stale or predictable. He brought a great atmosphere to the set because people are more mindful when there is a child onset.
‘You don’t have as many people going off bitching and moaning about the long hours or the tiredness when there is a kid working just as hard. There is a nice mindful atmosphere on set and it changes the way people speak. It brought a nice levity to the shoot. Then as an actor, getting to act opposite James, you don’t really know what you are getting. And what is great is that he is a great barometer as to how you are performing. If he believes you or not because he will tell you.
‘I remember one time he looked at me and just blurted out ‘we aren’t really doing anything here are we’? I was like, “speak for yourself”. The camera was on me and he was being harsh but there was some truth in it. So he kept me in check.’
The film made its debut at this year’s Sundance festival but it is already touring the globe wowing cinemagoers with its story about a single mother who stars to get suspicious about her son.
The Hole in the Ground from the title is about, well a sinkhole that’s opened in the woods near her the house where her character Sarah has recently moved with her son Chris. After a heated argument over Chris’s now suspiciously absent father he rushes off into the woods and goes missing briefly near this ominous deep pit.
It’s not long into the film before you realise that Seána is going to have to venture into the eponymous sink hole which lends to an underground scene that makes some of the I’m A Celebrity Bush Tucker trials seem like a day in Tayto Park.
‘The scene underground wasn’t that bad’, she says with a smile, brushing a strand of red hair from across her face. ‘I never let Lee know this at the time but there was definitely rising panic. I think there was a sense of claustrophobia even from the way it was shot and the fact that her whole world is falling in on her.
‘But the character was allowed to push through it. So there was definitely a claustrophobic element there but that sense that she was able to push through and get free. You become your character as well so you do feel those emotions.
‘But you are an actor as well and your job is to get down into the dirt and crawl through a three-metre tunnel of dirt then you do it. The set was in a studio and it was built in a way to recreate the tunnels and caverns. It was fairly terrifying. But any job where you get to wear giant dungarees for three weeks on set is great. I felt like a giant toddler going around the place. We will know if the film is a success if we see loads of girls going around the place in big old dungarees.’
What is wonderful about the movie is that it revels in its Irishness. Seána has not totally dumbed down her Dublin accent nor has the director attempted to introduce any American brogue. This is the first big part where Seána has been allowed to stretch her acting chops having made ripples within the Irish scene from parts in A Date With Mad Mary and Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope. She hopes this canvas will prove to critics that she can play much more than the stereotypical party girl with a conscience.
‘It was important for me to spread my wings from Can’t Cope Won’t Cope. Especially on screen I have done a lot of characters who like to party and like to be out. Between
A lot of my characters liked a good time with alcohol. It was good to play someone who didn’t
Mad Mary and Doll House and Can’t Cope, I have played lot of characters who are aggressive and some that are passive aggressive.
‘A lot of them like to have a good time with alcohol. It was nice that Lee gave me the chance to play someone who is a little bit quieter in that sense. She is not a loud character. She doesn’t drink and she doesn’t want to lose control or any more control than she already has. So it was important for me to show a different side to me.
‘Then there is an insecurity that comes with that. Because maybe the audience expects a certain performance from me and you worry and wonder if they will stick with you now in that slow pace. Because she is not outlandish any more. She is running away from someone, it is probably fair to assume that the scar on her forehead is from her ex-husband that she is running from.
‘She is coming from a difficult domestic situation. It is why she is such a quiet character, she has done her screaming and shouting in the past. She has run away from her monster in the past but she gets to a point where she can’t run any more, she has to face up to the monsters in the world and overcome them.’
Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope, was an unprecedented success story for RTÉ2. It was a comedy about two party-loving twentysomethings. Written by Stephanie Preissner the TV series reunited Seána with director Cathy Brady, who was one of her instructors at Bow Street.
Despite the cult following for the series Seána doubts that a series two will make it to our screens any time soon.
‘At the moment I don’t think there will be another series of Can’t Cope, as far as it goes’, she says. ‘I think when an Irish movie gets a platform like this one has at Sundance that is a platform in itself.
‘And with the backing it has just received from Wildcard and Vertigo, you have all these people who are helping secure that platform for you. So it has already been seen by eyes that I didn’t know or would have believed would get to see it.
‘And then to get that sort of positive reaction that it has brought in already and the response has been mind boggling.
‘Any door that it does help open, which it has done for both Lee and myself already is amazing and you just have to capitalise on it as well. Because when a door opens you have to capitalise on it and that brings a new challenge with it.’
The only real challenge that now faces Seána is how to manage her new-found success.
She has an old head on young shoulders though and says she won’t be rushing out any time soon to buy a Ferrari.
Her only real headache is now whether or not to stay in London or take the plunge and head to Los Angeles.
‘I am based in London at the moment which is great because home is just an hour’s flight away. But I keep saying that my roots are here and my branches can be where they want to be. But I have to be firmly rooted in Ireland.
‘LA is a thing that was fun because we spent an extended period of time out there with this film. It is only ten hours away and it was only meant to be there a couple of days and then suddenly that became a week and two weeks. Then I was wondering was this going to be the moment where I never intended to stay in LA and the suddenly, six months later I haven’t left and I live there?
‘My trip kept getting extended. But you never know. I wouldn’t rule anything out and if the right job came along. Who knows?’
We missed out on the first heatwave in Ireland that I can recall but it was worth it