SPREADING HER WINGS
JUNO TEMPLE stars as a young woman finding herself in an exotic period drama set in 1950s Morocco
Little Birds
Tue, Sky Atlantic HD, 9pm & 10pm
IN THE GLAMOROUS and bustling El Sirocco nightclub, adorned with palm trees and jewelled lanterns, a band is setting up on stage as a young woman rushes into a phone box to make an intense call.
Tv & satellite Week is at a Manchester studio, which has been turned into a sumptuous bar in the steamy heart of Tangier, to watch filming for Sky Atlantic’s provocative six-part drama Little Birds, loosely inspired by the erotic short stories of Anaïs Nin.
The series is set in 1955 and centres on New York socialite Lucy Savage, played by Dirty John’s Juno Temple. Following psychiatric treatment to ‘cure’ what her parents see as her unnatural behaviour, Lucy goes to Tangier to marry English lord Hugo Cavendish-smythe (The Windsors’ Hugh Skinner).
‘Lucy has been wrapped in cotton wool and is trying to free herself,’ explains Temple, 31, as she joins us during a break in filming in May last year. ‘Her parents want her to be this exquisite creature – like a little bird of paradise.
SUPPRESSED
‘She’s hungry to know things that maybe a young woman in her time and situation shouldn’t, so she’s been suppressed and heavily medicated. But now she is finally being released from the cage she’s grown up in.’
Hugo might not be her passport to a glittering new life, however, as his affections secretly lie with Anglo-egyptian Adham Abaza (Raphael Acloque).
‘Lucy wants to fall in love with Hugo and have marriage, children and a beautiful bohemian happy ever after in Tangier,’ explains Temple. ‘It doesn’t turn out that way.’
Being in Tangier does open enticing new doors for Lucy, however, as she becomes part of the heady melting pot of underground passions in the city. She falls under the bewitching spell of both flamboyant American film star Lili Von X (Nina Sosanya) and charismatic Moroccan dominatrix Cherifa Lamour (Yumna Marwan).
‘Lucy has never met a woman like Cherifa – it’s a power she’s never been around. These women have completely different backgrounds but also this magnetic pull that ends up being how they learn how to love themselves and feel comfortable in their skin,’ says Temple.
As she and Cherifa come to the attention of sinister Frenchman Pierre Vaney (Jean-marc Barr), Lucy also becomes embroiled in a perilous political situation.
‘Tangier is this incredible whirlwind and titillates every sense. Lucy’s intoxicated,’ says Temple, who jumped at the role as she had been captivated by Nin’s stories at the age of 17.
‘They heightened my senses in a way that was new and exciting. I read them on a plane to LA and it was a pretty intense flight for me. Nin was so forwardthinking. She wrote Little Birds in the 1940s but it wasn’t published until 1979.’
The actor was also thrilled to film part of Little Birds in Tarifa, Spain, which stands in for Morocco.
‘When Lili makes a film, we shot that standing on the edge of the very tip of Spain by this incredible ruin but we were feeling the wind from Africa,’ she says. ‘it was an extraordinary moment and felt like magic.’