Leading the choir
Kristen Scott Thomas finds note-worthy role in ‘Military Wives’
For Kristen Scott Thomas, starring as an unlikely choirmaster in “Military Wives” (streaming Friday on various platforms) was a no-brainer.
This upbeat drama, inspired by a documentary called “The Choir,” has Scott Thomas as Kate, the tightly wound colonel’s wife.
Kate organizes the women on an English Army base to form a choir when their soldier husbands are deployed to Afghanistan.
Singing, it turns out, is good for morale and the nation.
Although Scott Thomas’ film debut was opposite the late Prince in his 1986 musical “Under the Cherry Moon,” “I didn’t sing there.
He knew better,” she joked. “This is the first time, possibly the last.”
As to why Kate, who has yet to grieve for her martyred son, was so compelling, “These kinds of parts, these women with huge obstacles they create themselves,” Scott Thomas, 59, said from self-quarantine outside London earlier this week, “I’ve played quite a few of these women who have struggled with terrible loss but refuse to let it show.
“Then there’s the added attraction of playing somebody who is involved in military life, which is something I know a little bit about having been brought up in a naval family.”
Her father, Lt. Commander Simon Scott Thomas, was a British Royal Navy pilot.
“He was flying off the aircraft carriers — you know ‘Top Gun.’ I was 5 when he died in a training accident.
“Then my mother married another guy who had the same job and he was also killed in training.”
She was 11. How did she process the terrible reality of losing two dads?
“The first time was in the ’60s and the second time in the ’70s and in those days psychotherapy was not commonly used. I was just a little girl so I didn’t really know what was going on around me. There really wasn’t any counseling or anything like that.
“We just were ‘This is what life is like.’ There was no crying, no nothing. Just ‘Get on with it.’
“Now I think it would be very, very different. People are far more aware of the damage trauma in children does.
“However, I’ve managed to use that trauma for an ‘engine’ of my own.
“A lot of the films I’ve done have been with women with a sort of secret tragedy. They’re hiding something. I’ve used that experience, like a battery or an engine if you like.”