IT’S NOT EVERY DAY THAT YOU GET TO STRANGLE ONE OF OUR GREATEST ACTRESSES!
A FIGHT broke out on set when tamara Lawrance came face to face with Killing Eve star Fiona Shaw.
But fortunately it was all in a day’s work for a new thriller.
Lawrance (pictured with Shaw and Jack Lowden) smiled and said: ‘It was nice to have a little struggle and strangle with the great Fiona Shaw. She just said go for it, so I did, and we both landed on the floor.
‘We got up and there were probably one or two more takes. Fiona demystifies any fear you might have.’ they star in Kindred along with Lowden, who also produced the film with Dominic Norris .
In Kindred, tamara — who won awards when she starred with Lowden three years ago in the BBc drama the Long Song — plays charlotte, an expectant mum who discovers that she’s being psychologically terrorised by her deceased partner’s mother Margaret (Shaw) and her weird estate manager tom (Lowden).
During filming in Ireland (though
the film is set in Scotland), Tamara stayed alone in a small cottage ‘in the middle of nowhere’. It wasn’t lost on her that her circumstances were redolent of what Charlotte was enduring.
‘There were elements of the experience in which I felt quite alone,’ she told me. All of which added layers to her compelling performance.
She was grateful, though, for the occasional visit to the pub with co-stars, crew and director Joe Marcantonio. And though she’s ‘ not a drinker at all’ especially of beer and stout, she did enjoy the ‘velvety taste’ of half a pint of Guinness. ‘And it was all the better having it on home soil in Ireland.’
Lowden was initially approached to act in Kindred but he was encouraged to join Norris in sharing producing duties as well as playing the ordinary-looking but creepy, Tom.
‘I do enjoy acting but I never felt it was enough for me. I get so bored easily and I found that on film sets you’re sitting around between takes and I was getting itchy feet,’ he said.
Pushed in at the deep end, he joined in on everything from developing the script, location hunting to suggesting that Marcantonio look at Tamara to play the role that dominates the film, which is available on Sky Cinema from today.
‘A lot was asked of Tamara — and she head-butted it,’ the Scottishborn star said. There are other screen projects that he’s developing including a film planned for production next year.
Meanwhile, he’s working with Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Jonathan Pryce filming Mick Herron’s brilliant Slow Horses spy thriller for Apple TV+.
He plays River Cartwright — a sort of 007 wannabe. ‘River’s an allaction guy who looks like he has all the answers, but he’s a f***–up,’ Lowden explained.