STRANGE DAYS
EMILY WATSON EXPLAINS HER ROLE IN THE THIRD DAY, A GROUND-BREAKING BLEND OF TELEVISION AND THEATRE
The Third Day sounds bonkers?
You really don’t know where you are or what’s going on in it! I loved the fact that within the first three pages of the screenplay six really weird and unusual things had happened. Mrs Martin is unlike any character I’ve played before. She is just the most tremendously emboldening and liberating place to occupy. She’s a very abrasive, bold, foul-mouthed character but she also has a natural empathetic, instinctive emotional understanding of people. Though it’s not coupled with a moral compass that you or I would share…
Tell us about the odd community the Martins are part of?
They are people who, if they y had been raised in more normal circumstances, would be quite ordinary, but here they have this religious belief that the island of Osea is the centre of the universe. If Osea is well then the world will be in harmony, but if Osea is unwell then things go wrong. g.
What was it like crossing the causeway to the actual Osea Island in Essex?
in Essex. It felt quite spooky to me but that’s probably the nature of the material we were shooting there.
Had you previously encountered Punchdrunk, the immersive theatre group who are involved in this production?
I’d seen an interactive show they’d done. It’s wonderful, amazing work. The presence of the Punchdrunk company is throughout the piece. All the ritualistic stuff you see being enacted and the scenes in the pub with Jude Law are all Punchdrunk theatre company actors.
Will we see you get involved with the interactive theatre piece p that is part of The Third Day?
. Jude Law stayed jolly on set
The causeway was quite wobbly and it was only open for a limited time each day. That was one thing that was tricky about making this series. You had to get a huge film crew across there so most people had to camp for the duration. The logistics of filming under those circumstances were pretty terrifying. Osea Island is in the Blackwater estuary
That’s Tha had to be slightly reenvisaged en because of Covid. Originally O it was going to be a music festival with a ticket lottery so about 2 2,000 people would have g gone to the island. Instead it it’s going to be the festival tha that the islanders put on eve every year, which is a kind of coming-of-age thing. I’m going to be there too.
Your co-star Jude Law puts himself through the wringer…
He was amazing. Every day he would come back to the make-up trailer exhausted after swimming and running and covered in mud, still encouraging and happy.
Episode one of The Third Day is on Now TV. New episodes on Tuesdays at 9pm