In Odyssey, an estate agent gets in over her head with debt and a frantic personal life. Things get even more perilous when the gangsters she owes insist she does them a favour. We caught up with the film’s director, Gerard Johnson (Tony), and his wife, Polly Maberly, who plays the lead character, Natasha, to find out more about the anxiety-inducing thriller…
STARBURST: What gave you the idea to run the story around an estate agency?
Polly Maberly: I used to work as a lettings agent in Islington. It’s a small boutique agency, and it was a jobbing actress resting job, so I was there on and off for a number of years, with several other actors, but when I came in, it was just a failing business. It was a nice setup, but it was starting to fall apart, and there were definitely things coming away at the seams; if you wrote it down, you’d think it was a bit far-fetched. And so I got to know the real ins and outs of the job without being so cut-throat as the character Natasha is about it, but I’d be drawing up contracts and moving money around which didn’t always add up, you know, fielding calls from tenants and landlords alike, and so I got to know that side of it. I told Gerard bits of stories from there that became the inspiration.
Gerard Johnson: So Polly knew that side of it and then I wanted to give her a character to really sink her teeth into, someone who’s quite different to who she is as a person in real life, and then put these obstacles in her way. I’m always interested in those kind of stories where you really are on the journey with someone and how they’re going to navigate through the horrible things that happen; the more in trouble they are, the more you’re wanting them to get out. They keep digging themselves in. That stressful kind of cinema is what I love as a viewer as well as in the films that I try to make.
The character’s fairly unlikeable, but you could see where she’s really dug herself into a hole and by trying to dig herself out she’s getting deeper and deeper. Polly, was it hard to get into that mindset?
Polly: It was hard, but it was lovely once I cracked something about her. We did three or four weeks rehearsal beforehand, and when we first got into the rehearsal space, we were discussing the hierarchy of the office. Gerard said, let’s set up the scene, and I had to walk out of the scene, and the others were inside the office, jumping around the script and riffing and improvising, which I’m slightly terrified of. I was outside the door and waiting to come in, listening to Charley Palmer Rothwell and Kellie Shirley riffing, very understated and brilliantly comedically. I came in, and I was doing the same – though I was trying to match them and failing. I was terrible and all over the place. By the end of the first 48 hours, I was basically saying to Gerard, you’ve got the wrong girl! I didn’t know what I was doing, having thought I had a good idea about her. Anyway, I had this epiphany where I realised that she didn’t really listen to anybody and she didn’t need to match them, she just needed to go through them, and it was enlightening. It felt very freeing, and so when I came to the set, it would have been such a different character if I hadn’t had that time. She was fantastic to play, because as soon as I made choices and I’d done a few days, I felt like I could do anything because it felt authentic. It’s great being bold and mean at the same time.
Is it easy enough to leave that behind at the end of the day?
Polly: Yes, you’re knackered! We live together and we have kids as well, but what was really nice was, we were both coming home and going to work at different times, and meeting on set. It’s nice when you’re making the same film rather than someone saying this happened, this happened. The whole crew and the whole cast become like a surrogate family and it’s really easy. I mean, it’s still stressful to make a film and it’s tiring, but it’s not bad stress.
Gerard: Also, because I do a long rehearsal period, we’ve had all those big questions and discussions. Once you’re on set, Polly and all the other actors are not going, “I don’t know about this scene”, we’ve had all those discussions. Filmmaking is so stressful in other areas, locations, camera, everything else, that if you’ve got all that stuff under control, you then have more freedom trying stuff out.
And was there a chance to try different takes?
Gerard: You’ve got that freedom, but you’ll find once we’re in that space, you pretty much know we’re going to do it this way. There are always opportunities, “can I just try this or try that” – yeah, why not!
Can you talk a little bit about the cinematography? Because there’s lots of wide-angle lens and very close shots.
Gerard: Yeah, we tested a lot of lenses, Korsshan Schlauer [DP] was using a lot of modern lenses, there were some Ukrainian lenses that I really liked but they’re all lacking a little bit of texture. Then we found these incredible Todd-AO lenses, which were the same lenses that were used in a lot of Apocalypse Now. They’ve got this beautiful anamorphic feel to them that’s almost blurring at the lines.
Yeah, there’s a bit of vignetting and things like that…
Gerard: There’s loads of vignetting, and the focusing was an absolute nightmare! There are a couple of times in the film where it does go a little bit soft. You wouldn’t get that on a new lens; it’s super sharp, but to pull focus, it took about half an hour. For a focus puller, that’s enormous, but for me, that’s the beauty, especially if you’re shooting on digital; the Alexa’s a fantastic camera but you need something to soften it and those lenses did a really beautiful job. I tend to shoot 360 so we’re out on the street, we go into a lot of places where there’s people, they’re not extras. They’re people not knowing we’re going to come in with the camera, that’s the sort of style that I love, it’s a semi-documentary, fairy tale-style that I’ve always loved doing. Because it’s not period, you can go out and about with the camera, and I’ve noticed now, much more so than when I started making film, people are less bothered about cameras. Everyone’s got a camera now, you could be doing anything.
You mentioned a little bit about a documentary style. Certainly, with the first few scenes, it could be something like The Office. Was that intentional before you lead up to the later horror?
Gerard: Yes, everything I do is between my two loves, the social realism and the genre, it’s always a mixture of those two. I don’t ever want to make straight genre or straight social realism. I keep it as authentic in the worlds that I’m making films about, but then there’s that side of me that starts to kick in, “okay where can we take it? How dark are we gonna go with this today?”
And what is that like for you as an actor, Polly?
Polly: It felt very concise, it was such a fast pace and there wasn’t room to breathe, you couldn’t post-mortem scenes; there were lots of night shoots, so I was living on this nervous, exhausted energy, which made me feel quite frenetically energised. I just rolled with it and I felt really strong, even though I looked a bit emaciated because I was full of nervous energy. I wasn’t stopping for meals much, but it was really lovely not to have to think about what just happened and keep moving on. When you don’t have time to think, I think you don’t comment all the time on it.
What was the biggest challenge during the film?
Polly: For me, bar the emotion of the journey she goes through, it was running in six-inch Yves Saint Laurent boots, fighting with the biggest guy in the house, but that was fun as well. And a glorious challenge was the scene with Tom Davis and Cavan Clerkin as the gay couple who I’m showing around the townhouse. Oh my god, Korsshan kept twisting the camera to find a straight face, but never did. We did about six takes, about 25, 30 minutes each time. There was so much more footage there, it could be made into a short film about a couple looking for a house to let.
Gerard: We didn’t have the main location, Calypso Farm, until about three weeks into the shoot. Not knowing that we were going to get that amazing house was the biggest challenge. On my one day off, going in cars up and down the country to try and find that location and then realising when we got there that it’s totally wrong! I think when you’re making films, it’s nice to challenge yourself and do stuff that might be out of your comfort zone. It was the first time I worked so much with stunts. I’ve had stunt guys before, but this was really breaking down every single part of that end sequence into ways of shooting that I’m not massively a fan of. I pretty much do 30-minute takes for everything I do. So that was a challenge, in a good way. It was like, suddenly I’m not really directing this anymore, the stunt guys are doing their bit. It was really nice working with storyboards as well, which is something that I don’t do because I’ve got it in my head a lot of the time, but this really needed to be played out.
And how long did it take to shoot that one scene at the end?
Gerard: It took a couple of days. We had to break it down because there’s fire, there’s prosthetics, there’s all these bits and pieces that could go wrong. I’m very pleased with the end result.
What was it like being covered in blood and stuff?
Polly: It was fine, I mean, geez, it was really not a hard day’s work. We only did it for a few hours, really. In the last scene with Mikael [Persbrandt, who plays The Viking], I kiss him goodbye, and every time we did it, we got the giggles because we were sticking together! So you see me leaning into his shoulder, and just pushing away. But it was great, I was lathered in lots of blood. We had only a couple of outfits that matched, which I took home with me.
ODYSSEY is available on Blu-ray and DVD from December 8th and on digital platforms from December 22nd. You can read our review here.
