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WICKED LITTLE LETTERS Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley star in a true story of postal abuse...

Love thy neighbour: Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley – more friendly off screen than on

There’s a really bizarre true story at the heart of Wicked Little Letters, the latest feature from theatre-turned-film director Thea Sharrock (Me Before You, The One and Only Ivan). In 1920s England, in the unassuming seaside town of Littlehampton, one resident starts receiving expletive-laden letters of abuse, creating a scandal that quickly spirals.

The recipient is Edith Swan (Olivia Colman). The suspected sender? Her neighbour, Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley). Rose vociferously denies it, but it’s not long before police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) is investigating. Teasers catches up with Sharrock just ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and she’s buzzing at the thought of showing it to a big audience (albeit sad that the actors can’t experience it due to the strike in effect at that time). ‘The tone of the film is quite hard to pin down,’ she says. ‘It’s a comedy, for sure, but it’s a bit of a roller coaster…’

One sure-fire first step to creating a crowd-pleaser is to cast Colman and Buckley, two of the finest actors working today. ‘When I came on board, Olivia was already part of the project,’ explains

Sharrock. ‘I know that Jonny [Sweet, screenwriter] had her in mind when he wrote the part, to a degree.’ The characters are opposites: Edith buttoned-up, living with her ageing parents (Timothy Spall, Gemma Jones), Rose a sweary, widowed mum who moves to town with her young daughter and new fella.

Director Thea Sharrock on set

‘It’s peculiar, bonkers and brilliantly British’

THEA SHARROCK

‘As soon as I knew Jessie was going to be playing [Rose], one of the first things I said to her was, “I think you should make her Irish, so you can just lean into all her roots,”’ Sharrock says. ‘Which, again, made the two women culturally different.’ It also allowed Killarney-born Buckley to ‘let go of a layer’ and have ‘a sense of freedom’, says Sharrock.

The leads’ experience across an eclectic body of work aided the film’s unusual tonal offering. ‘I could not believe that it was based on a true story,’ says Sharrock, who estimates the finished film is ‘70 or 80%’ factual, story-wise. ‘It’s completely intriguing and peculiar and bonkers and brilliantly British… But, really, I think it’s about friendship and family, above all else, and how and why we behave with each other in the way that we do.’

Sharrock certainly sees resonance with the present day in this 100-yearold story. ‘When you transfer everything 100 years later, and you think of social media, and a generational need to find a voice, and to feel that they want to be heard – actually, that’s no different [today]. The format’s changed.

Technology has moved on. But there’s still a human need that not everybody has [met].’