Lily James: 'Rebecca asks a lot of pretty sinister questions about men and women'
Lily James with Arnie Hammer in Rebecca, on Netflix.
British filmmaker Ben Wheatley isn’t the first filmmaker who comes to mind for the making of an adaptation of literary classic Rebecca. The man behind such cult indie hits as the shoot ‘em up Free Fire and the darkly funny Sightseers doesn’t seem like the type to take on Daphne Du Maurier’s much-loved novel.
That’s what leading actress Lily James thought too, until she realised his knack for the complexities of human nature meant his involvement made perfect sense.
“At first, I was like, wow, Ben Wheatley, Rebecca? And I said to him: ‘Why do you want to do this movie having done Sightseers and Kill List, which are two of my favourite films?’
“When you think about it more closely, it's the perfect fit. Not only does he genre shift between the movies he's made, this is so psychological, it's so dark and twisted, it really gets into the human psyche and asks a lot of pretty sinister questions about men and women. It sort of made perfect sense.
James, who has been on the gossip pages recently after being photographed in Rome with actor Dominic West, says she really enjoyed working with Wheatley.
Wheatley’s adaptation successfully highlights the moral ambivalence of the novel, which centres on the whirlwind romance between the wealthy Maxim De Winter (Armie Hammer) and a young ladies’ companion (James) who quickly agrees to become his bride when they fall in love in glamorous Monte Carlo.
They return to the fabulously vast and fancy Manderley house on the Cornish coast, only for the new Mrs De Winter to discover that the shadow of his deceased wife, Rebecca, looms very large indeed.
In fact, it feels like she is still the primary figure in the house. Much of this sense is fanned by the head housekeeper, a devoted Mrs Danvers (the excellent Kristin Scott Thomas) who treats the house like a shine to Rebecca and who views the new arrival as a threat.
“For me, the moment when you see that ambivalence, you suddenly question this character that's been leading you through, trying to seduce you and keep you inside her head and lead you through the story,” says James.
“And then you see how she behaves. It's more important that she really catches on to her sanity, that she wasn't crazy, that he did love her, that is more important. So it's more morally ambivalent, but it's also deeply human. And that was totally why I wanted to play her. I think it's exciting to have characters that are tricky.”
James has been mixing it up in recent years with movies including the live-action version of Cinderella and quirky crime thriller Baby Driver. Many stars in her position would have steered clear of revisiting what it is regarded as one of Hitchcock’s classics and while she points out it’s a return to the novel rather than the 1940 film, she had no qualms about taking it on.
“I watched the Hitchcock film before. And in a way I wanted to draw from it as much as possible. I mean, this is a retelling of the story adaptation of the book. It was nothing to do with remaking Hitchcock. But I felt why not draw on everything that's out there? Not only the Hitchcock film - there's the TV show that Joanna David did that's very faithful to the book. I drew on everything. I thought, why not?”
Wheatley, for his part, was not perturbed about adapting a novel made famous on film by Hitchcock. He was already drawn to Jane Goldman’s script, which he says he really enjoyed, but also felt there was a new audience for Du Maurier’s story.
“I'd seen the Hitchcock version, I'd read the book, but I still fell for all the twists and turns of the script. When I reread the Daphne du Maurier novel, I realised that I'd kind of misremembered a lot of it. And that was quite strange.
“I talked to other people about it, and everyone was like: ‘Oh, Rebecca, it's such a romantic story’. Is it really that romantic? I realised a lot of people misremembered it. I thought maybe it's because it casts such a big shadow, it's such an important and well-loved book.
“When I reread it, I realised how much of it was so modern. The morality of the book is so brave and different, that even modern cinema won't go near it. And it's something that's definitely missing from the Hitchcock version, that side of that book. I didn't really think about the Hitchcock version to be honest. I watched that, and I watched the various TV versions. I watched those mainly for due diligence, just to make sure that I wasn't using anything from those adaptations that wasn't in the book.”
The new film does have a subtle modern edge, and even though it remains set in the late 1930s, Wheatley’s touches do give it a sense of universality.
The production and costume design, for example, manage to be other worldly without pinning down the story to a specific time. It was something that Lily James noticed from a very early stage.
“Ben really encouraged us to not think about a period at all. I mean, it is a very period film, because particularly, for my character, the situation she's in as a woman is very specific to that time. But also the story is so modern, it could be now for the emotional and psychological aspect of it. I never really felt like I was in a period film ever, actually, particularly in France.”
Like many in acting and the arts, James has seen film and TV production badly impacted by the Covid pandemic, as colleagues and peers slowly return to production. Rebecca was due to have a cinema run here before bowing on Netflix, but with cinemas currently closed that was not possible.
She is very concerned for cinema and the arts, but is hopeful that they can survive the pandemic. “It's been such a surreal time for theatre too. I miss it. It feels like cinemas are being chucked under the bus and it's really frightening. But I think that it will always survive. There will always be a demand however long it takes to get it back up to its former glory. There will always be people who want to go.”
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