Niamh Algar on how her turf-cutting past helped her in Netflix film, The Wonder
Niamh Algar in The Wonder, coming to cinemas and Netflix.
In an airport hanger outside Celbridge, Co Kildare, Niamh Algar is reflecting on the indignities of 19th-century female fashion. “I understand now why women used to pass out unpredictably,” says the Mullingar actress with a laugh. “The outfits are restraining. There’s a scene where I’m in the bog with my petticoat on, in my bonnet. I’m leading a donkey down the road. In the middle of the Wicklow Mountains. And you kind of go — this is what people did? You’re so exposed to the elements. Of course, I used to cut turf at the weekends. I felt like I was in training for this for years.”
Algar has blazed a thoughtful trail across the large and small screen since her breakthrough role opposite Stephen Graham in Channel 4’s in 2019. She’s worked with Ridley Scott on under-rated HBO sci-fi series . And she’s appeared opposite Jason Statham in hard-knuckle action romp .
That journey now proceeds from the ridiculous to the sublime as she stars in Sebastián Lelio’s post-Famine gothic mystery , adapted by Emma Donoghue from her 2016 novel of the same name and coming to Netflix on November 16. It’s a film that demanded a rigorous performance from Algar (30), whose character functions as a sort of unnerving audience surrogate (the fourth wall is broken more than once). The project also required her to, as she says, don a petticoat and walk the bog with a donkey.
“It’s a thriller. It has this gothic aspect. Sebastián is such an artist,” she says. “He’s created such an 'insular' type situation. You’re led into the story. You find yourself picking up on people’s expressions in the most minimal way. As the viewer, you’re reading everyone in the room.”
Netflix is backing the movie as part of its on-going quest to become a force in prestige cinema. To that end, the streamer has assembled an impressive cast to the set at Weston Airport, on the border between Kildare and Lucan in Dublin.
Florence Pugh plays Lib an English nurse and Crimean War veteran hired to ascertain how a fasting child in an unnamed Irish village has seemingly survived for months without food. The child’s mother, Rosaleen, is played by Elaine Cassidy, opposite her real, 12-year-old daughter Kíla Lord as Anna. And then there is Algar’s Kitty, an elusive one-woman Greek chorus who gazes down the camera, directly to the viewer. In a film swirling with disturbing imagery — Lelio knows how to make nuns look terrifying — she is the creepiest of them all.
is a bleak, sometimes slow, often starkly beautiful feature. It circles themes of religiosity, family secrets and the generational grief that followed the Famine (the story opens 10 years after the Great Hunger). For Algar, who relishes material into which she can sink her teeth, it was a dream job.
“The reason why I got into acting was to lose myself in film. Film and TV were my way of understanding the world,” she says. “I’m drawn to characters that let me understand people a lot better. I can’t help but be drawn to heavy material. That doesn’t mean I myself am wallowing and sad all the time. I’m always fascinated when people see characters that they feel represent them on screen. Or touch on a subject that has a kind of poignancy. We’re not here for a long time in this career — or in this world: so let’s make it count.”
Famine trauma meets folk horror in Walking the set at Weston, the sense of travelling back to a dark, haunted Ireland is overwhelming. In the central hanger stands an eerie re-creation of a two-story peasant farmer’s house. Through the door and up the stairs, there is a feeling of being dragged into an alien and superstitious Netherworld. A place where the dead cast long shadows over the living and where religion is not a comfort in difficult times but a way of making sense of an arbitrarily cruel world.
“I hadn’t seen a film that talks about the Famine in the way this does,” says Algar. “There is a family drama at the centre of it — set in this gothic thriller novella. It showcases a time in history that a lot of people outside of this country understood. It will be interesting to see how that is received internationally — what Ireland went through during the Famine. This is 10 years afterwards but, at that time, it’s a wound that hasn’t even begun to heal.”
How would she compare working with a younger director such as Lelio (48) to an old master like Ridley Scott?. “I’ve never compared one director to the next. For me, going on the set and working with a new director is about understanding their language. You have to be adaptable as an actor. You have to find a language that both of you can communicate in. The idea is to always be open and honest. And listening. Once you stop listening, you stop learning. That’s what is so important creatively — being open-minded.
"Understanding that the way one director works is not going to be same as another. Actors go from set to set. We’re the ones that adapt and change. What I’ve learned is that all the great ones, they’re passionate and that seeps through into the cast and the crew. And that feeds the energy on set: the passion for the story you are telling.”
will get a brief cinema release in the UK. But in Ireland, most people will see it on Netflix. The argument over whether Netflix is a threat to or saviour of cinema continues to rage. What is Algar’s take?
“It’s the way streaming services have gone. Plus, you have writers who were writing for film and now writing for TV, especially with these one-off miniseries.”
She doesn’t have a preference, she says, between film and television. “For me to be given the opportunity to play a character over a longer period of time is always a gift. You get to spend longer with a character and tell more of their story. Then I also love the opposite: spending five or six weeks doing a feature. You don’t have 'TV actors' and 'movie actors' anymore. There’s an overlap. It’s just screen-acting.”
is a gripping film. But it is also a disturbing watch, full of buried secrets and festering evil. In that, it has much in common with Shane Meadows’ , which is about child abuse, and, indeed with Algar’s 2019 crime drama, . If the opportunity presented itself, would Algar ever consider doing something frothier— and more lucrative — such as a Marvel blockbuster?
“If the script is there and the characters are intriguing enough and if there was a director I was passionate about working about, I’d read it [the script] and if I can see something in that character you can bring originality too… Something that hasn’t been done before. Absolutely. We’re here for a good time not a long time. I always want to be in projects I’m passionate about. It’s important. It’s your work. It represents you.”
- is in cinemas from Wednesday November 2, and released on Netflix on November 16
