'Skibbereen doubled for New York and Florida': Katie McGrath on her new Bill Evans film
Katie McGrath in a scene from 'Everybody Digs Bill Evans', the film made in Co Cork.
West Cork strikes the right note in the story of one of the most influential figures in 20th century music.
The film is set in the aftermath of one of the greatest musical successes of Evans’ life. In 1961, the jazz pianist found his musical voice in a trio that included close creative and bass player Scott LaFaro. A residency at New York’s Village Vanguard culminated in the live taping of two of what are regarded as among the greatest jazz records of all time in one day: and
But just days later, LaFaro died in a car crash, leaving Evans shattered by grief and struggling with his own history of addiction, as he stops playing music for the first time since his childhood.
Filmed in West Cork Studios and on location in West Cork, the region does a fine job in doubling for the US in what has been a widely well received film. won the Silver Bear for director Grant Gee at this year’s prestigious Berlin International Film Festival.
“Skibbereen doubled for New York and Florida,” says Irish actress Katie McGrath, who was impressed by how filmmakers and the region stepped up to the challenge of capturing a very American time and place on the big screen.
“A lot of that has to do with the Irish crew and we had a lot of local Cork crew on it too, who were to a person, incredible. It’s one of those situations where I end up feeling so proud of being Irish.”
When she wasn’t filming, McGrath got to check out the bookshops and vintage furniture stores near her Skibbereen base. “It makes me embarrassed at how little of our country I've seen because I've lived away for so long, and I come back and I get to do this movie, and it shows me parts of the country that I'm like: ‘Well, this is where I should live now’.”
is the latest project to film in the region in what has been a busy period, following the forthcoming a period drama about Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart; a gritty horror from Bantry filmmaker Damian McCarthy starring actor Adam Scott; and the forthcoming starring Saoirse Monica Jackson and Eva Birthistle.
Prime Video this week released the first images from , the forthcoming adaptation of Chloe Walsh’s young adult series, filming in counties Cork and Dublin.
Starring Anders Danielson Lie as the jazz great, features and Irish cast which includes McGrath and Barry Ward, along with prolific US actors Bill Pullman and Laurie Metcalf. The film, shot in black and white, is written by Mark O’Halloran ( ) and based on Owen Martell’s book,
McGrath plays Bill’s sister-in-law Pat and mother of Debby, after whom one of Evans’ most-loved records is named. “I knew who Bill Evans was. I didn't know much about his life, so when I got the role, I did some more research about his life,” she says. “I was familiar with his music - my partner is into jazz, so you can't know anything about jazz and not know the Bill Evans trio, and especially the albums that they made and the one that this is all set on.”
Does McGrath feel an extra sense of responsibility when it comes to playing Pat Evans, a person who has lived? “One hundred percent. This is a real person with a family who people love, who's got children.
"I couldn't imagine if I saw myself up on screen and my family, what that would mean and how that would affect them. I think you absolutely have a responsibility to the person first of all, and the memory and the reality of who they were, and then to everybody who loved them and knew them.”
She remembers a moment on set talking to director Grant Gee about a scene where Evans was playing Waltz for Debby, and being asked: What did she think Pat is thinking in this moment? “I think she's heartbroken for her family. I think she knows Bill is self-destructing, and what that's going to mean for her husband, and what that's going to mean for her daughter.
"I think she's reacting as a mother and a wife and a family member. She's sort of broken by this, touched by the music. But what she's really watching is this man falling apart. And I think that for me was my character. Is that it was less about the world of jazz and more about her family, and that's the way I came at it.”
McGrath was acting full time for just six months when she got a role opposite fellow Irish actor Colin Morgan in the BBC’s fantasy adventure TV series which emerged as a huge hit for the broadcaster. She had serendipitously found her way into acting through a job on hit TV series which was filmed on location in Ireland.
“I ended up with a job on because I came back from travelling and didn't have a job,” she says. Her mum’s friend was working on the series and knowing that the young McGrath was interested in fashion and design, suggested her for a role in the costume department. It was there that her interest in acting was fostered.
“ , with its first season, was this incredible thing that nobody knew how big it was going to get. Most of the young cast, it was their first big job, and the first season, they very much felt like people I could talk to, and that I knew. I was like: ‘acting, maybe it's possible’.
“I had no concept of how difficult it would be because I was seeing the end result, not the getting of there. If I had known how hard it was, I think I would have been too scared to try. But because I was young and clueless, and we'd had an incredible summer that first summer, I was like, let's go, it'll be fine. And then I was extremely lucky.”
Talent makes its luck, and McGrath would go on to play Lena Luthor in the hit series of star opposite Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in and as Lucy Westerna in We’ll soon see her starring with Anna Kendrick and JK Simmons in a series set in the aftermath of an embassy attack in London.
She has been particularly heartened by the audience response to following early festival screenings. “People are really moved by it: moved and surprised. The comment I get a lot is this is a type of movie that people aren't necessarily making anymore, but that people want to see. It's like a piece of jazz - it takes you on a million different places up and down and around, but it tells a full story. It’s like you're watching a jazz band, except on screen.”
- is now in cinemas
