British actress Olivia Colman says swearing is a ‘wonderful seasoning of language’
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Olivia Colman said 85 per cent of all strong language in the script for Wicked Little Letters was original.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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PARIS – British actress Olivia Colman, who starred as Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix series The Crown (2016 to 2023), says she loves a good cussing, as long as it does not hurt anyone.
That is just as well, because Wicked Little Letters, the latest film she stars in, is full of creative expletives.
“I rarely swear at another person in anger,” said the performer, who won a Best Actress Oscar in 2019 for playing 18th-century Queen Anne in The Favourite (2018).
But “I use it every day or if I’m cross about something. It’s a useful tool and a wonderful seasoning of language”, said the 50-year-old.
In Wicked Little Letters, a comedy based on a true story, Colman plays a pious spinster who lives with her domineering father in an English coastal town in the 1920s and suddenly finds herself receiving poison pen letters.
Deeply affronted, she accuses her neighbour, a free-spirited sweary single mother played by Irish actress Jessie Buckley, and manages to get her sent to jail.
A policewoman, lone among a group of condescending and often bumbling male colleagues, suspects foul play and decides to crack the case. She is played by Singaporean actress Anjana Vasan.
The female-led comedy recounts a post-World War I tale of trolling, but also celebrates foul language as a means of liberation from social expectations.
It shows trying to shackle women “only causes some kind of lavatory overspill”, said Buckley, 34, using the image of an overflowing toilet.
“Beware. We’re not meant to be cooped up, we’ve got a lot more about us.”
Trials, invisible ink
Colman said 85 per cent of all strong language in the script for Wicked Little Letters was original.
“There’s a perception that no one in the 1920s said anything rude, and that’s clearly not true,” she said.
The original story – recounted by screenwriter Jonny Sweet – involved multiple nasty missives in the southern seaside town of Littlehampton, several trials and a final masterstroke involving invisible ink.
English director Thea Sharrock said she wanted 10- to 12-year-olds to pretend they were older to see the film despite its 15 rating when it comes out in Britain on Feb 23.
“Apart from the swearing, there is no reason why young teenagers can’t see this movie,” she said.
“There are lessons to be learnt about language, the use of it and why it’s really important to know that there have to be boundaries,” she said, evoking modern-day social media.
Colman used the F-word to qualify how horrible she thought it was for online trolls to anonymously “hurt someone”.
“We’re not on social media, so we take ourselves out of that arena and are much happier people because of it,” she added, speaking for herself and Buckley. AFP
