| Emilia
Fox talks about the incredible thriller why-dunnit Fallen Angel
Emilia
Fox relished the chance to play a character through different stages of
her life.
It was easier playing a character with three strongly defined stages of
life. So much of the time with a drama you’re working from scripts
which only deal with the present, so you end up making up your own
history for the character and these decisions could be different from
those of the director or writer.
But with Fallen Angel, Andrew Taylor in the novels and Peter Ransley in
his adaptation, map out Angel’s entire life so you are very clear
about every stage. The only strange thing was not being there to see
Tigerlily play little Rosie so I couldn’t pick up any mannerisms of
hers and include them in my portrayal. Although I did join in her
rehearsal process so that I could get an idea of how she might be.
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Emilia
read Andrew Taylor’s Roth Trilogy before her audition and, according
to the novelist, knows the books better than he does himself.
I found the books utterly compelling and, once I was cast and had the
scripts, I used the text to bring back bits of Rosie as Andrew is very,
very clear about little details which made Rosie become Angel. I found
the original book very useful as a bible.
We filmed over the summer months and I felt totally immersed in the
project and the character. I had time to develop ideas and include them
in various stages of the character development. In his book Andrew laces
Rosie with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder from a little girl, seemingly
as a result of lack of control as a child and the lack of attention her
father showed her. So you see it in the containment she had as a little
girl and then as a teenager when she’s trying to control her emotions,
then this becomes a fully fledged disorder as an adult when she likes to
have everything planned and she’s totally thrown by spontaneity.
She has to have everything clean and tidy which is in total contrast to
the disorder she is creating in everyone else’s lives. It’s an
efficiency executed over herself that she tries to impose on all around
her. It was really satisfying trying to inject that into the whole span
of Rosie’s life.
Describing her character from childhood to adulthood – as opposed to
the order we see in the films – Emilia says: It’s both exciting and
terrifying to try and achieve the balance between the reality of that
character, so that an audience can totally believe that Angel might be
the person living next door to them, but also to maintain something of
the gothic, heightened realism that Andrew Taylor invests in the novel.
Rosie is the daughter of the Reverend David Byfield and Janet, who had
this very strained marriage due to his professional ambitions and a lack
of good communication in the marriage. Rosie’s childhood relationship
with her grandfather is ambiguous, but there is the suggestion that all
is not as innocent as the grandfather - granddaughter relationship
should be. Maybe because she was forced into an adult world far too
young, Rosie becomes an expert manipulator of situations - and
especially of Wendy. She listens to and absorbs what the adults say and
do and then she uses things against them to ultimately tragic affect.
In the second film you see Rosie at first as this happy, well developed
teenager. She’s just taken her A-levels and she’s hoping to go to
Cambridge University. She has a totally exclusive relationship with her
father and she’s the most important figure in his life – but the
peace and balance between them is shattered by the arrival of Vanessa
who David plans to, and does, marry. Then Michael Appleton, Wendy’s
son, seems to usurp her role in the family by coming to stay with them
and this destroys Rosie’s relationship with her father, and her once
high achieving academic life is shattered in consequence. Film Two
really charts the falling apart of Rosie’s world.
And as an actress in her 30s, Emilia slipped into the youthful character
of 17-year-old Rosie quite happily.
It was frighteningly easy to remember what it was like with all those
hormones rushing round. I took it as a huge compliment being asked to
play 17 again. But it took a lot of brilliant work from make-up and
costume! And what surprised me most was the amount of energy you have to
invest in being a teenager. I wanted to find a balance between what
Andrew had written in the book which was this very contained 17 year-old
girl, and Peter’s interpretation of Rosie which was much more of a
teenager with volatile emotions, but I wouldnt ever want her to be too
melodramatic so I asked David Drury, the director, to keep a constant
check on me.
Then in the third part of Rosie’s life, as she becomes Angel, we meet
her as a fully fledged psychopath with ‘antisocial behaviour’ living
with a man called Eddie who she’s manipulated, through his own
desires, into doing exactly as she wants. They’ve been kidnapping
children under the pretence that it’s for the good of the children,
whereas in fact they both have entirely different motives for their
actions. Eddie’s seemingly suppressed paedophilia, which Angel uses
against him, and Angel’s motives which relate to her own upbringing
where her unsatisfactory parenting develops into her own mothering of
the kidnapped children. And the children become objects of desire and
ultimately victims.
Emilia believes Rosie’s driving force is the pursuit of her father’s
attention.
Its the absolute key to her character and all she does stems from that
desire. He is a highly intelligent man who failed to recognise his
daughter’s needs. He loves her blindly and he ignores whats right in
front of him and she in turn mimics his behaviour. She adores him but
when she doesn’t get his attention she seeks it in other ways and
tries to preserve herself as his little girl.
Emilia is currently filming a new series of Silent Witness for the BBC.
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