Interview: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay on ‘Femme’
Marking the directorial debut of filmmakers Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, Femme is a neo-noir thriller that centers on Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who has managed to cement his status as one of London’s most celebrated drag artists through his performances as Aphrodite Banks. One night after a show, he steps out to get some cigarettes and is brutally attacked by a man (George MacKay), out with a gang of his friends. Although Jules is able to recover physically, he withdraws from the outside world, traumatized. Months later, he recognizes his attacker by chance in a sauna. Without make-up and wrapped only in a towel, Jules is able to approach the other man incognito and find out who he is. He begins an affair with the closeted Preston, with a plan to take his revenge.
Femme is a dark, thrilling and ultimately tragic pseudo-revenge drama that incisively subverts audience expectations, carefully flipping every genre trope and convention on its head. Aided by a surprisingly nuanced script, and powerful performances from stars Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay, it also paints an incredibly realistic portrait of the complexities of identity, desire, and vengeance, never sacrificing character development or progression in favor of sensationalism or visual flare. Asked what made them want to sign on to the project, both Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay point to the script as being the deciding factor in their involvement.
“I was just blown away by it,” says MacKay. “The story itself and the characters within it were so full of beautiful contradictions. It’s very complex, but also incredibly accurate. It’s sort of economic but also operatic, and [Preston] was such a brilliant character to get your teeth into.” It’s a sentiment Stewart-Jarrett more than shares, according to the actor himself, who reveals he went on a “slight campaign” to be part of the project after reading the script. “I read the script and I just thought it was really heartbreaking,” he explains. “It felt almost classical in its arc of these two characters and it was just really, really powerful. I really wanted to be part of it.”
Stewart-Jarrett worked closely with the directors, who also penned the screenplay for the film themselves, to develop a backstory for Jules, in addition to capturing all of the different sides to the character that are displayed throughout the film. “I always felt that there were four different aspects of Jules,” he says. “Before the attack, in my head, Jules was the happiest he’s ever been; it was something that was just so glorious. It was a real moment for him that Preston steals, and so I wanted it to be full of joy because there isn’t much joy for Jules throughout the film at all. We also did talk about backstory. I wrote so much of where he was and where he was coming from, and all of the different aspects of it, like school stuff. I always think you carry that into into the project so I felt like that was a really good, foundational thing to do. But I also knew that Jules at the beginning was different to Jules at the end, and Aphrodite at the beginning was different to Aphrodite at the end. Figuring out how to facilitate those different parts of himself was quite a difficult journey, but I was quite strict about how I did it.”
MacKay says he also shared conversations with Freeman and Ng Choon about the character of Preston, who himself is also deeply conflicted and multifaceted, struggling with his own internal battles throughout the duration of the film. “We had a lot of conversations about the character,” he reveals. “I asked a lot of questions, like, ‘What was his sex life before this? Has he ever had a boyfriend? Has he had many girlfriends?’ It was similar to the work that Nathan has done in terms of building a foundational understanding of the character, so it was just about building a history for Preston beyond what was on the page.” With a large number of tattoos covering almost every inch of his body and his hair cropped and shorn on the sides, there is no question as to what type of person Preston is. Cementing that sort of first impression for the audiences was important for MacKay, which is why he worked closely with the film’s crew to develop Preston’s look from the ground up.
“A huge part of the character that you actually meet in the present story came from our makeup and hair designer Marie Deehan, and our costume designer Buki Ebiesuwa,” he explains, citing Freeman and Ng Choon’s association of Preston with drag kings, usually performers who personify male gender stereotypes, as the inspiration for his look. “I sort of always understood this whole nature of there being a drag king, but I think it was a more subtle or not as brave interpretation of that that we initially went with. We initially had much smaller tattoos, I kind of wanted Preston to be anonymous, but then I actually came to realize that his anonymity comes from being unquestionably masculine, you know? You don’t even ask the question with Preston because he is just so tough. And that’s where his anonymity and his hiding comes from. That expansion of the character came from Buki and Marie, and then was reinforced by Sam and Ping. We decided to go with larger tattoos, more gold watches, shorter hair. It was a mutual coming together of all of departments, basically.”
For a large bulk of the film, Jules and Preston are the only two characters audiences will actually see on-screen; it would be an understatement to say that the film rests heavily on their dynamic and the evolution of their relationship, which keeps the tension high throughout the film. “There’s this concept called the Master-Slave Dialectic,” says Stewart-Jarrett of the dynamic between the characters, who share a constant push and pull between them. “It basically means that the master and the slave can’t exist without one another to varying degrees, and that the slave knows more about the master than vice versa. There is something that is so codependent about these two people on screen; they literally cannot exist without each other and they fail to, in a really tragic and awful way, because of what Preston does to Jules. Preston exists forever in Jules’ head and when Jules sees an opportunity to rectify that, he takes it.”
In opposition to the destructive dynamic between Jules and Preston on-screen, Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay had an incredibly positive and collaborative working relationship off-screen, according to Stewart-Jarrett, who credits the success of the film and his performance in it to the close bond they developed throughout the filming process. “It was really wonderful working with George every day,” he says. “I could not have given that performance without George being opposite me, giving his performance. I felt tied to him in a really wonderful way and I never felt alone. Even though Jules was incredibly isolated, I felt very together with George. It was wonderful exploring those moments with him and going through each moment together.”
MacKay echoes the sentiment, praising Stewart-Jarrett’s dedication and talent as an actor, as well as his professionalism on-set. “I think Nathan is really extraordinary in the film,” he gushes. “It was just a pleasure to be one of the few people who got to directly watch his performance every day. Some people on-set are holding a boom, some people are holding a camera, but my job was just to focus on Nathan and to be affected by him in those moments. Nathan is just an incredible actor and a wonderful man so it was just a pleasure to be in his company and to do this film together. We had to go to quite extreme places quite quickly and literally, and I always felt safe on-set, thanks to Nathan. That’s something that you hope for and strive for in your work, and that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for him.”
As for what’s next for the actors, both of whom have a highly decorated, incredibly diverse filmography they built throughout the past few years, Stewart-Jarrett can next be seen opposite Samara Weaving in horror film Azrael from director E. L. Katz, which is set in a world where no one speaks. “There’s no dialogue in it,” he says of the film, which received rave reviews following its recent festival premiere. “There’s a tiny bit of a lost language in the middle of it and that’s it. It’s gory. It’s weird. There’s definitely some ambiguity to it; Azrael does not explain itself at all, in any sense. It also does some stuff about religion. I’m excited to see what people think.”
As for MacKay, who has Bertrand Bonello‘s The Beast opposite Lea Seydoux coming up next month, he recently wrapped production on Joshua Oppenheimer‘s The End alongside Tilda Swinton, Moses Ingram and Michael Shannon, described as an apocalyptic musical that centers on the last human family. “I don’t know how much I can say at this stage but I do lots of singing in it,” he reveals. “It’s about the last family on earth and the things that they have done to keep themselves safe. There’s also this kind of equivalent through-line in a sense with Femme in regards to the portrayal of subtle deceptions that reverberate and leave an impact.”
Femme is now playing in theaters in New York and expands nationwide throughout the next 2 weeks.