Interview: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Diego Calva, Sasha Calle & Daniel Minahan on ‘On Swift Horses’
There’s something quietly radical about On Swift Horses, a film that threads longing, secrecy, and queer desire through the heat shimmer of 1950s California. Adapted from Shannon Pufahl’s novel and directed by Daniel Minahan, the film is a slow burn of longing, secrecy, and impossible choices, and ultimately a love story told in glances and charged silences.
It follows Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her husband Lee (Will Poulter) as they try to settle into a new life in California after the Korean War. But their fragile sense of stability is shattered by the arrival of Lee’s brother, Julius (Jacob Elordi), a gambler with a past he’s not running from so much as circling. When Julius takes off in search of Henry (Diego Calva), the young card cheat he’s fallen for, Muriel’s longing for something more propels her into a secret life of her own, gambling on racehorses and exploring a love she never dreamed possible with Sandra (Sasha Calle).
“There’s that beautiful scene where Muriel goes to Sandra’s house and she has her book club over,” Edgar-Jones says of her character’s journey in the film. “It feels like such a joyful, hopeful, beautiful version of Sandra living her most authentic life, and I think for Muriel to witness that and see it, it sparks this new feeling of exploration and freedom that she can start to begin with Sandra. So yeah, piecing together our dynamic was so much fun. I think Muriel opens up in a way with Sandra that she doesn’t with any other character and I just loved developing that.”
Edgar-Jones plays Muriel with a kind of quiet defiance; soft-spoken but observant, slowly figuring out what it means to want something that might break the world she’s built. Calle, as Sandra, grounds the film against some of its more melodramatic leanings, balancing charm with vulnerability, and delivering an incredibly nuanced performance in the process. The two actors shared an off-screen dynamic that largely shaped what ended up on screen. “I just think that [Daisy was] a wonderful number one,” Calle says. “She was a wonderful leader. From the moment that we connected, she reached out and created a safe space for me. She wanted to hang out. She wanted to talk about our characters and work on that. She led and I followed, and I felt comfortable and safe. I had so much fun with her and it was just such a beautiful experience.”
If Muriel and Sandra’s storyline is about awakening, Julius and Henry’s is about reckoning. Julius first comes across Henry when he starts working in a casino. Drawn to the cool and charismatic Henry, Julius finds himself dragged into his card-cheating schemes against his better judgement, giving their relationship an intense, charged, and unpredictable energy that pulsates throughout the film. “I found that Jacob is really a methodic actor. He likes to study a lot. I like to improvise,” says Diego Calva, who plays Henry, the young card cheat Julius becomes obsessed with. “So in a way, I feel that we kind of complement each other. And also we both were playing the same Pokémon game on Nintendo Switch. That was part of the icebreaker. But yeah, we rehearsed together and I felt safe all the time.”
Elordi plays Julius like he’s teetering on a tightrope; magnetic but restless, dangerous but not cruel. There’s a duality to the character that matches the film’s genre-blurring tone. “The novel was so intriguing because I was recognizing all of these literary tropes in it from James Baldwin, from Gore Vidal, from Patricia Highsmith,” says Minahan. “All of these queer writers that I loved. I felt their presence in Shannon Pufahl‘s writing and that really excited me. And then it also touched on all these different film genres, like film noir, melodrama, gambling, the love triangle. And it was just one of those things where I read it and I thought, ‘I could see myself in this.’ I felt like I had something to offer to this and I felt like I was compelled to tell this story after reading it. Luckily, a bunch of other people felt the same way!”
On Swift Horses is now playing in cinemas.