Tal­lu­lah Greive: ​‘Work­ing-class women aren’t homogeneous’

Hav­ing been delayed for almost two years by the pan­dem­ic, Michael Caton-Jones’ Our Ladies, adapt­ed from Alan Warner’s 1998 nov­el ​‘The Sopra­nos’, final­ly arrives in UK cin­e­mas this month. Set in 1996, the film fol­lows six 17-year-old Catholic school­girls from the High­lands who head to Edin­burgh for a choir com­pe­ti­tion, only to get caught up in debauchery.

At the story’s cen­tre are five work­ing-class friends, along­side derid­ed posh girl Kay (Eve Austin): there’s clos­et­ed group leader Fion­nu­la (Abi­gail Lawrie), her child­hood bestie Man­da (Sal­ly Messham), punk singer Kylah (Mar­li Siu), islander Chell (Rona Mori­son), and Orla, who is in recov­ery from leukemia and hop­ing the Lord’s Prayer will now help her lose her vir­gin­i­ty. Orla, also the film’s nar­ra­tor, is played by Aus­tralian-born, Edin­burgh-raised actor Tal­lu­lah Greive in her first fea­ture film credit.

LWLies: How did you get into acting?

Greive: In nurs­ery, I played a sheep one year and Mary the next, which is a kind of career pro­gres­sion I’ve nev­er nailed since. I start­ed youth the­atre at about nine and then when I was thir­teen, my Edin­burgh youth the­atre Strange Town, which I’m now patron of, start­ed a lit­tle agency to run along­side. And it just went from there. I’ve been pro­fes­sion­al­ly act­ing for about ten years, which is quite strange to say at 23. I loved being in youth the­atre and then the odd CBBC job came my way, which was great. And then Our Ladies hap­pened, which was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent and amazing.

You ben­e­fit­ted as a young per­former from Strange Town’s bur­sary schemes. How do you feel about the cur­rent state of access for actors from low-income backgrounds?

I’m wor­ried, but I think every­one has been for a very long time. As much as there are peo­ple fight­ing back against the arts cuts, it is scary. And there’s such a huge divide some­times in the indus­try. Every­one that I’m friends with is aware of the fact we all come from very dif­fer­ent places of priv­i­lege. You might have had pri­vate school con­nec­tions and then you were able to find an agent through fam­i­ly and friends, where­as oth­er peo­ple come through youth the­atre and there’s the dif­fer­ence between that and dra­ma school. There are many chan­nels into the indus­try, but the main dis­ad­van­tage is that some peo­ple just don’t have the mon­ey to do it. From my youth the­atre there were so many tal­ent­ed peo­ple, but pro­fes­sion­al act­ing didn’t feel like some­thing they could fea­si­bly just go and do.

I still remem­ber a friend in pri­ma­ry school say­ing, ​‘My mum says that you’re gonna end up work­ing in a fish and chip shop.’ I remem­ber being real­ly upset about it, but then also say­ing, ​‘Well, if I worked in a fish and chip shop, maybe I’d enjoy it!’ That’s a clas­sist com­ment. If you’re doing it to sup­port your­self, there’s no shame. But there’s a strange hier­ar­chy I think peo­ple shy away from, pre­tend­ing that if you’re tal­ent­ed then you’re going to reach a cer­tain lev­el. That’s not always how it works. There’s also a lot of luck. And then, yeah, bur­sary schemes involved.

Con­sid­er­ing all that, did the explo­ration of class in Our Ladies stand out to you?

Yeah, I felt I real­ly knew those girls. I’d become aware of ​‘The Sopra­nos’ as a nov­el a while before­hand because there was a play adapt­ed from it called Our Ladies of Per­pet­u­al Suc­cour. I just felt it was so authen­tic with­out ever doing pover­ty porn. There was some­thing about Our Ladies that allows these girls to be very cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, clas­si­cal­ly framed in the way Michael shoots, where he’ll do these mas­sive wide shots and six peo­ple mov­ing in and out. As much as I also love the shaky hand­held stuff often used with work­ing-class kitchen sink dra­mas, it was real­ly refresh­ing to have some­one approach it as if they were, say, fight­er pilots in World War Two. Some­one who’s gonna frame you against a beau­ti­ful sky or stun­ning back­drop of Edin­burgh. There’s this one bit where I’m sit­ting on Cal­ton Hill and it looks like a fairy tale.

I don’t think work­ing-class women get to be por­trayed like this all the time. There’s a rough­ness some­times to the way they’re shot, which is authen­tic in some ways. But it was very refresh­ing to me to have some­one explore class real­ly authen­ti­cal­ly and make it clear how indi­vid­ual all these peo­ple are. Work­ing-class peo­ple aren’t homo­ge­neous. They don’t all want the same things. And there’s some­thing quite won­der­ful about the way that Michael did that.

What do you think Our Ladies has to say about being Scot­tish, being young, and sexuality?

It’s not a short­bread hag­gis movie. It comes at Scot­land from a very authen­tic place. The ver­nac­u­lar the girls use is real­ly authen­tic. And as much as there’s a rough­ness to the way some of them speak to each oth­er, there’s that clas­sic caus­tic wit I think Scotland’s known for. Espe­cial­ly when now liv­ing in Lon­don, everyone’s like, ​‘You’re rude some­times.’ And I’m like, ​‘No, I’m fun­ny.’ I think it’s how peo­ple show their love and affection.

I like that it takes their youth seri­ous­ly. As much as we know these girls might be blow­ing mole­hills into moun­tains, it takes their wants and desires real­ly seri­ous­ly. And I think it’s impor­tant we see that with young women. I love that Olivia Rodrigo’s album is at the height of teen angst and everyone’s tak­ing it seri­ous­ly. We should take teenage girls’ emo­tions a lot more seri­ous­ly than we do because they’re very real. And I guess, being young, you have so much oppor­tu­ni­ty in front of you and so much life to live, but it can also feel like the end­ing of being young is the end of your free­dom in a way – for a few of these girls because of their oppor­tu­ni­ties in life.

With regards to sex­u­al­i­ty, I was read­ing a good thread on Twit­ter about how peo­ple often shit on rom-coms, but those present female desire as such an impor­tant thing. And it was real­ly won­der­ful to read a script, and then see some­thing shot, where 17-year-old girls are sex­u­al, because they are sex­u­al beings in real life, 100 per cent. But they’re nev­er sex­u­alised in the film. They’re just able to express them­selves and what they want and how they choose to express them­selves sex­u­al­ly is com­plete­ly on their terms, which is quite won­der­ful. It’s becom­ing less rare, but def­i­nite­ly when I was grow­ing up it didn’t feel like there were films like this.

Our Ladies was already in pre-pro­duc­tion when Der­ry Girls first aired in ear­ly 2018. Some peo­ple have pit­ted the two against each oth­er but the actu­al sto­ries and char­ac­ters are very dif­fer­ent. How would you pitch the film to any­one hung up on super­fi­cial similarities?

I could explain to them how it’s dif­fer­ent while say­ing that, obvi­ous­ly, I’m a big fan of the afore­men­tioned show. I think it’s absolute­ly won­der­ful. I would say it’s a very Eng­land-cen­tric thing, isn’t it, when­ev­er someone’s like, ​‘Der­ry Girls and Our Ladies are exact­ly the same.’ Well, one takes place dur­ing The Trou­bles. Hav­ing been to Belfast and hav­ing friends in Belfast, it’s a lit­tle bit weird that you’ve kind of for­got­ten about that huge piece of North­ern Irish his­to­ry. The oth­er one’s tak­ing place in a fun day out in Scot­land where you don’t have the same kind of threat or his­tor­i­cal absolute suf­fer­ing going on. It’s just not the same thing.

For me, it’s a shame that, I guess, because of the Catholic school­girl thing, there’s an instant reac­tion of, ​‘They’re iden­ti­cal.’ It’s a very Eng­lish way to see it, to say that Scot­land and North­ern Ire­land are the exact same, despite the fact that they’re real­ly not. We’ve got a lot in com­mon, like caus­tic wit, great chat, real­ly good drinkers and a few Celtic names. But beyond that, they’re incred­i­bly dif­fer­ent. There’s a lot of that kind of real­ly quick com­par­i­son, as with the slam-dunk­ing of, ​‘Well, only women should be telling women’s sto­ries.’ But we don’t have enough women’s sto­ries out there to begin with. And we don’t have enough work­ing-class women as the focus of a film, anyway.

It’s a bit shal­low some­times to be able to make these com­par­isons real­ly quick­ly. And that’s prob­a­bly harsh and some­one will def­i­nite­ly tweet me about it. But it’s frus­trat­ing because work­ing-class women aren’t a homo­ge­neous group of peo­ple. There’s the idea that we see work­ing-class peo­ple as all inter­change­able, but we don’t for upper-class peo­ple. They’re seen as indi­vid­u­als. It’s why we have so many films about gen­er­als in wars, land­ed gen­try or the roy­als. And I love a lot of those films, but we give them a chance to have agency, dreams and goals. Where­as we look at work­ing-class peo­ple and say, ​‘Oh no, no, you’re the exact same and that’s how it works.’

It’s a spe­cif­ic atti­tude in this coun­try, root­ed in cen­turies of being told that work­ing-class peo­ple ​“can’t appre­ci­ate beau­ty”. I think we just need to remem­ber, when­ev­er we’re mak­ing these com­par­isons, that there’s so much art that already exists about so many oth­er groups of peo­ple. And when­ev­er we talk about any under­priv­i­leged or mar­gin­alised group and we say, ​‘Oh, we’ve already got this one piece of art for you. Why do you need anoth­er?’ Well, why shouldn’t they have anoth­er? Every­one else has loads!

You’re very active when it comes to in-per­son protest­ing and online cam­paign­ing regard­ing social injus­tice. How impor­tant do you think it is to speak up when you have a platform?

I grew up in ex-coun­cil flats and know a lot of that com­mu­ni­ty that lived there. My par­ents are jazz musi­cians – when the pan­dem­ic hit, they didn’t have any sup­port. I’m a bur­sary kid. And I’ve thought about this a lot in the last year and had a bit of a reck­on­ing with what my idea of suc­cess is. If it takes place in a world that’s lit­er­al­ly burn­ing and peo­ple don’t have guar­an­teed good hous­ing, food and basic human rights, how can I look at that and then be like, oh, but I’m gonna go off and do what­ev­er. I’m so lucky in that I do a job where you get a nice chunk of mon­ey and then you have all this free time, so why not vol­un­teer as much of that free time as pos­si­ble to make sure that peo­ple just stay safe.

What sort of films would you like to make?

Hope­ful­ly I’ll have a career where I get to do many dif­fer­ent things and don’t get stuck at any point. Espe­cial­ly after the last cou­ple of years, with the pan­dem­ic, I just want to do stuff where it gives me some joy and everyone’s eager to be there. I’m real­ly lucky to have some cast­ing teams giv­ing me oppor­tu­ni­ties to be more than I ever thought I could be. Which is in a way, also, what Michael did with Our Ladies. I nev­er thought I could do what I did. Trust and sup­port and allow­ing you the free­dom to fail, that’s quite a mag­i­cal thing.

Our Ladies is released in UK cin­e­mas on 27 August.