What was the process like between you two as you developed the screenplay?
Well the the screenplay developed in a really, to use an overused word, organic way. I knew he was a fine writer. I gave him a premise that I had been sitting on for about a decade. He did the writing, but we developed the story and the feel and the texture of it together.
Period pieces are notoriously cumbersome and expensive to make. Did you find that to be the case?
Thaddeus O’Sullivan: The biggest challenge in this context was really the whole Lourdes issue.
The tone that you set from the very beginning lets the audience know that they’re going to see something that’s serious, but you’re not going to weigh them down with it, and I appreciate that so much about this film.
Rich Peppiatt: Yeah, that was something that was important to us, to make sure it was entertaining. And there’s been so many films about Belfast which can stray sometimes into a turgidly serious tone.
Can you talk about the decision to set the film in 2013, and why that specific year was the right choice for this story?
Austin Peters: If you think about where we, as a country, were at in 2013… It was such a different time.
Jesse, what inspired this story? I understand it was a long road for you, between the initial idea and getting it up on the screen.
Jesse Eisenberg: Yeah, I’d been, like, sitting with the seeds of this movie for twenty years.