How ‘Wicker’ Became the Most Exciting, Tenderest Film of the Year

If you are online, Wickera fantasy romantic comedy centered around an ostracized fisherwoman who spends many noisy nights with her wicker husband, will remind you of something.

Thanks to directors, co-writers and real-life married couple Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, the feature film has taken on a life of its own since social media and the meme-generating corner of the internet stumbled upon this intimately created indie.

And can you blame them? Adapted from the 14-page short story by Ursula Wills-Jones The Wicker Husbandthe film stars British Academy Award winner Olivia Colman as the aforementioned village outcast, who is fed up with the snide remarks of her fellow townspeople (led by The CrownElizabeth Debicki) and implores the local basket maker (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband from his materials. Enter Alexander Skarsgard as an enchanted bridegroom made entirely of wicker, whose raw sex appeal and tender devotion to the fisherwoman disturbs – in a good and bad way – the entire village.

Oddly enough, Wicker might have been considered a tough sell until Colman came on board as lead star and executive producer. “You’re always trying to push the rock up the hill,” Fischer begins. The Hollywood Reporter. “But then Olivia signed. And then, boom!” Things are turbocharged. Skarsgard, who like Colman has made bold career choices in recent years, has become the only man to do justice to this shining wicker knight. “We wanted him to be strikingly handsome and like the actor,” Wilson said. THR.

But even with two sets of Hollywood stars in their own right, the couple couldn’t have predicted just how excited they were. Wicker – and his online image – would become. “Everyone fell in love with them as a couple on set, even from the camera test,” Fischer says. “So when the trailer came out, we learned a lot about the Internet and the viral loop.”

Below, Wilson and Fischer engage in a candid conversation about Black Bear’s journey. Wickerfrom its premiere at Sundance to its appearance at the BFI London Film Festival last week. They discuss the incredibly impressive work of a New Zealand-based effects studio to create Skarsgard’s practical wicker suit, how the film’s incredibly tender message surprises you, and why a project partly centered around the power of a wicker penis might just be what everyone’s been waiting for.

This must have been years in the making. Tell me about the origin story.

ALEX HUSTON FISCHER It’s now been five years since we wrote it, which is surprising.

ELEANOR WILSON Yeah, it’s amazing how time flies. And this from the first draft until here, I’m talking to The Hollywood Reporter(which) is actually a bit normal-slash-fast! We shot the film two years ago and we finished it a year ago now, and then it screened at Sundance. The origin story is based on a short story by Ursula Wills-Jones called The Wicker Husbandand this news was shared with us by one of our producers, Justin Lothrop, who was a fan of his writing and brought the news to us with the intention of making it into a film – and we just loved it. It’s a short story, very short. I think it’s 14 pages, but it’s a really nice structure, which is a rare gift to give as a screenwriter. We worked on the script for a while. We sent the script to Olivia Colman. She said yes, which was crazy.

FISCHER You’re still trying to push the rock up the hill. We were trying to make other films, and (it was) like, “Oh, (Wicker) will have to come after these. But then Olivia signed. And then boom!

It turbocharged things, I assume?

FISCHER Turbocharged exactly. She is jet fuel.

Did you know from the start that Olivia would be your dream, but thought it might never happen?

WILSON (Laughter.) Exactly true.

FISCHER We never even allowed ourselves to believe in the dream. We know how it goes. Our agent told me, “Don’t bother. » But then, it was the same agent who contacted Olivia’s agent, and then, I don’t know why, but they read it and then they liked it.

Do you remember the call?

WILSON It was like, “Olivia wants to meet.”

FISCHER And that’s usually good. This means that only you can screw everything up.

WILSON You always think you’re going to take these calls and you have to make a big pitch and you have to explain and sound professional and make sure you…

FISCHER Articulate.

WILSON Yeah, and you could say we’re not very good. But when we called, (Colman) was like (with a British accent), “Oh wow, thank you so much for thinking of me. I love the storyline. Let’s do it.”

FISCHER “You look adorable.”

WILSON And then we mostly talked about our children.

FISCHER Our child was only about 6 months old.

WILSON He was like a baby in the other room, and we didn’t know how to do everything yet. We were very nervous, but we talked about the kids all the time. It was great.

FISCHER She is disarmingly kind.

Did she tell you What did she like so much about the script?

FISCHER It’s funny because a lot of communication with Olivia is nonverbal and instinctive, even when we’re on set.

WILSON Yeah. I don’t know if she ever necessarily explained to us what she liked, but she just seems to cling to things instinctively, and I think she must have seen something in the fisherman that really captivated her.

FISCHER I think she understood it.

WILSON She sure did. All of our actors are very different in the film, but (with) Olivia, we don’t talk much about the character. She just understands.

FISCHER She absorbs 100 percent of what is written.

WILSON And brings it to life.

So when she arrived, the money flew away a bit?

WILSON It was still a strange film.

FISCHER It was 2023. So it was a pretty dark time. We were coming out of the writers’ strike. No original films were made. “Don’t even try to make a movie” was the mood. So (we had) Olivia on board and (special effects studio) Weta Workshop on board very early on, and they did the prosthetics. Then we turned to the financiers.

Did you find it a difficult sell? Just because, obviously, it’s such a unique premise for a movie.

WILSON Every step of the way in making this film, we tried to do it with people we know. We needed…

FISCHER Some control.

WILSON Stay in control and do it in a somewhat safe space. So we never presented it to the big studios. It was a strange film, and we wanted to make sure we could do it the way we wanted. We therefore entrusted it to independent financiers whom we already knew a little.

FISCHER And it was unstoppable.

WILSON It was unstoppable.

FISCHER The first thing our producer Justin said was, “Do you want to present it as a pitch, or do you want to write it basically to spec with a little development money?” And we said, “We’re not going to be able to present it. We want to be able to understand what it is and write it for what it is.” We therefore always opted for the control version.

WILSON Less money, more control.

FISCHER And when we had the script, Olivia and the workshop attached, we also went to see financiers (that) we knew.

WILSON And who already knew us a little and knew what our sensitivities were and was OK with that.

FISCHER Because the worst thing you can have is a movie that has its own DNA and then someone takes it and tries to make it something it’s not. It was the worst case scenario. It’s worse than not making a film at all.

WILSON Yeah. So we were very protective of him. But I think it worked. You never really have enough money. I think everyone feels this way all the time. But we had just enough. We have to make the film we wanted to make.

We talked about Olivia, but I want to talk about Alexander. When did you know you wanted to make a pretty hot movie?

FISCHER (Laughter.) There was a line in the short story that said that after their first night of marriage, the wicker husband said, “The bed is broken. Bring me a scissor. I’ll fix it.” And that’s all he says.

WILSON That doesn’t describe the night before.

FISCHER So we read that and said, “Well, why don’t we show the bed breaking?” »And then that was the beginning.

WILSON But we always considered the sex scenes to be the comedy of the film. They were meant to be played for laughs, and they are. But I think once we had Alexander in costume, Olivia and Ita O’Brien, our intimacy coordinator, working together on those scenes, that’s when they became surprisingly sexier than we thought.

Was the casting of Alexandre crucial? Did you imagine a conventionally attractive actor for the role?

FISCHER He must have been handsome.

WILSON Yes, I think for everything that happens to the villagers, it must have been very striking. That was the goal of the workshop: we wanted him to be strikingly beautiful and look like the actor, which was huge because we really wanted Alexander’s performance to be able to shine through the prosthetic. And just that the prosthesis can move towards his facial (expressions).

FISCHER So it reacts to his face.

WILSON And we wouldn’t have CG any movement.

FISCHER But both…