A dis-used power station dating back to the 1960s dominates the landscape in Catherine Linstrum’s debut feature, Nuclear, which is released on digital this week. But, despite that title, it’s a film that concentrates on the psychological rather than the environmental. You can check out our Emilia Jones and George MacKay interview below.
Emma (Emilia Jones) rescues her mother from a vicious attack by her step-brother and the two escape in the dead of night. Discovering an isolated house, used as a religious retreat, they hide out there and Emma makes friends with a young man (George MacKay) who is camping in a nearby field. She’s fascinated by his reason for being there: he climbs tall buildings and plans to scale the heights of the deserted nuclear power station. But all the time the shadow of her step-brother and what he did hangs over her and her mother.
George Mackay and Emilia Jones star in Nuclear, Catherine Linstrum’s debut feature. Now available on digital.
George MacKay came to the film after preparing for The True History Of The Kelly Gang and found that work helped in portraying the physicality of his character. As he explains in the interview below, he was attracted by the ambiguity of the story and the sparse script with its room for different interpretations. He’s recently finished filming Wolf in Dublin, with Paddy Considine and Lily Rose Depp. It was a shoot that involved the entire cast and crew having something close to their own lockdown – regular testing, forming a support bubble in their hotel – a programme that paid off as they all came through the shoot without infection.
Currently filming the second series of Locke And Key for Netflix, Emilia Jones is having a similar experience in Toronto, with the crew wearing protective equipment so she has no idea what their faces look like. Like MacKay, she was attracted to working on Nuclear by its element of mystery and intrigue, so much that once she’d finished the script for the first time, she wanted to read it all over again. Because her character is hardly ever off the screen, she worked with director Linstrum on exercises to help deepen her understanding of her character – one that involved charting her emotions on a roll of wallpaper. Jones’s next film, Coda, sees her working alongside Marlee Matlin in a story about a deaf family in a fishing community. It involved her learning sign language, which she continues to use, despite finding that the British version is completely different.
George MacKay interview:
Emilia Jones interview:
Nuclear is released on digital on 9 November 2020.
