During a break from M:I 7, Simon Pegg made his way to dreich GFF and embraced the rain for the premiere of Lost Transmissions, alongside director Katharine O’Brien, where we got to catch up with them both.
Lost Transmissions tells the story of music producer Theo (Pegg); he has found a new friend, and potential recording artist, in Hannah (Juno Temple). The pair quickly hit it off – and some lyrical success lands her a gig writing for popstar Dana Lee (Alexandra Daddario). However, when Theo goes off his medication, his schizophrenia gets out of control and Hannah, alongside Theo’s other friends, are forced to try to find him adequate care in L.A’s troubling healthcare system.
On the red carpet for the film, we got an opportunity to speak to Pegg and O’Brien about some of the challenges of tackling mental health and adding to the conversation in a positive way.
Could you talk a little bit about what inspired the story?
Katharine O’Brien: It was inspired by something I went through with a group of friends when one of our friends went off his medication for schizophrenia. It took us down the rabbit hole in Los Angeles for a minute.
And this is quite a departure for you so what was it that drew you to this?
Simon Pegg: I was really surprised to get sent the script, for a start. Most of the scripts I get sent tend to be in a similar frame, in a similar vein. This was something that felt challenging, and it was an amazing story. I was really interested in the fact that it was directed by a woman. I haven’t done a movie which has been directed by a woman before, which is not my choice but rather just the way things, unfortunately, are so it was a real opportunity for me to something different.
Obviously, when you’re dealing with a character like Theo, who has schizophrenia, how do you go about preparing for that, as a writer/director and as an actor, and what are some of the challenges that presents as well?
O’Brien: Well, I spoke to my friend who is schizophrenic and he’s able to reflect on what he went through. He offered a lot of insight. He’s usually very internal but I wrote the character to, sort of, externalise his thoughts more and I learned a lot about exactly what it feels like to be hearing an abundance of stimulation and sounds and connecting them to meanings and colour and things like that so understanding what they were experiencing I think definitely helped fuel his behaviour in the script and the ways he would be reacting to people.
Pegg: Yeah, I tried to read as much that I could about schizophrenia. I went to a hospital and had long conversations with people who were suffering from it, or people who experienced it. I spoke to the person, Katharine’s friend, and got to know him and understand how he felt about his delusions when he was in the midst of it and also looking back on them. I really wanted to go into this knowing what I was talking about. It’s very easy to play crazy, this happens a lot. It’s one of the last illnesses, mental health, that is fair game for being flippant. You don’t see that many films where people, kind of, approximate what it’s like to have cancer. It’s a disease, you know? It needs to be portrayed faithfully.
Katharine, this is obviously your first feature. What was the journey like to this being your first one?
O’Brien: I had written one before, with a friend that I sort of shadowed throughout the process so that was nice. But, yeah, I think at a certain moment you lean into it, like they say, and pretend you can do this thing because you realise there’s a lot of knuckleheads that are doing it anyway so why can’t you?
Pegg: Knuckleheads?
O’Brien: Knuckleheads. It’s one of my 1950s terms.
Pegg: It’s a good one.
O’Brien: But, yeah, once you do that, you actually find that you’re doing it. So you can start to feel like you can own that.
And Simon, you’ve obviously been known to throw yourself into roles. You’ve been a marathon runner and now you’ve become a musician. What was it like for you to take that challenge on?
Pegg: It was great. I had to learn to look like I could play the piano and that was a really interesting process. It was about physicality. I grew up in a very musical family so I’ve been around music so it wasn’t completely alien to me. But both the portraying the mental health aspect and the musician were both challenges I really relished.
Good luck with the film.
Pegg: Thank you so much.
O’Brien: Thanks.
Lost Transmissions is playing at GFF 2020.
