Ruth Wilson at the Venice Film Festival
Ruth Wilson was in a candid frame of mind as she spoke of how she tapped into past relationships to understand the psychology of infatuation.
'Why do we fall for someone that isn't necessarily right for you?' mused the 39-year-old star of The Affair and Mrs Wilson. 'When you're infatuated with someone — when you really fancy someone — it takes over your whole body. It takes over your every waking thought. lt's obsession!' she declared.
Wilson stars in True Things, a film inspired by Deborah Kay Davies's subjective novel True Things About Me.
The actress and the film's director Harry Wootliff, along with writer Molly Davies, reshaped the book's diary-like structure and created a screenplay which she described as a 'universal experience of infatuation' — a subject also at the heart of her chilling portrayal of psychopath Alice Morgan, opposite Idris Elba in Luther.
She told me she became involved in True Things at a very early stage. She and Jude Law were working together on Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie at the Donmar Warehouse more than a decade ago, when Law's production company was sent Davies's book — and Wilson was asked to have a read of it.
She and Law joined forces and acquired an option on the screen rights. Later, the British Film Institute and BBC Film also became involved.
Wilson said what she loved about the book was that it felt 'incredibly feminine and truthful' — and this was before the Fleabags of this world came to the fore.
The story focuses on Kate (who isn't named in the book), who works in a benefits office. Day after day she's subjected to abuse from clients until one day, a man (played by Tom Burke) waltzes in and upends her life.
Ruth on the red carpet for True Things
'She objectifies him and calls him The Blond,' Wilson said. 'And she has to have him. When The Blond comes in, he's got to look sexy and attractive... and dangerous and alluring,' Wilson told me, adding that it's Kate who chooses to chase after him. 'She's not a victim. She goes for him.
'He gaslights her, doesn't behave very well — but she's choosing not to listen to those warning signs, and she continues to pursue.'
As awful as Kate's experience is, there's a sense that at some point we — all of us — need to go through a car-crash relationship in order to understand what it is we really want.
During pre-production, while trying to flesh out both Kate and The Blond's characters, Wilson and Wootliff 'would speak about relationships we've had where you'd sort of be infatuated with someone and then suddenly the veil would lift one day. That instant where you'd think: 'What is that about?'
Ruth and Tom Burke in True Things
Ruth Wilson says she became involved in True Things at a very early stage
'It's interesting that two women — Harry and me — should decide who this man should be,' she said. 'And then Tom (Burke) came in and brought his own complexity to him.'
True Things was screened at the Venice Film Festival this week (it will also get an outing at the London Film Festival next month). Wilson and I had met for a chat in a shaded section of the Tennis Club Venezia. She was wearing a Nina Ricci top under a swanky suit designed by The Frankie Shop (she modelled another eye-catching suit, by Schiaparelli, on the red carpet that evening).
In True Things, Kate comes from a 'nice' middle-class family — though Wilson insists the film isn't a judgment on 'comfortable upbringings'. 'It's about a woman trying to break from the confines of her life. She knows she's a bit different from the world in which
