For the cast of Arie and Chuko Esiri’s “Clarissa,” which takes Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs. Dalloway” and moves it from 1920s London to 2020s Lagos, Nigeria, getting to perform in a drama set in modern Africa was a breath of fresh air.
Starring Sophie Okonedo as the titular Clarissa, the film reimagines Woolf’s upper-class drama as the story of a middle-aged Lagos socialite preparing to host a party while reflecting on the choices that led her to marry a respectable man rather than her close friend, the poet Peter, played by David Oyelowo.
Oyelowo told TheWrap’s Jada Yuan at the Toronto International Film Festival that the majority of the “Clarissa” cast were working for the first time in Africa, making the shoot an emotional experience.
“We all have our own relationship with that region, but had never worked there, and there was something that was evocative of what the characters are going through in terms of a kind of an embrace,” he said. “Because we’ve all operated as characters outside of Nigeria, and there’s a kind of embrace and a complicated set of feelings we have about Nigeria, and that was the case for the actors as well.”
“The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri also appears in the film as a younger version of Clarissa’s estranged friend, Sally, as the movie flashes back to Clarissa’s past and explores how her relationship with Sally may have been something more.
“As Black actors, we’re often asked to to perform around where my source of pain is coming from, where it’s written,” she said. “Why can’t I, as a Black person, as an African person, also be dealing with existential issues, just like my non-Black counterparts are?”
Chuko Esiri said he and his brother felt a similar sense of freedom as they were adapting “Mrs. Dalloway,” noting that while the core themes of class conflict carried over from Woolf’s novel, there was a point where Nigerian society and culture took over as the primary inspiration when building the characters.
“There was a moment where I really had to let them go because … we were writing Nigerian characters, and that sort of evolution really helped sort of evolve,” he said. “And I think for me it was liberating, and it just found a way into it.”
“Clarissa” will be released by Neon on Dec. 11.
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