By Patrick Cremona

Published: Friday, 09 December 2022 at 12:00 am


Mark Strong is certainly not lacking for film projects at the moment. The Kingsman star has completed as many as five movies currently awaiting UK release, and the first of those – Nocebo – arrives in cinemas this weekend.

The psychological thriller comes courtesy of Irish director Lorcan Finnegan, and stars Strong and Eva Green as an overworked couple whose world is thrown into disarray when a mysterious caregiver from the Philippines (Chai Fonacier) suddenly shows up on their doorstep, armed with some seemingly strange cures for the mysterious illness being suffered by Green’s character. To give too much away beyond that point would be to veer into spoiler territory, but it’s a fascinating film with a very particular atmosphere – one in keeping with Finnegan’s previous film Vivarium.

Strong had seen that film and been quite taken by it before he got involved with Nocebo, finding the world the director had created “really interesting,” and so when the chance came to meet Finnegan over Zoom he immediately mentioned it would be great if they could work together one day. The script for Nocebo was sent to him a few months later, and he knew instantly it was a project he wanted to be a part of.

“Lorcan’s talent is that he can take something off the page and give it that uneasiness,” Strong explains during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com. “Reading [the script], I was struck by the kind of juxtaposition of Chai’s character and Eva’s character and the meeting of the two worlds. Obviously, a lot of the stuff that you read in the stage directions you need to wait until the film is made in order to get that sense – but I think his talent lies in an ability to know exactly what kind of mood he wants to create with the film.”

Part of Finnegan and screenwriter Garret Shanley’s research process was to really throw themselves into the world of shamanism in the Philippines, which plays a huge role in the events of the film. They met with various witch doctors, black magic practitioners, and other relevant people, applying much of what they had learned to the script. But this research was something Strong himself did not partake in – for very good reason.

“My character is very skeptical, so in a way I didn’t really want to find out about it or fall in love with the notion of this very different type of medicine,” he reveals. “But I did talk to Lorcan about it. And he said that he and Garrett had been to the Philippines and had seen a ceremony like the one that Chai undertakes in the movie. And they found it really fascinating.

“So that was enough for me, I kind of understood that the purpose of all that was to be mysterious, unusual, and a little bit almost supernatural. But the fact that it was rooted in reality, I thought, made it all the more powerful.”

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Mark Strong as Felix in Nocebo.
Vertigo

Another thing that attracted Strong to Finnegan’s work was the strong political underpinnings of his films. Whereas Vivarium took aim at the Irish housing crisis, Nocebo makes pointed criticisms of colonialism and the exploitation that occurs under global capitalism, and this was something Strong was especially keen to explore.

“It’s one thing making a movie or telling a story that is entertainment, but to be able to address an issue like Lorcan does in the film of class, of privilege, of different societies coming into contact and different cultures coming into contact – I think that makes it much more interesting,” he explains. “And I love the idea that there’s this sort of very privileged, easygoing couple with the life that we all supposedly aspire to, suddenly having the rug pulled out from under them because of a very tragic event that could easily pass for a random piece in a newspaper that nobody pays any attention to.

“I think it’s very brave of Lorcan to bring that into focus. Also, the idea of fast fashion that he kind of incorporates in there – the idea of where are these clothes coming from that we’re wearing? Who’s actually doing all the work behind the scenes, and what conditions are they working under? We’re benefitting from their work, so what does that all mean? I loved that there was a strong political message threaded through the whole thing.”

The cast for Nocebo is not particularly large, but Strong was delighted to work with both Eva Green and Chai Fonacier – “a huge star back home in the Philippines” – while he also had kind words for his young co-star Billie Gadsdon, who plays his daughter in the film.

“She is just a joy,” he says. “I mean, we got on really well – we did lots of dancing together off camera, we laughed around, she’s got a lot of energy and I was happy to sort of absorb that energy. And the two of us got to know each other as well as we could off-camera so that all the stuff that was on camera would be as believable and as realistic as possible.

“Her sister [Beau Gadsdon] is also an actor and funnily enough, I’ve just worked with her in a movie with Ian McKellen, in which she also plays my daughter. So all the members of the Gadsdon family are eventually going to be playing my children at some point!”

That film with Ian McKellen is The Critic, one of many movies featuring Strong scheduled to arrive in cinemas in the coming months. Indeed, in addition to Nocebo, the actor has a role in another new release coming out this very week – the animated feature Charlotte, which tells the true story of a young German-Jewish painter who fled Berlin on the eve of the Second World War to seek a new life in the South of France. As well as Strong, the film features the voices of Keira Knightley, Jim Broadbent, and Sam Claflin – and the actor says it was a “fascinating” project to be a part of.

“I hadn’t been familiar with the story, but I liked the people very much when I met them and they asked me to get involved with it,” he explains. “And there is something quite satisfying about doing voice work, because you’re not on display quite in the same way as you are in a [live-action] movie.

“I was really interested to learn about her,” he adds. “It’s an incredibly tragic story but sort of imbued with a sort of artistic love of life, that bittersweet thing that makes for great stories. I play an artist who admires her work and takes her under his wing, and they become very fond of one another – just at the point, unfortunately, when all the National Socialist problems start to kick off in the Germany that they’re living in. So they managed to have a sort of short relationship, which revolves around her art and their mutual artistic taste that is then brutally destroyed by the advent of the Nazis.”

Perhaps the most exciting project on the horizon for Strong is Tár, the new film from director Todd Field which has already been released to huge acclaim in the US following a Venice Film Festival premiere earlier in 2022. The film – which stars Cate Blanchett as a fictional composer-conductor and is already being tipped to pick up several Oscar nominations – will arrive in the UK early next year, and Strong can’t wait for audiences on this side of the Atlantic to see it.