The Star Wars star plays the lead role of Trudy Ederle \u2013\u00a0the first woman to swim across the English Channel \u2013 in the new biographical film. <\/p>
Given that she\u2019s playing Trudy Ederle \u2013 the first woman to swim across the English Channel \u2013 Daisy Ridley had to do a fair bit of swimming for her new film Young Woman and the Sea.<\/p>\n
But according to director Joachim R\u00f8nning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), the Star Wars<\/a> star had to overcome a major fear in order to accomplish that feat, as he explained during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWhen I spoke with Daisy Ridley very early on, before we started\u2026 like, long before we started shooting, I said: \u2018Listen, I\u2019m just gonna warn you, like, I really want to do this in the ocean,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to do it in a heated tank on the blue screen. I want to do it in the ocean with boats and all of that. And she was like, \u2018Yeah, let\u2019s do it. Like, I think the story\u2026 that\u2019s what we should do, it deserves it.’\u201d<\/p> He continued: \u201cLater, I found out that she\u2019s actually scared of the open ocean \u2013 like, really. And so she had to overcome that, and then she also trained for months and months open water swimming so she was as prepared as she could when we were out there.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we were out there for weeks, you know, in 15\/16 degrees Celsius, her lips blue.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re exposed to the weather and the currents and it\u2019s challenging \u2013 any endeavour involving a lot of people is always going to be challenging, but when you put it on the water, it adds to the complexity of it and safety issues and all that.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I feel so lucky that I had her as a partner on this movie, because I doubt that anyone else could have done it the way she did it.\u201d<\/p>\n Veteran producer Jerry Bruckheimer also praised Ridley and explained why she was the perfect fit for the role \u2013 revealing that she had turned down other roles during the long pre-production process because she was so determined to tell Ederle\u2019s story.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s a great actress. You\u2019ve got to start there, that\u2019s the most important thing,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s beautiful, she\u2019s physical, she\u2019s got broad shoulders, she\u2019s tall. You can just see that she could power through the water\u2026 it\u2019s not like you have some weakling in there that doesn\u2019t look like a swimmer playing the part. She was made for this movie.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cAnd she waited for this film. She gave up other movies. So did Joachim. There were so many people that read the script, that worked as technicians on the movie that waited to get this movie made.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted to be a part of it. They felt it was such a special story and inspired them for their own kids and their own families that they wanted to see this, get out there and be a big part of getting it made.\u201d<\/p>\n It looks like that decision to wait could well have been a good one. Although the film was originally intended as a Disney Plus<\/a> release, it test-screened so well that it was given a full theatrical release instead \u2013 with Bruckheimer explaining that audiences had responded extremely positively to Ederle\u2019s story.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the highest testing movie I\u2019ve ever made \u2013 and I\u2019ve have had some big hits,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so they, when they see the movie, and they watch it with an audience, it\u2019s explosive. People laugh, they cry, they applauded. They\u2019re really into this movie.<\/p>\n \u201cIt harkens back to all the great movies they made years and years ago, and the movies we in Hollywood made years and years ago. So it\u2019s a throwback to a great, emotional drama with humour, and it\u2019s got everything we go to movies for: it\u2019s got a big expansive canvas in the ocean and the things that happened to this girl.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s this underdog story. It\u2019s inspirational. It\u2019s a girl who\u2026 she\u2019s an immigrant, she\u2019s partially deaf. Everybody is against her, including her own father, to even just get in the water. And yet she perseveres, and we want to inspire people. That\u2019s why we make movies, to make their days a little better.\u201d<\/p>\n Likewise, R\u00f8nning was delighted when he discovered that the film would be given a theatrical release rather than the original streaming-only plan, explaining that: \u201cOn a scale from one to 10, I would say 10.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cIn this movie climate, it\u2019s so hard and it can be brutal out there. And it was something we really fought for and, you know, I just feel so grateful to be able to be here and show the movie on the big screen.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s what I make movies for \u2013 not to be pretentious, but I feel that my art form is cinema. That\u2019s what inspired me when I grew up to become a filmmaker. So I\u2019m thrilled \u2013 this is an epic story. It\u2019s epic in many ways, it\u2019s an epic emotional story. And I think movies should be a physical experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Young Woman and the Sea is now showing in UK cinemas.<\/strong><\/p>\n Check out more of our\u00a0Film<\/a>\u00a0coverage or visit our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Streaming Guide<\/a>\u00a0to find out what\u2019s on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to\u00a0The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n The Star Wars star plays the lead role of Trudy Ederle \u2013\u00a0the first woman to swim across the English Channel \u2013 in the new biographical film. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":52449,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/05\/daisy-ridley-was-terrified-of-the-open-ocean-before-young-woman-and-the-sea.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/05\/daisy-ridley-was-terrified-of-the-open-ocean-before-young-woman-and-the-sea-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/05\/daisy-ridley-was-terrified-of-the-open-ocean-before-young-woman-and-the-sea-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/05\/daisy-ridley-was-terrified-of-the-open-ocean-before-young-woman-and-the-sea.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/05\/daisy-ridley-was-terrified-of-the-open-ocean-before-young-woman-and-the-sea.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/05\/daisy-ridley-was-terrified-of-the-open-ocean-before-young-woman-and-the-sea.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/05\/daisy-ridley-was-terrified-of-the-open-ocean-before-young-woman-and-the-sea.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The Star Wars star plays the lead role of Trudy Ederle \u2013\u00a0the first woman to swim across the English Channel \u2013 in the new biographical film.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/52448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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