Good - Jodie Whittaker interview

JODIE Whittaker, of Venus and St Trinian’s fame, talks about some of the ethical challenges of making Good, a film set in 1930s Germany during the rise of Hitler, and why it really challenged her as an actress, as well as viewers as members of society. She also recalls one of the more inspiring reactions to the film she’s experienced. She was speaking at a UK round table...

Q. I imagine that a lot of the appeal of taking a role such as this is exploring the many ethical dilemmas it puts forward?
Jodie Whittaker: Oh yeah, completely, especially because it’s such a challenge to throw yourself into a part that you don’t want to admit that you’re similar to – that you might make those kind of choices. I think that people always say that artists always go to the left, but I think in a time like that we’d be the ones… the freedom fighters and the ones banding together. But we are in times like that… we just don’t think we are, because we can’t see what’s 10 years ahead, or even two years ahead. We were commenting before about what our children will think of us when you’ve made those decisions. There’s this whole generation of people that are asking their German grandparents what happened. But they were just normal people essentially.

With a film like Good, you’re not creating these people that audiences automatically distance themselves from. You want to be left with a feeling at the end where you say: “I don’t quite feel that comfortable because I can’t really go, he’s the monster, ‘she’s the monster and he’s the hero’.”

Q. How easy was it to shake off your character at the end of the day?
Jodie Whittaker: When you’re working you want to immerse yourself as much as you can in the piece, but you’ve got to go home at the end of the day as well, and it can destroy you. When I first read this, I kind of naively felt that I was going to be throwing myself into a character performance that was really far removed from myself and I wouldn’t really have to think about my own choices. But that was absolutely the polar opposite of what happened, because of autobiographies that I’d read of women who obviously didn’t go to the gas chambers, and didn’t see the camps, but who voted Hitler in and the highlight of their life was if their kid got to sit on his knee. And then, 20 years later, they had to really coming to terms with what they did and what they contributed to.

I would read things like that and start thinking not how could they have known, because there were enough warning signs of where the party was going, but just how easy it was [to do what they did]. I suppose it’s that thing where once it’s over just feeling black that you’ve been exposed to the history of individuals and making sure that we can at least try not to let it re-occur in our own lives. But even now, two years after filming it, talking about it again has reminded me of how passionately I felt about certain things, but they went a bit dormant for a bit because we didn’t talk about them. Now, however, you start to re-think about them as we’re promoting the film. It’s easy to be lazy and selfish.

Q. But isn’t that always the case, even now?
Jodie Whittaker: Yeah, but in times of extremes as well, it’s about protecting what you’ve got and what you love. A lot of people can look at my character and think: “I wouldn’t have done that.” But actually her decisions come from a place of motherhood, or love of her immediates. The consequences are scary. She’s not just going to get a slapped hand for doing what she did; the consequences were that you’d lose your home, you’d disappear to where these people are disappearing to. But you don’t know where. So, it’s really about how you make that kind of decision [to act and protest] when the extremes are so massive.

Q. I would imagine that the reaction to this film has been very varied. So what is the most surprising you’ve experienced?
Jodie Whittaker: We’ve done a lot of Q&A screenings while promoting this, but there was a guy at one who stood up and said that he just wanted to let people know they can do something. He was a man who specialised who getting people out of war zones who have the same career as him. He was an academic and he has a charity that specialises in getting academics out of places.

He was saying: “Everyone in this room… you’re a doctor, you’re a nurse, you’re a teacher, you’re an actor… you could now, with not that much effort, research and find out in whatever war zone in the world where that person needs help, and help them, because it could all switch and be on us.” It was just that man’s power. It made it really relevant how un-period this piece is. We may be a part of this film and we’re proud of that, but essentially we’ve not done what this man did – which was to go and get someone out of a war zone.