Lydia Wilson
In 1994, a toddler disappeared from a small Welsh village, never to be seen again.
Published: 22 January 2018
An integral part of Matilda is empty. I worked with the image of there being a breezeblock missing from the middle of her.
What interested you about Requiem?
I really liked was the fact that it was a psychological drama, but in a sneaky way. Matilda is a girl from London in Converse trainers, whose life suddenly spirals into this giant mystery. Requiem starts off with the banality of everyday London, and then it suddenly goes, “Woah!”
How would you describe Matilda?
She has a big hole in her chest. Something huge is missing from her life. A lot of twentysomethings are looking for something in external images, but an integral part of Matilda is empty. I worked with the image of there being a breezeblock missing from the middle of her.
How pivotal is Matilda’s relationship with Janice?
That’s the key relationship in the whole drama. Like a lot of single-parent families, they’re friends, as well as a mother and a daughter. Matilda is filled with grief about Janice’s suicide. She is now at a crossroads in her life. She can either fall apart or she could channel her sadness into an obsessive search for her true identity. That’s a much more bearable way of dealing with her grief. I love working with Joanna, who plays Janice. She’s completely unique, a genius.
How would you characterise Matilda’s bond with Rose?
Rose shape-shifts for Matilda. Claire, who plays Rose, is amazing. Her talent is quite scary. She can reveal her soul in a scene - I don’t know how she does it. In one scene with her, she was so emotional, I just couldn’t stop crying and ended up in the toilet!
What was it like working with Mahalia?
It was brilliant. She created an amazing, quiet, empathic atmosphere on set. She was the calm in the eye of the storm and made you feel you could go further with your feelings. When rhetoric has lost its force, we can make feelings a priority - and that’s Mahalia’s bag.
You are in virtually every scene of Requiem. How did you cope with this enormous workload?
It was very tough. I remember thinking once, “Where are we in the scripts?” It’s very hard to remember where you are because you’re jumping around all the time. We were shooting all six episodes simultaneously. It was quite surreal.
What else was hard about the shoot?
Because Matilda is a state of shock, her skin is very thin. She doesn’t know who she is, and that has taken off a layer of her skin and put her at the mercy of the world. I didn’t realise that until I had a week off in the middle of filming. During that week, when I wasn’t so vulnerable, I remember thinking, “Why am I crying?”
How do you hope that the drama will be received?
I hope audiences will fall in love with this world and want to keep coming back to it. I hope they will feel like we did when we made it - intrigued by this strange thing that doesn’t look like anything else.
In this day and age, drama can be homogenous and formulaic. I love to watch formulaic dramas sometimes and know what I’m going to get. That is one of drama’s responsibilities. At the same time, I think it’s great to do something like this, which is uncomfortable and unfamiliar. It’s fantastic to make something that is so bold.
