Nell Williams

A childhood love of old Hollywood musicals convinced Nell Williams she was meant to act. The 24 year old actress chats to us about starting out on stage, the microbudget production of her new film Inland and the origin of her unusual middle name.

When did you know you wanted to pursue acting?

I was never allowed to watch telly when I was a kid, so I had quite a weird mix of films that my parents fed me - it was a lot of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly when I was really young, which I absolutely adored and would sing and do the routines of Make 'Em Laugh etc endlessly. But then also it was Soviet films and fairy tales like The Singing Ringing Tree and Three Wishes For Cinderella from the 70s, which I was also completely obsessed with. I think I spent a lot of time trying to live inside of those worlds and I think acting was a way of realising that - I spent my childhood putting on plays with my friends and making tiny homemade films.

Have you sung in many of your roles?

In some! In Blinded By The Light, a film set in the 1980s revolving around the music of Bruce Springsteen, I did. That was pretty much the only film I’ve had to sing in - I’d love to sing in more. I also sung in the theatre in my first ever job, which I loved. I think singing is the best thing you can do. It feels good for you. But saying that I’ve never had any training, and the last time I auditioned for a singing role, I whispered to the pianist “Follow me, because I can’t follow you!”. I didn’t get the part.

Have you done much theatre work in the past?

Yeah, I started off in the theatre really. The reason I got an agent was because I was in a production at my local, the Rose Theatre in Kingston. Then I was in the Royal Court and the Gielgud doing some Caryl Churchill and playing the young Queen next to Helen Mirren - that was kind of the opening of my acting career. I did do film and TV work alongside theatre, but theatre was what I was really interested in - I mean I still really am, but I think you just sort of go down a route and you’re either in the theatre community or you’re in the film and TV community.

Did you go to drama school or uni?

Not drama school, but I did go to uni, at UCL, to do History - only because I was interested in it! I’d been at school all the way through my acting career at that point, so I wanted to study something that wasn’t related to acting.

**Your latest film, Inland, is out now - a small indie that managed to get Mark Rylance to star in it! How did you get involved with the film?**

I happened to meet Fritz - Fridtjof, the writer/director - at the cinema, at the BFI, we were there with mutual friends, and we started hanging out a bit after that. We'd go to see films and debate about directors we loved. At one point he asked me “Do you want to be in my film? I’ve written a script!” and sent me it, and it was absolutely great. It was kind of unlike anything I’d been sent before - it had very strong ecological undertones in it which I gravitated towards, because I’ve been very involved in climate activism for a long time and had never been sent a script that incorporated the climate crisis. Also the way he dealt with folklore and mystical elements of the script I found wonderful, and again was kind of unlike anything I’d read for before. I remember writing in my diary that I felt like I was Rory’s character, the unnamed man - watch the film and make of that what you will! But I couldn’t quite believe it was going to happen. Fritz was only 20 at the time and had no money and all the crew were students, I think they funded it on GoFundMe! I said “Yeah, I’ll do it if it happens”, and then it actually did happen!

How long was the shoot?

Just two weeks, for the whole film! They went back and shot B-roll later on after Trudie Styler came on board as a producer and got them some more money, but the initial shoot was only two weeks.

What do you look for when you’re sent a script or go to an audition? What stands out to you?

The character obviously, the script - really the director is huge, and how they talk about the project can be the most important thing. My favourite director is Claire Denis and she talks about the script as being skeletal, so the film is very much fleshed out by the actors, in the process of filming. I would love to work on something like that. I also love Gaspar Noe at the moment and he works the same, I think one of his films was five pages long. I love the idea of inventing the film in the shoot. And massively important to me is the things the script talks about. As I said, one of the things that compelled me towards Inland was the whole ecological undertone - that’s actually where I want to steer my career towards in general right now. I do work for the UK Youth Climate Change Coalition and I’m still involved in a lawsuit against BP that began earlier this year, so I’ve been doing that stuff alongside acting, but what I really want is to converge the two. If we were talking about an ideal script to come through my letterbox, it’d be something with an ecological element in it. And maybe something to do with movement, because I trained as a ballerina until I was like 15 so I’d like to utilise that! And maybe something athletic that I can train really hard for. I love the idea of training myself physically as rigorously as myself for a character. So… ballet and climate change! But I think climate change content has to be written by younger people to be honest. Climate change is pretty much intergenerational war, and with the older generations there’s a disconnect, there’s such a divide. People my age have literally grown up watching things change before our very eyes, watching forests on fire, there’s now a whole generation of people growing up with that being our reality. There’s a tangible sense of urgency in people my age, which the older generations just don’t have. That’s why Fritz’s script is so important. It feels like the beginning of something. I feel like that’s going to be a huge theme in film in the future - once my generation properly have their teeth into the industry.

You have a very unique middle name - Marmalade. Is there a meaning behind it?

Ha, I think my mum was high on the maternity ward laughing gas. But then her and my dad had to kind of pretend it was intentional, so they gave my siblings other condiment-based middle names - Mustard and Mash.

Words: Scott Bates

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Inland is now in cinemas, and available on July 17th on iTunes/AppleTV, Amazon, Sky Store, Virgin Media, BFT TV and BFI Player