Buzz Uncut: Director Tom Shankland talks to Buzz...
...About WAZ’s rape scene.
“What was extraordinary, and this is how cool an actress Selma is, is that was Selma’s first day. She’d just arrived from L.A. all jetlagged two days before, and on the call sheet she thought that she wasn’t in it and she was a bit perplexed. In my head, I thought I’d have these POV shots of all these vile gang rapists doing all this gross stuff. But Selma was adamant that she had to be in it, because this was what drove her whole story. She felt that she should be there. So I was like, ‘Selma, if you wanna do it, I am absolutely gonna take you up on that.’ So her first day, there she is, getting thrown around having her clothes ripped off, totally manhandled and having all this gross stuff go on. And she was actually much less disturbed than the guys in the gang; I think that they were rather more disturbed by having to go to that place. Selma in a way, I think, is attracted to the dark side of what you can do with acting. And she sort of revelled in it, and that is some of the most horrific footage in the movie. So more power to Selma.”
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