We also chatted about working with Edgar Wright’s new horror movie.
In 1917, Loretta Walsh became the first woman to enlist in the US army.
With a certain amount of coincidence, in 1917 (the movie, not the actual year), Krysty Wilson-Cairns became the first woman to write the screenplay for a big budget war movie.
Sure, women have directed war movies before – Kathryn Bigelow helmed both The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty – but when it comes to writing the scripts for this huge war movies, it has been almost solely a man’s game.
Wilson-Cairns co-wrote the script with director Sam Mendes, which marks her first foray into feature films. Previously, she was a writer of several episodes of Penny Dreadful (she lived in Ballsbridge in Dublin while they shot the show here), but after 1917’s surprise Best Drama Picture win at the Golden Globes, we imagine she’ll be snapped up all over Hollywood.
Before then, she’s got Edgar Wright’s new London-set horror Last Night In Soho coming later in 2020, and when JOE sat down to chat with her ahead of 1917’s release, we couldn’t help but bring that up.
We also talked about her thoughts on Ireland’s own Andrew “Hot Priest” Scott, her favourite war movie of all time, the potential weight of being the first woman to write a big budget war movie and whether there was something missing from the genre that she wanted to add.
Plus she reveals the moment when Sam Mendes rang her up to offer her the writing job. That isn’t a call you’d want to miss, we imagine.
Check out our interview in full right here:
Meanwhile, JOE was also lucky enough to chat to the movie’s director Sam Mendes (which you can watch here), as well as the two leading stars of the movie, Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay (which you can watch here).
1917 lands in Irish cinemas on Friday 10 January, and you can watch the behind-the-scenes featurette on the movie right here:
Clip via Entertainment One UK
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