REQUIEM: THE PRODUCTION INTERVIEWS

23 years after a child disappears in Wales, Matilda travels to Wales, determined to explore this mystery, even if it means unraveling her own identity. In the process, she uncovers long buried secrets in this remote community – including  one  secret  more  bizarre, terrifying  and  dangerous  than anything  she  could  have  imagined:  Dark  otherworldly  forces  are gathering – they have been waiting many years for Matilda to arrive. 
 
If every life is a story, then for most of us, it’s our parents who write the opening chapters. They record and remember our early childhoods as we cannot, acting as trusted witnesses to our lives.
 
But what if you discovered that your parent might have lied to you? That almost everything they’d said about their own history, and yours, might have been untrue?
 
Requiem takes its inspiration from the psychological horror films of the late 1960s and ‘70s - Rosemary’s Baby, Don’t Look Now, and The Innocents, avoiding easy answers, and instead playing on uncertainty and ambiguity.
 
It’s also a rumination on the nature of memory, identity, and loss, hinging on a universal truth: that when a parent dies, a part of you dies with them.
 
Requiem is written by Kris Mrksa (episodes 1-4 and 6) and Blake Ayshford (episode 5). The series is directed by Mahalia Belo, produced by Susan Breen and executive produced by Willow Grylls, Elaine Pyke and Charlie Pattinson for New Pictures, Kris Mrksa and Christopher Aird for BBC.

Read Ginger Nuts of Horror's review of requiem's first episode  here
Read a Guest post from requiem's creator  Kris Mrksa Here 
and read a series of interviews with the cast of requiem here 

KRIS MRKSA (Creator and Writer)

What inspired Requiem?
I often have two or three ideas kicking around. Then I suddenly realise they fit together and I have something to run with. The first kernel was the death of my mother. I realised that a whole part of my life had died with her. I had very little recollection of my childhood - and what I did have was imperfect because it was a child’s view of the world. My mother would always explain to me what was going on with Auntie Dolly whether or not I’d had the measles jab. So I really lost things with my mother.
 
Can you please amplify that?
Losing a parent is a loss that strikes at one’s identity. Identity is something that I have always been fascinated by. I think the idea that we are all a unified individual is more illusory than we recognise. So I began to combine a philosophical idea about identity with the theme of grappling with loss.
 
How did you translate that into this drama?
As a writer, one is always plundering one’s own life. Matilda, the protagonist in Requiem, confronts mysteries greater than what Auntie Dolly got up to the family do. After the plot kicks off with her mother committing suicide in a shocking fashion, Matilda starts to wonder whether something about her own childhood might have been invented.
 
What has influenced in writing Requiem?
I’ve never been a big fan of chainsaws and monsters. But I’ve always been an enormous fan of the more low-key, psychological horror thrillers that toy with an audience’s and the protagonist’s psyche. These are films that are terrifying and powerful, but not in the conventional way.
 
Can you give us some examples?
The Innocents, Truman Capote’s version of The Turn of the Screw, is a really wonderful film, the best haunted-house movie ever made. That had a big influence on my thinking. Other masterpieces that have the same ambiguity are Don’t Look Now and Rosemary’s Baby, which sits in terrifying, disquieting territory. Rosemary is being doubted at every turn until she starts to question herself. That was something I was trying to land with Requiem
 
Tell us more.
Because the TV market is so crowded, the challenge is to deliver something fresh to keep the audience interested. So I thought this might be fruitful, unexplored territory for a TV drama. I wondered if one might play this story as a psychological horror that is ratcheted back. That was not something I’d seen on TV before.
 
How did you choose the setting of Requiem?
The protagonists are a pair of urbane London sophisticates who listen to classical music. I wanted to throw them into a place where they were maximally “other.” They had to end up in a remote part of the UK that was a stark contrast to London. I wanted there to be a clash of two worlds. The protagonists had to be out of their element. They are fish out of water. When I visited Wales, I fell in love with the place. It has a mystical feel, and the history there is very palpable. There is a druidic vibe there, too. Matilda and Hal are quickly drawn into that world and enmeshed in it. The Welsh town becomes a character in its own right. It’s the perfect setting for this drama.
 
What impression do you hope that Requiem will create?
I’m very much aiming to unsettle people. Since the 1960s, we have had this obsession with finding out who we really are, as if that will solve all our problems and make us happy. I’m very sceptical about that. Requiem won’t scare you like a guy with a chainsaw would scare you. But I hope I have created something haunting and disturbing. I want to cause lasting disquiet!

MAHALIA BELO (Director)

What drew you to this project?
It was the ambition of Kris’s story and the challenge of realising it. I was very excited about the fact that there was the potential of another world hidden underneath the surface throughout the six episodes. That really appealed because that secret hint of another realm affects everything – the visuals, the sound, the design. That’s a very exciting thing to bring to the screen.
 
What does Lydia bring to the role of Matilda? 
What doesn’t she bring to it? She’s a phenomenal actor. We auditioned a lot of great actors, but Lydia always did something unexpected in her auditions. It’s very exciting when you find an actor and you’re never one step ahead of her.
 
Can you please expand on that?
Lydia brings an extraordinary imagination to the part. She’s strong, but also vulnerable. What’s so difficult about this character is that her history has been erased, and she doesn’t have any memories before a certain time. That’s very challenging for an actor. The biggest flaw in Matilda is that she doesn’t know herself. Lydia has to go on a journey discovering the character. The cast are all my allies, but Lydia is something special.
 
Can you please talk us through the strengths of Kris’s writing?
His script is a real page turner. I wanted to know what happened next – that’s what I signed up for. Every five seconds, something new is happening. It’s compulsive. Kris has a great understanding of how to keep people on the edge of their seats. He’s a very bold writer. His script sets things up as one thing, and then you discover it’s something else. It’s really exciting.
 
What do the Welsh locations add to the drama?
I spent a lot of time in Wales when I was growing up, and I have a big love for that country. There something at play in the countryside. That epic landscape enhances the scale of the drama, and we wanted to make sure we captured that on camera. That’s very particular to that community. It feels that Nature is pushing the story along as much as Matilda’s investigation.
 
What was the biggest challenge for you?
Shooting every episode out of order. It’s hard enough to film one hour out of sync, but six hours is really challenging. Knowing every character and keeping their peaks and troughs in my head was a massive task. But you can only learn from experience. I found the whole process a great education.
 
How would you describe the tone of Requiem?
It’s an interesting clash between a real-world, family drama, and something a lot more heightened like Rosemary’s Baby. I was also influenced by films like The Conversation. We used a lot of zooms to underline that sense of being watched. I hope the meeting of those two worlds has resulted in a strange and exciting tone.
 
What response do you hope Requiem will generate?
I hope people are thoroughly entertained by it. I hope they stay with us and enjoy the strange tone of the show. It’s so particular. It is its own thing, and I hope people embrace that. Finally, I hope people feel they have been on a very exciting journey and fall in love with these characters – because I certainly have!

SUE BREEN (Producer)

What immediately stood out for you about Requiem?
What instantly appealed was the fact that it was so different from anything else on TV. It’s a very unusual combination of a cracking mystery page-turner, but also a gripping psychological thriller, which poses the question: “Is this actually happening or is it all in Matilda’s head?” It was a tremendous opportunity to make something really different, and that doesn’t happen very often.
 
What are Kris’s strengths as a writer?
Kris is fantastic. He’s been inspired by 70s horror films like Rosemary’s Baby and Don’t Look Now. Those are timeless classics, and this was a great opportunity to do something on TV in that vein. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of those films and had all the references in his head. There’s recently been a great resurgence in the popularity of horror. But what is unusual about Kris’s script is that although it has slight horror elements, we made sure from day one that they felt real-world and grounded. Even when it goes to extreme places, the drama has to remain believable.
 
What are Kris’s other great qualities?
He’s an incredible generator of plot. He is amazingly hard-working and generates stories at an unbelievable speed. No request is ever too much. He is also a brilliant writer of character. Matilda is a very distinctive character. It’s great to have such a strong female lead, and her relationship with Hal is key to the show. A writer who is so good at combining plot and character is very hard to come back. We are very lucky to have Kris.
 
What makes Mahalia such a talented director?
Her great quality is vision. That’s something rarer in directors than people realise. What you want from a director is for them to come on board a project that’s already brilliant and take it to a level that you didn’t see coming. That’s what Mahalia did, and that’s what makes her special. It felt like we were watching a genius at work, and that’s incredibly exciting.
 
What drew you to Lydia as the lead?
She’s an amazing actress. She is a pleasure to work with – she’s the least grand actor I’ve met. She’s very real and connects with audiences. You never feel like she’s acting. She has an ability to tap into real emotions and not give you what you might be expecting. She’s also a real Londoner, and we wanted that sense of fish out of water in Wales. Lydia really conveys that sense of a woman whose world has been turned upside down and who has been sent to a place very far removed from her normal life. Everything she thought she knew about her life may well be wrong.
 
What effect do you hope will Requiem have on its viewers?
More than anything else, I hope people are surprised by it. The story is completely un-guessable – and that’s not easy to achieve. I would like people to be shocked because they didn’t see where the story was going. I think we have made something very distinctive and original. Mahalia has a unique way of combining the dark nature of the story with great beauty. Even the scary stuff contains a lot of beauty. Finally, I’d like people to go away saying, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

WILLOW GRYLLS (Executive Producer)

What instantly gripped you about Requiem?
 
About three years ago, Kris sent me a two-page treatment‎. I was immediately struck by how strong it was. I was intrigued by its mix of genres and by the fact that it was influenced by lots of films I really admire, including Picnic at Hanging Rock, Don't Look Now and Rosemary's Baby.
 
What else caught your eye?
The fact that it was based on the very personal experience of Kris'‎s mother dying. Everyone is searching for identity. When his mother died, she was a repository for a lot of his identity. Tied up with his grief was a sense that some of his identity had been taken away from him. So Requiem is a very hooky thriller. It has great scares combined with great psychological questions – and that combination really appealed to me.
 
What does Mahalia bring to the party?
She has an eye for great performances that are deeply heartfelt. She also has a fabulous visual sense. It was very important that we had a director with the vision to elevate the whole production. Mahalia delivered that in spades.
 
Does it add something that she directs all six episodes?
Yes. Mahalia was brilliant – and perhaps foolhardy – enough to take on all six episodes. The authority with which Requiem announces itself elevates the piece. The look, design, performances and music all have a coherence to them. A director not afraid to take on the baton of authorship was essential. She had only done a single drama before, so she might not have been able to step up to the rigours of making a six-parter. But in the event, she rose to the challenge superbly.
 
What else distinguishes Requiem?
One of the most exciting elements is that everyone working on the show, apart from the writer and the first assistant director, was female. That made it a very special production.
As Matilda, what does Lydia give us?
She’s just a very smart and surprising actress. Matilda explodes into the story and into this community like a grenade going off. She’s a complete force of nature, and yet she has to carry us with her. We have to feel her grief, but not wallow in it.
 
Tell us more.
In order to make sense of her mother’s death, Matilda has to embark on this crazy journey. Lydia has the ability to approach that in a fearless, truthful way which will take the audience with her. As Matilda guides us into ever more challenging territory, Lydia leads us all the way. It’s a quite remarkable performance.
 
How does the Welsh setting enhance the drama?
Wales is such a beautiful place. There is also a sense in which Wales is a frontier and there are lots of secrets buried under its hills. Wales is the perfect theatre to situate a story like this. It gives us a great sense of myths and mysticism. That’s essential to Requiem because although the story is rooted in real people, it also touches on ancient myths.
 
What are the benefits of working with BBC and Netflix?
The BBC and Netflix have stayed very true to what Kris set out to do. We’ve had two partners who have really been on board. We’ve been very blessed with their support.
 
One other advantage is that with Netflix, you are tapping into a service that gives you an immediate release right across the world. We’re all trying to make shows with global audience, and Netflix allows us instant access to that. That is really exciting. 
 
Why do you think that Requiem will make an impact on its audience?
It’s much better to take risks, and Requiem does take risks. That doesn’t always work, but I really believe that in this case it will work. It’s thrilling. I haven’t seen anything like this on TV for a while.

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