Herself: Director Phyllida Lloyd on the exciting, record number of female directors

Amazon Prime Video’s Herself is one the best films to come out recently, a traumatic drama that centers around Sandra (Clare Dunne) who decides to leave her abusive husband and reestablish her life with her two young daughters. Poignantly acted by Dunne and Killing Eve star Harriet Walter, who plays Peggy, a doctor Claire works for who provides her with an opportunity that will function as a possible new beginning for her dream home.

But nothing is easy for Claire throughout Herself: Not her decision to leave her husband Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson), not navigating Ireland’s welfare and housing system, not even her developing friendship with Peggy. Claire struggles to overcome the obstacles that impede her decision to not only rebuild her life but to build her home from the bottom up. Despite these struggles and her own doubts, Claire’s fierce determination is admirable (and gut-wrenching) to watch.

Culturess had the chance to interview the film’s director, Phyllida Lloyd about the importance of telling this story, her experience of directing female-driven narratives such as Herself, Mamma Mia!, and The Iron Lady), and her thoughts on the growing number of female directors in the industry.

Culturess: Herself is an amazing film, it’s a story that needs to be told. I look at a lot of your other films, and you always direct very strong women. Could you tell me why it’s so important to tell these women-driven stories?

Phyllida Lloyd: Yeah, I guess there’s just so much that hasn’t been told, and that doesn’t get its way onto the big or the small screen. And particularly, you know, a time now, during the pandemic when there are so many people behind closed doors, we don’t know what’s going [on], what’s happening to them. We know that the statistics of domestic abuse are very high all over the world. So, it’s important, the story that gets told.

But of course, this is not the story of what happens: it is in part, but it’s really what happens once you break out from those closed doors. And I think one of the things that really sort of drew me to this—we’ve read and seen stories of domestic violence—but I hadn’t really read a script where the writer’s actually talking directly to these women and saying, ‘you know, if you do make that break, maybe there’s hope. Maybe there’s a community out there for you.’

And we spoke to somebody from Women’s Aid in Ireland who said to us, ‘do not make this central character a victim because these women, they are heroes, they have so much courage: The courage to stay, the courage to leave. And I think that’s one of the things that really struck me about the story that [Sandra] is so much the kind of agent of her own change and recovery and that, you know, was inspiring.

Culturess: Yeah, and there’s a moment where Sandra looks up, and then she chooses to join her daughters [in sweeping]. Can you just give me some insight into that incredible moment?

Lloyd: She has helped her children to have this kind of indomitable spirit and that’s so much [of] what it’s about. It’s not just the woman: it’s the woman as mother, wanting to make a future for her children, and then… seeing them kind of reply to her with their own kind of ingenuity.

And yet we know it’s not just ‘Oh, a couple of kids who don’t notice what’s going on’ because we know we’ve seen them really suffering and learn from their mother. This kind of energy and to have this positive spirit communicated, I think that sense that maybe this cycle of violence is being broken.

In the story, I think that’s what’s really fundamental to it because we can see that the cycle of abuse goes down through generation to generation, and here we’re seeing it, like, you know, as the mother-in-law says to her at [one point], ‘you’re free now.’

Culturess: What’s your perspective on women directing films in Hollywood? You’re seeing a lot of these women-driven stories where all the women in this film drive the story and then also behind the scenes. Do you feel like it’s a genuine change?

Lloyd: Yeah, I was reading about the number of movies opening directed by women over this Christmas winter season… day after day, and seeing [them], ‘Oh another one, another one, another one’… and feeling like ‘my god, you know, maybe something is finally shifting.’ And that there are movies that are right up there that have been kind of talked about for the Oscars that have been directed by women. You go, ‘oh my god, okay, maybe, maybe there’s finally a change.’ It seems as if something positive is happening, but god we’ve got to keep pushing, that’s for sure.

Herself is now available on Amazon Prime Video.

If you or someone you know needs domestic violence help, you can reach out to the National Domestic Hotline or Women’s Aid in the UK.