Really, we all share stories about our own existence, right? We’re all lead characters in our own movies.
Photography: Matthew Cylinder
Grooming: Anna Bernabe
Shiny object syndrome, or magpie syndrome, is a pop-cultural, psychological concept: The tendency to focus undue attention on new and exciting opportunities, regardless of how valuable or helpful it may be in the long run. So in pursuit of a novelty, one can lose sight of the bigger picture.
Sam Yates’ aptly-titled Magpie introduces its protagonist when there’s nothing left that resembles love in her marriage. Daisy Ridley anchors the adultery thriller as Anette, a long-suffering wife who begins to spiral after her young daughter is cast in a movie, and her husband, Ben (Shazad Latif), becomes enamored with the glamorous Italian actress, Alicia (Matilda Lutz), playing her onscreen mother. It’s practically a foregone conclusion that he will further neglect his wife in favor of this shiny new romance. Carefully treading spoiler territory, the big question, then, becomes what a woman on the edge might prove capable once tested past the brink of her sanity.
Magpie is the passion project of Ridley—who conceived of an original idea after forming a close bond with a child star playing her own onscreen daughter in 2023’s The Marsh King’s Daughter—and her husband and fellow actor, Tom Bateman. Magpie is Bateman’s feature screenplay debut.
Next up for Bateman is a string of acting projects, which will see him reprise his role as a serial killer on the second season of Based on the True Story, a new team-up with long-time collaborator Kenneth Branagh on The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, and Nia DaCosta’s Hedda.
Magpie is now in select theaters. Based on a True Story returns to Peacock on November 21.
Hi, Tom. How are you doing, sir?
I’m doing great. How are you doing, Kee?
All good over here. It’s great to connect with you. So, I got to preview Based on a True Story.
Oh? The second season? My god, how is it? I haven’t seen it.
It’s a blast. You’re gonna love it. As you know, it’s a difficult one to discuss. It’s a landmine for spoilers. So I’ll say this much: It’s obvious to me that you’re having so much fun doing it.
It’s a license to have a good time. [laughs] I love this show.
Talking to you now, this is also my thought bubble, right? You do a great American accent.
I’ve got an amazing dialect coach out here in LA—Ron Carlos. He’s the best of the best. I love him so much. He’s been with me since season one. When we got picked up for season two, the producers were asking me, “What do you want?” I said, “Just give me Ron again. I don’t care about anything else.” Because he makes me so happy, and I feel so secure with the accent. We almost started from scratch on season one because I had a lot of bad habits. I’d never done an American accent in-depth like that before so we were really working on the building blocks. For season two, Ron said, “It’s almost like riding a bike. You just need to dust it off and get going.” So, actually, we only needed a couple of sessions before we started shooting. But Ron was with me every day. It’s also super fun for the people who’ve just watched the show and maybe don’t know that I’m English. Even with the actors coming in, like day players for one episode or something, I’ll go and say “hello” to them in the makeup trailer, and they’re like, “Oh my god, I didn’t know you were British.” They always apologize. But, to me, it’s the biggest compliment you can give.
You seem really at home playing in the comedic space as well—in that diabolical kind of way.
[laughs] Matt really straddles that beautiful line of what the show is. It’s very, very funny. It’s very, very dark. Often, it’s both at the same time. I get to embrace the dark and scary stuff, along with getting the occasional punchline. This is something I’ve said to Kaley [Cuoco] on the first season when we had a lot more scenes together, just me and her. She would say, “You’re so funny,” and I would tell her, “I feel like I’m just serving up your home runs.” She’s a genius at what she does.
When you come back for a second season, are you inevitably a more confident performer?
I think I am. Because all human beings require validation, don’t we? I think there is something about getting a show picked up again. When we were doing the first season, I remember coming in and meeting the showrunners, and even on those first couple of episodes, we were working out what the show was. What is the tone of the show? Is this too much? Is this too scary? Is this too straight? Is this too crazy? What are we doing? Then we started to get a really good handle on what the tone of the show was. And with season two, I was really nervous because I don’t like to watch my stuff. I was thinking, “I don’t wanna go back and watch this series. I’ll get in my head.”
And you’re never alone in that, right? That’s like an actor’s dilemma.
It is, isn’t it? And I was actually surprised at how quickly we hit the ground running. It was like, “I remember this dynamic. I remember how to have fun and play.” Really, to your point about it looking like we’re having fun, the second season felt like the safety bands were off. It’s like, “Do you know what? Improvise. Do what you want.” Our new showrunner, Annie Weisman, was so generous in that. She said, “Guys, you know what these characters would do. I’m okay with you throwing things in or taking things away.” It gives you a lot more freedom, I guess, to explore the comedy, the drama, and the different shades and tones of the show. We can play around a little bit more. You don’t feel like you’re just working it out. It feels like, “I got this. We’re cruising now.”
In what ways do you think acting prepared you as a first-time screenwriter on Magpie?
That’s a really cool question. Primarily, I know what I like to do as a performer. Nearly all of the things I’ve written have been character-based. We wanted Magpie to be a fun noir thriller that takes the audience on a ride, but at the core of it, I wanted it to be a character study. So to your question, I write it as if I’m to perform it. I put myself in the shoes of all of them. Once the story was done and my first draft was approved by the producers and the director liked it, I started to do passes playing the characters in my own head. I’d sit down and be like, “I’m Daisy [Ridley],” and I’m just concentrating on Anette’s storyline and her dialogue. How does she feel? Then I’d do another pass: “Right now, I’m Shazad [Latif] and I’m Ben.” Then Matilda Lutz, and you go through it like that. So it’s from an actor’s point of view. I have those tools because of my work as an actor. It’s also about being open enough. I mean, writing this thing, Daisy was with me from day one. Every morning, I’d have these new pages I’ve written. I would ask Daisy, “What do you think?” and she would help steer it: “Oh, I don’t wanna say that” or “Can I have a bit more of that?” I was curating it for her, and I wanted to extend that to Shazad and Matilda, too. I would say, “Look, if there are moments that you don’t understand and you want more clarity on them, or if you just wouldn’t do something, I’m really open.” I love that collaboration as an actor, too, when a writer will say to me, “What would you say?” I’ve been fortunate enough in my acting career that, even on a picture I’ve done with Ron Howard [Thirteen Lives], he said, “What do you do in this moment? Do you think that’s good? Okay, how about we try something else?” That leaves me thinking, “If Ron Howard can do that with his actors, I’d love to extend that as a first-time screenwriter.” I know how gratifying that collaboration is creatively. I could play around with Shazad and Matilda until they were really happy. Then you watch them deliver it on-screen and think, “That moment was actually a collaboration.” You work through it together and we can be proud as creative partners.
Did you at any point have conversations about the possibility of you playing Ben yourself?
There was a conversation about it. Ironically, it’s funny talking about these two projects at the same time. I was shooting Based on a True Story when we were filming Magpie in the UK so I could never have done it. And for our first film together, Daisy and I didn’t really want to be doing it like that. We wanted to concentrate on making a legitimate film we loved and were proud of. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was interested. But it turns out that I wanted to play all of the characters. I wanted to play Anette. I wanted to play Alicia. We also felt that, with me playing Ben, it would be yet another obstacle for an audience to navigate in order to engage with the story. They’d have to get over seeing a husband and wife playing that, going, “I wonder if that’s them in real life” sort of thing. So we steered away from that for this one. But who knows what the future will bring?
And Ben is a novelist. You could say that there’s another part of you, the writer, in there.
Certainly. And Shazad is one of my best friends. When I sent him a very early draft, just two hours later, he was like, “Dude, I’m in.” Knowing him, I knew it was a good idea to cast him. He’s very, very funny. He’s very, very charming. He also has a darkness to him. I would write things for him and some of our producers would have questions. I would tell them, “Trust me. I know Shazad. When the time comes, the darkness in this dude will be there.” For a writer, it’s a real joy to write for the people you know so well. You know what they’re capable of. You write to their strengths. You can also surprise them. Actors know their work so well that it’s really fun then to surprise them, too, putting them in a space where the audience maybe haven’t seen them before.
Before learning that an idea from Daisy put Magpie into motion, I figured it was all your doing. That felt a bit twisted, right? I’m thinking, “What made Tom write this?” As an actor, have you had an experience like Daisy, playing a dad and feeling like the surrogate parent?
I did have a baby on Vanity Fair. Olivia Cooke and myself had a baby in that. And I have just done another Kenneth Branagh film [The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde] where Jodie Comer and I have a little girl—Eadie [Johnson] is the young star’s name—who’s about the same age as Daisy’s daughter in Magpie. Because of Magpie, I was aware of that dynamic. It’s like, “Oh my god, this is super strange.” Eadie will knock on my trailer door, asking, “Can we play and color in together?” Then I’m sat there, coloring in, going, “This is super strange.” And to your previous comment about Daisy coming up with the idea for this story, her original idea was about that very strange dynamic on set. It was that idea about a film within a film. What is real and what is not real? Daisy’s initial idea had to do with playing the actress infiltrating a family. From there, she asked me to efficiently write with that spec in mind: “Do you think this is an interesting territory to explore? Could you find a story in there?” I said, “Leave it with me.” I mean, she didn’t give me very long. [laughs] She was cracking the whip. Then as I was writing it, there was this nagging feeling in my mind that the woman left at home was more fascinating. Who is that woman? How is she keeping it together? Where does she find the strength and the resilience to survive watching her husband do this again? When I told Daisy that I’m feeling a creative pull going in that direction more and more, she was so open to it. She said, “Go and explore. Let’s see what happens.”
So Daisy was compliant with the idea of you putting her through the wringer like this.
[laughs] That’s where we ended up. It’s almost changing the entirety of it from what it was gonna be, right? That’s the really exciting thing about this side of the creative process. When you’re an actor, you get presented with something that’s kind of done. So the structure is there and you’re embellishing on that. Whereas, in creating it, we could turn the boat around: “Actually, let’s go over there.” It changed the tone of the film. It slowly went from being about a woman stealing this kid away to this sort of revenge piece and a character study. If you put Anette’s amazing strength of character under so much pressure, what’s gonna happen? That’s what we started to explore. And that, too, was a collaboration—further shaping the seed of a great idea Daisy had come up with.
Magpie is a wonderful first showcase for you, and any recurring themes that might exist in your writing can only be evaluated in the future, right? At the same time, I find this striking: You once told The Hollywood Reporter that you’d loved working on the Universal Studios lot because it’s hallowed grounds. Because Psycho and Jurassic Park had filmed there. So even at the high level you’re working at, you can appreciate the lore of Hollywood and filmmaking. Your use of the movie within a movie trope speaks volumes. Your love of film is tangible. That anecdote and your script, taken together, feel potent enough to be a signature in itself.
I do love it so much. I love all forms of storytelling. I actually talked to my mum about this recently. She always knew I’d probably explore acting or writing or creating in some way. She said, “You were obsessed with stories at bedtime. We had cassettes in the car, and out of all your brothers and sisters, you’d never wanna get out at all. We’d get to a place and you’d be like, ‘No, I wanna hear the end of this story.’” Really, we all share stories about our own existence, right? We’re all lead characters in our own movies. I’m Tom. I’m from London and find myself in America. Driving through the Universal lot, it’s an out-of-body experience: “Look at you. You’re one of those guys that came to America, and you get to be on this lot.” Do you know what I mean?
Of course I do. Was the idea behind the movie within a movie always period? I’m guessing it was pretty open canvas. I mean, you could’ve potentially staged that any way you wanted to.
Visually, I remember thinking that it would be beneficial to us to have a clear distinction between the world of our film and the film within the film. Quite frankly, for me, that became about changing the time period. And since Magpie is about a suppressed woman who is underestimated, I thought, “Well, actually, we don’t need to look that far into the past to land on a period where women were overlooked and treated terribly and bound to certain norms and weren’t allowed to express themselves.” That’s why I was looking to period. I also took inspiration from things where that theme—a woman being squished down by the world around her, to the point where her true colors and her true power and her true strength are shown—run parallel and are so clearly mirrored. There’s A Doll’s House [by Patrick Garland, 1973]. There’s the Hitchcockian world of repressed human desires and emotions. That was really useful for me. Then, you know, Sam [Yates], our director, and Laura Bellingham, our director of photography, also loved that world, as well as our costume and hair designers. They could express certain motifs creatively through that. It just looks amazing, too—Matilda with her amazing hair and the corseted costumes. That gave richness to the period piece. All in all, it deepens what an audience, hopefully, will be watching.
It was interesting to hear Sam talk about what most surprised him on Magpie, going from directing in the theater to film. Seeing Daisy step into the frame for the first time, he said it was powerful. He witnessed a movie star’s presence. He compared actors to special effects in the film world. Did you feel similarly as a writer, knowing that you were writing for Daisy?
One hundred percent. I’ve been writing for quite a few years now and Daisy has always been the first person I would share things with. I respect her creatively so, so much. She tells it as it is. If she doesn’t like something I’ve written, she tells me. She’s my perfect sounding board. But I’d never really thought about writing for her previously. Although, looking at the other pieces I’ve written that are now in development, ultimately, we draw from shared experiences, I guess, whether that’s deliberate or subconscious, where we’re seeing bits of her turn up. The ultimate joy was when Daisy asked me to write this. She said, “I don’t wanna go out to another writer. I want you to be the one to write it.” Of course, the gift that comes along with that is in knowing she’s so talented and a movie star with a powerful presence. I could write things so sparingly and elegantly. I didn’t have to overwrite anything, knowing that she was totally capable. Particularly, early on in development, I remember writing the dialogue almost like monologues for her. For our creatives to see that and go, “Now we really like this,” it was like we were getting a true Daisy Ridley vehicle in a way. Then I could strip that all away because Daisy knew fully where that idea had come from. So now, she gets to just play it with “nothing” and just hold that, which aligns with my desire to have the audience not know who this woman is. Because Anette is like an iceberg. It’s this enormous, gargantuan, powerful thing where we can only visualize the tip, right? Meanwhile, Daisy knows the true power that Anette harnesses all the time. Since I was filming in LA while we were shooting Magpie, I would watch the dailies as they came in every morning. I would sit back with my morning cup of coffee, watching Daisy and Shazad and Matilda. I would be like, “There it is.”
You also have a producing credit on Magpie. What were the big lessons for you in producing?
As an actor, stepping into producing is a gift, man. And to be perfectly honest, I joke that it’s hilarious because there are certain aspects of producing I have no strength in, like with the spreadsheets, the time tables, and the actual organization of things. However, on the creative side of it, it’s me and Daisy in our barn in the middle of the countryside coming up with this idea, casting it, visualizing it, putting the storyboards together, and feeling when is the right time to go. When Isobel Waller-Bridge [Magpie’s composer] came in, we just watched a movie with her. My god, it’s about Sam, our director. I had known Sam’s work in theater. It’s about the beautiful squad. So my role as a producer was about seeing where this could go. That’s been one of the most exciting experiences of my whole life. As I said before, when you come on as an actor, there is a certain amount of the world that has already been created for you. You’re kind of working out how to build upon that world. But when you’re creating from nothing, you can do anything, right? I’m not saying I have a God complex. [laughs] It’s the most liberating, remarkable thing. You can do anything to any character. And as you pointed out, with the film within a film, it could’ve been a space movie. We could’ve made it a comedy. It could’ve been anything. You get to be the one to choose the tapestry. So it can be quite difficult then to step back. When I came back to do season two of Based on a True Story, it was such a strange experience, having spent the last year sitting in an editing room being creative in another capacity. Coming back, where your job is to only act, it’s a strange one. I’d be seeing people around on set, like the writers and the showrunners, and the conversations they’re having. I’d be like, “What are they talking about? I want to be there.”
So needless to say, alongside acting, you will continue to write and produce moving forward.
Oh, I’m just gonna keep doing more and more. It’s super fun. Acting is my first and main love, but writing and producing are so addictive. I also know that not everyone wants to do it because I talk to my actor friends. They’ve been so supportive of my writing, and the creating that Daisy and I’ve been apart of. But they’ll tell me, “We don’t really have any interest in that.” I also know many actors that moved into producing, like Letitia Wright. Jodie Comer will tell me, “I’m putting together this thing I’m producing.” It’s an amazing thing to be around—people have so much more to them than just one thing. We’re all multifaceted. There are many dimensions to all of us. We have strengths that we don’t even realize. And I’m still only getting comfortable with the idea of referring to myself even as a writer. For a long time, it was something I just loved doing. This is the same way I felt when I started out as an actor, thinking, “Am I even gonna get to do this? Am I good enough to do this?” It’s when people will ask you, “What do you do?” When I was 20 or 21, those words, “I’m an actor,” felt strange in my mouth. So I’m having that same experience with writing and also the producing. Right now, I still say, “I’m an actor.” And people will say, “But I saw that you wrote and produced this movie, and I saw that you’re writing another one. I heard that you’ve got another two movies you’ve written.” For me, it’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah—I’m just an actor.” You have to get used to saying it. We all have that, don’t we? That’s human beings for you.
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