Best known as Cassie from Skins, Hannah Murray stars in Chatroom alongside Kick-Ass star Aaron Johnson. The film is directed by Hideo Nakata (The Ring) and focuses on five teenagers.
Chatroom’s about to hit UK cinemas so can you tell us a bit about the movie?
It’s about a group of teenagers who go online because they have various dissatisfactions with their real lives. Mainly they kind of want excitement and they want friends and they’re all looking for something.
Unfortunately they’re taken advantage of by one member of their group, who’s a very manipulative and quite unpleasant boy, who’s got his own frustrations in life and controls other people.
You play the character Emily in the film. What drew you towards the character? Was it the script?
Well the script, in general, is a really exciting prospect. I don’t really know of any films that have tried to represent the internet before in such a kind of literal way that have tried to make it a real space.
I thought that was a really exciting thing to try to represent the online and offline world. It was kind of like playing two characters for all of us because in the online stuff, each character tries to perform in a way.
For Emily, I just felt really sorry for her. She has a real innocence and naivety, I had to try and suspend a lot of my own awareness of what was going on in the script and get into her headspace, which was interesting.
I’ve played people, such as Cassie in Skins who was cool and alternative, who wore all these weird clothes. But Emily is very geeky, does what she’s told and wears neat clothes and cardigans.
So you wanted to broaden your horizons as an actress?
Yeah, definitely.
Chatroom is directed by Hideo Nakata, the man behind such films as The Ring. What was it like working with him?
It was really great. I think this is a different film for him, as it’s not really a horror film in the same way. It’s also his first English language film I think. He was really lovely to all of us: he’s a really nice man who was very gentle and very encouraging.
He also had a really clear idea of what he wanted from the beginning, so it was very inspiring to watch him work. It just felt very safe in his hands; he had a very clear vision.
The movie is based on the play and screenplay by Edna Walsh. How familiar were you with the work and how was it used during filming?
Well I actually read the play first, because when we were filming there wasn’t a complete screen play, just a couple of scenes. I was working with Matt Smith (Dr Who) at the time who had been in the original play and he said ‘You have to read the play, it’s so good.’ In a way, it was how good the writing in the play was that first made me excited about it.
Of course, Hideo adapted it himself; it’s always been present but at the same time, what I think is really impressive about what he’s done, is how different is. When you read the play, it’s just people sitting on chairs. To turn that from something so simple and theatrical to something cinematic and visual was a really impressive feat.
How did the audition process work?
I went in first by myself, in front of casting director Nina Gold, and read a few scenes as Emily. Then there was quite a long wait as they sent off the tapes to Japan and I thought nothing was going to happen with that. It was only after 6 months even before I got called back in and then we had a few situations where they brought people in, in groups of 5 of us, reading for the 5 characters as they wanted to get that dynamic right.
We just kept reading with different groups of people and I guess they were finally happy with what they got.
