Andrea Riseborough is a rare actress. She has shunned blockbuster movies for meaningful and varied roles in the likes of Birdman, Madonna’s W.E, Battle of The Sexes and Made In Dagenham, and she even – genuinely and caringly – takes the time at the start of an interview to ask how I am. It’s rarer than you think and speaks so much of her Newcastle roots. Zooming from LA, she may now firmly be a Hollywood resident but her Northern twang is still on show and true to form, is talking to me for two very different projects.
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The first project is her latest feature film, Luxor, a heartbreaking drama which follows her character, Hana, who has been emotionally and mentally scared by her work in a war trauma unit on the border between Jordan and Syria. On an adventure and mission to re-centre and rebuild herself after seeing unimaginable things, she finds a life affirming romance.
Then in a very different role altogether, Andrea appears in the budget busting eight part cocaine TV crime drama, ZeroZeroZero on Sky Atlantic. Focusing on the international drug trade and the dark underbelly of society that lines its pockets from drug dealing, Andrea appears as badass babe Emma, whose family uses their international shipping business to move drugs between continents. Think of it as Succession meets The Godfather.
Here, Andrea opens up about controlling the narrative of her career, the impact of filming across four continents – and breaking both of her legs – for ZeroZeroZero and the life lessons she will never forget from playing an aid worker in Luxor…
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What have you learnt about yourself over the last year by sitting with yourself?
Oh goodness, so much. Thinking about the beginning of last year just seemed like a different lifetime really, doesn’t it? The isolation is the most difficult, lack of intimacy and just missing the beautiful, tactile closeness of life.
You love a challenge when it comes to picking your roles. What challenge has shaped you the most?
The challenge in itself is finding out how to best serve what you’re doing, and also have a healthy mental detachment from what you’re doing. Really my one job, I suppose, if you were to sort of put an umbrella over it all, is to reflect life and at the minute there’s such a huge disconnect from being able to really get inside of somebody else’s world, literally. We’re all becoming more resourceful, in terms of reaching out, and making sure that we’re not isolated. Finding that human connection, in a time where, really, I continue to tell stories about people, but don’t see many people, is a challenge.
Do you think you’ve kind of taken control of your own narrative of your career and how difficult has it been to make those decisions?
In so much I think as anybody can, I suppose yes is the answer. I think it would probably be quite easy to go with the tide. I think the hard part of making those decisions is mostly financial, for a lot of us. Especially early on, it’s very difficult to make those decisions when you’re being offered things that the world might see as a potential slam dunk and might come accompanied with all sorts of ease, and all sorts of steps to the next big level.The reality is, as much as we’re in a frenzied race, that there is no rush – bearing that in mind I think is really helpful. The other thing is, any of us could – it sounds morbid but -pass away tomorrow. At a time like this, that’s the forefront of everyone’s mind more than ever. So to try and live in your own set of values feels nourishing. It feels right. I’m looking to stay in that place and that often means saying no to quite a lot of things.
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Diving into the life of Hana, an aid worker in Luxor must have been so emotionally and mentally draining…
It’s very difficult for me to get to the place that Hana had been in geographically but the journey that thousands of images took me on, taken by people who certainly risked their own safety to capture them, is something that I will carry with me my whole life. There’s a huge sense of responsibility when you’re dealing with the sort of subject matter that Zeina (British writer-director Zeina Durra) does, which is the unique way she explores conflict.
Throughout the whole piece you feel Hana cradling what’s gone before and it’s not a story about somebody finding themselves, it’s a story about somebody finding how now to move forward with the information that they have, experiences that they’ve both endured and come through. There’s a huge sense of responsibility of course, for all of those first responders who help millions of people in this world. No matter where you’re born in the world, or through which society you glean your perspective, all of us have blinkers on to a certain extent. And I find learning more about anything freeing, rather than a burden. The pain of it is something that passes through you and makes you stronger. Especially now, having more information and being able to really have empathy for as many different perspectives as you can in life is a hugely freeing thing. It’s a wealth – it makes you emotionally wealthy.
On the flip side ZeroZeroZero offers us a bleak escapism right now. What shook you most about the plot?
Well firstly, in terms of plot, it’s based on the book “Zero Zero Zero” by Roberto Saviano about the cocaine trade. Roberto’s life is such that he lives on an island protected by 24/7 security, because there’s a price on his head as he infiltrated the crime families, particularly of Naples, so deeply, to the point where he was considered family. And then of course, he wrote this artistic exposé based on that world. So he lives truly all on the edge. He came to Venice and talked a little bit when ZeroZeroZero opened at Venice Film Festival, which was wonderful, and it’s so fascinating to hear him talk about the cocaine industry. It was very dangerous that he was sitting on the stage with us, and he was exposed.
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He talks about many things in the books “Zero Zero Zero” but a huge theme of the book is subscribing to this code of honor and what it means to hold your head up high in that world, and live, and die by the sword, basically.
It’s a really fascinating book, so when we embarked upon the series, and they offered me the role, which I think was the end of 2017, and I was really considering whether to do it, and I was talking to our director, Stefano Sollima I didn’t think about how we would be filming on four continents and we would have seven different languages in the production. Or I was going to break both of my legs doing a stunt and we were going to go to Senegal and Morocco, New Orleans, Calabria, Mexico, all over Mexico.
We were a huge traveling circus moving around the world, we worked with hundreds and hundreds of crew members in different places, and we were relocating every couple of months. ZeroZeroZero was a life-changing experience. We couldn’t have anticipated we were going to be shooting “Zero Zero Zero” for a year and a half, or I was going to have an injury, and then was completely fine, and that we’d carry on. It was so exciting, it was really one of the most exciting, dynamic, fun experiences I’ve ever had in my life.
Luxor is available on demand now and ZeroZeroZero is available on Sky Atlantic now