Director and lead actor of The G on being screened at Glasgow Film Festival 2024

The G is being screened at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival. We spoke to actor and director ahead of the showing.

Transcript

00:00 He does that.

00:01 I mean it's a dark thriller and it's about this unusual, mysterious older woman who seeks

00:08 revenge on the corrupt legal guardian who's destroyed her life.

00:13 So that's kind of the one-liner, the nutshell of the film.

00:17 It was inspired by my Irish grandmother who was a bit of a tough cookie, as you can probably

00:24 imagine.

00:25 Taking this very singular character who I've known all my life and taking this idea of

00:30 someone who had always been someone I admired but feared as well to a certain extent, and

00:37 putting them in the context of this also very fascinating but unfortunate legalized exploitation

00:46 of the elderly that happens in North America.

00:48 I mean there's all kinds of different legal and illegal scams to defraud the elderly,

00:55 but this is particularly nasty because it's legalized.

01:01 And so it was combining these two things and then finding someone who would embody this

01:06 character, and then Dale has obviously knocked that one out of the park.

01:12 Tell us a bit more about your character, Dale, if you don't mind.

01:16 Well Anne, she's a complex woman and I think her story comes to life in bits and pieces

01:23 throughout the film, but she's someone who came from a tough, maybe violent background

01:31 that you learn a little bit more about, and then ran off and had a lovely, wonderful life

01:35 with her husband Chip, and now they've fallen into, and she becomes a caretaker, and she's

01:41 not initially taking growing old well, but she's very protective of her family and she

01:49 is a tough cookie.

01:51 She's one of those people, sometimes they're really mean on the outside but they have a

01:56 heart of gold, so there are some nice tender moments, but once they start messing with

02:01 her family, they mess with the wrong grandmother basically, and she regains her strength and

02:08 her vitality and is not going to go out easily.

02:13 So you don't really get scripts like this often I don't think, especially when you consider

02:16 it's focused around an older character, especially the protagonist, and the crux of the film

02:22 really.

02:23 So how did you feel when you got that through?

02:24 Obviously it's very unusual.

02:25 Very unusual, and I've been a supporting actress my whole life, long career, and this is my

02:32 second lead in a wonderful indie film with a terrific writer and director, and I knew

02:38 that as soon as I read the script, it was like this is a tour de force, and I know I

02:41 can do it.

02:42 I've played all of these facets throughout my career, and the chance to learn and grow

02:48 and carry the whole story and be guided by Carl, it is very rare, particularly in the

02:54 big studio films in Hollywood, but more and more hopefully in indies even we'll find writing

03:00 for older people.

03:01 It's like the film is, we're not going to go away, their life doesn't end, they still

03:07 have more to give, they have a whole story to say.

03:11 So yeah, I embraced it and I'm very grateful for it.