Original-Cin Q&A: Scream Queen Alice Krige on Trauma, Healing and Mining Both in She Will

By John Kirk

A tale of unexpected trauma and witchcraft, Charlotte Colbert’s directorial debut She Will features the incomparable screen queen of otherworldliness herself, the ethereal Alice Krige.

She Will is the dark fantasy story of aging film actress, Veronica Ghent (Krige) who, after a double mastectomy, needs to convalesce in a retreat in the Highlands of Scotland before she can return to her film star career.

Accompanied by her nurse, Desi (Kota Eberhardt), Ghent discovers that the retreat is built on land that once imprisoned, tortured, and executed witches. As she heals, she relives past traumas, remembering abusive treatment by a former director (Malcolm McDowell).

In the process, she discovers a connection to the land that inspires not only unique abilities and perceptions but a supernatural means of restoring balance and redressing the damage inflicted by those traumas.

In conversation, Krige says the relationship between trauma and fantasy is what drew her to this role.

“I was moved by her predicament and her journey,” she says. “What [Veronica] experienced, the event when she was 14 on the film set was never addressed or spoken about. She felt she had caused it. She wound up profoundly distrustful of intimacy and close relationships. The anger she suppresses, gets out and manifests itself in… ways.”

Krige has always masterfully portrayed complicated characters who are so moved by their passions that they penetrate the realm of the metaphysical. Memorable roles like Alma Mobley in Ghost Story, Holda in Gretel and Hansel, Christabella in Silent Hill or even the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact make her a veteran dark mistress of mystery.

In She Will, Veronica is tormented not only by her victimization but also by the scars of her cancer. Childless and alone, she develops a maternal and protective relationship with Desi. At the same time, she notices something in the Highlands that is evocative, restorative and oddly familiar to her. The land has made a connection with her, and she willingly opens herself to it and the metaphysical experience it yields.

To heal, sometimes we have to immerse ourselves in the stuff of dreams. We play, we relax and get stronger in order to return and deal with traumatic events. This film reveals the powerful connection between trauma and fantasy.

“Oh, what a perceptive observation,” confirms Krige, who appears supernaturally chosen for these ethereal roles. “I don’t see myself as ethereal; I experience myself as quite earthy! I generally accept gratefully what I’m offered. I’m a working actor and there’s a lot of discipline in that. But I do my best to find the human being in the role – what makes them complex human beings.”

Krige’s character portrayals are supernatural: like there are two characters being played instead of one, each taking turns to tell the story.

For instance, when we see Veronica confront her former director in a sort of astral projection, we know that it is the witch spirits of the Highlands who are empowering her to face her former tormentor, but it is Veronica’s hunger for justice dictating the confrontation.

“Malcolm’s performance was masterly in that scene,” Krige says of her co-star. “He has almost nothing to work with, but when he is sitting at that empty bar, I thought he felt an overwhelming guilt. He’s suppressed too, troubled as much as she is, and a profoundly troubled human being.”

Krige is cultivating the real core of humanity in this film. But, drawing on previous roles in her career to compare, what is human about characters like the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact? What is her joy?

“Just being the Borg Queen gives me joy. She is someone who conceives of herself as utterly powerful, utterly right and perfect, in fact.”

Following this line of thought, Krige regards her work in fantasy as something completely opposite. When asked about her approach to fantasy characters like Veronica Ghent, she says, “We go on the journey together.

“There has to be something that I can offer to the character. I have to stand in their place and without judging, I have to be there for them. I never think of the characters as fantasy. For me, they’re absolutely real.”

The pace of She Will is deliberately slow with an emphasis on visuals, character focus and an unsettling musical score that all contribute to an atmosphere, thick with suspense and supernatural fear. But how do these supernatural characters remain believable while being wholly fantastic?

“It’s a curious space that you enter because I don’t think of them as just being characters. I think about them, their needs, compulsions, wants,” Krige says. “The context allows you to express them in large emotions, and intense colours.”

She continues: “I think the genre enables big gestures. A bit like Shakespeare — or like a Restoration writer named Thomas Otway (who also wrote in iambic pentameter) — huge gestures that are true within the universe of the writing. I think fantasy gives you that opportunity.

“In Sleepwalkers – for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it was about! But after meeting with (the film’s director) Mick Garris, I realized he was having fun with the genre! When I understood that, I thought, ‘She’s got to be Volumnia in Coriolanus. Huge passions and needs, but you can do things like that within the genre!’”

Characters like Veronica have huge drives. They are trying to immerse themselves in fantasy in order to bury their fears or escape their traumas. She Will has elements of escapism, and instead of running from something fearful, Veronica runs to it so it can heal and help her to overcome her abuse, her cancer, and the feeling that she is done in this world.

It is easy to think there is a sense of revenge in this film. But the frequent visuals and focusing on the earth, the loam, trees, insects – all natural elements that surround Veronica – instead convey a sense of communion and restoration of balance. In other words: a sense of justice.

“There is something, that other reviewers have jumped on, is that Veronica wants revenge,” Krige says. “I don’t think she wants revenge. She wants the truth.”

Trauma is often retreated from until the person has the strength to face the truth. It grows, and then manifests itself as a need. In this film, the trauma follows that pattern until Veronica’s need for truth feeds the land around the retreat she stays at, until she has the strength to overcome it in a supernatural way.

Veronica inherits the power, and we see what she does with it at the end of the film. In this film, the genres of horror and fantasy benefit the character in a surprisingly unexpected way.

“The Borg Queen wasn’t fantasy for me. She was real,” Krige says. “Veronica and I are on a journey together. Totally real. But the one time it became, on a certain level, descending into the terrible void, was Silent Hill. You take it on, you have to commit.

“I didn’t know it would get so dark – and I didn’t know it would ever get that dark. It became [a] profoundly dark experience to live in that space, and you can’t get cold feet. I’ve never had difficulty before that character. I’ve told this story before, but I want people to know what it takes.

“I had a little dog called Skipper. She used to wait for me when I was gone. For the last two weeks of my part in Silent Hill was that part in the church that was burning, with burning people. We were shooting in Toronto and when we were finished, all the other people went home. Afterwards, I tried to get out of the space by meditating and everything, but I couldn’t.

“Anyway, I got home, and the car dropped me at the gate. And there was Skipper, doing the full body wag, happy to see me. And when I got out of the car, she stopped wagging, looked at me and she backed off. She would have nothing to do with me. Three weeks later, I went away to do another film, and there she was, and it was like, ‘Oh, you haven’t brought Christabella.’”

She Will isn’t just a simple ghost story; it’s a complex story that interweaves themes of injustice, trauma and eventually healing through supernatural means. Though ambiently creepy, there is a sense of redress. This is accomplished through the combination of Krige’s 40 years of experience and ability to present fantasy in a wholly believable way that allows for the healing in this story to take place.

It’s believable and could only be accomplished by someone who knows how to place one foot into the otherworld… for real.

She Will. Directed by Charlotte Colbert. Starring Alice Krige, Malcolm McDowell, Rupert Everett, Kota Eberhardt, John McCrea, Amy Manson, Jonathan Aris, Daniel Lapaine. Opens in theatres and digitally July 15.