Poppy Drayton – The Little Mermaid

By: Lisa Steinberg

Q) What I loved about The Little Mermaid was how it is live action and we get this great fantastical imagery along with it. I wanted to talk a little bit about how it provided this really great blend of poignant storytelling and a profound visual aspect for the audience.

A) We’re just so hugely excited to present it to everyone because it was such a labor of love. It was a small budget film that we were shooting. We did a lot of things that people tell you not to do like work with water, work with kids and not to work with animals and we had all three in abundance! It was a bit of a tall order, but we tried and put so much love into this film. It was a real labor of love and it was brilliant to have all those challenges and elements brought to it. For us to overcome those and sort of come out victorious at the other end and manage to get the film together was just really special and really magical. And I think it is a really magical and beautiful film.

Q) You got to film a large part in Savannah, Georgia!

A) We did. We were in Savannah for a while and it’s so nice down there. It’s really lovely. I’ve never been to Savannah before, but I loved it! I loved all the Spanish moss and I loved how creative it was. Everyone was so friendly. We had just the best time! It’s quite a magical place in its own right so kind of the perfect place to shoot this movie.

Q) How do you feel that the film instantly draws you in?

A) I think that Blake Harris who wrote the script and directed it was very keen to really set a really rich visual world for the story. And he did that brilliantly by creating this 1930’s circus. There are such brilliant images immediately that you get a really clear idea of what the world is and it’s really a little bit strange and dark and twisted and fantastical and whimsical. It really captures your imagination as a viewer. Definitely when I first read the script I was struck by how magical that world was. Even just reading it on the page, you could envision this beautiful kind of weird and whacky circus. I think there is something about that which appeals to people. I think people love (and people have always loved throughout history) the whacky and the bizarre. And you get that Victorian thing with people paying to see bearded ladies and strong men. You sort of see different creatures that were oddities and abnormalities. So, I think there is something that innately inspires an interest in us humans. It was fun to see that all come to life when we made the movie.

Q) For me, it reminded me of the book/movie Water for Elephants.

A) Funny you should say that, absolutely. Our elephant in the movie was an elephant from the film Water for Elephants. So, they actually brought the whole crew from Water for Elephants from LA to Savannah to work on this production. So, it was the same elephants and same team. And they were incredible!

Q) There is a lot of great play between the lighting and the cinematography. It helps to kind of give us this warmth when you’re singing on the boat and then we get this deep dark at the circus. How does the lighting add and build up the suspense and undertones of the film?

A) Oh definitely! There is definitely an interesting dynamic between the lighter tones (as you say) and the darker tones with the blues and the more cool tones. I think it was really interesting to see them play with the two and bring out this sort of rich warmth of the circus. Certainly, at the beginning where everything is quite hopeful and bright and pretty and quite soft. To see that change over the course of the story and the film as it gets a bit more blue and a bit more eerie and darker. I think the lighting, for sure, takes us on its own journey that compliments the story. It’s really exciting when the artistic flow of all the different design elements of the production come together to help carry the story along, too.

Q) The costume you get to wear as a mermaid was gorgeous! How did that help you transform into this character and added to your performance?

A) As soon as I was in the tail, I couldn’t help but feel very much like a mermaid. That is sort of the ultimate transformation. It was wonderful! It took a bit of an operation to get me in it because it was very skin tight, as you can imagine, and it was quite thick silicon. So, it took a lot of coconut oil all over my legs to shimmy myself into it with about three helpers. Once I was in it, it was great! We had a fantastic airbrush artist who once I had the silicon tail and the silicon little bra-let stuck on me he would then blend it all together by sort of airbrushing paint all over my stomach and up my chest to kind of make it look like the scales were coming through my body. It was really beautiful to feel that happen and he’s an incredible artist. That was a wonderful thing to get to do every day. By the end of it you do sort of feel like a mermaid. In terms of my costume when I was Elizabeth when she’s in her human form and has legs, I was really keen to keep her in sort of blues and greens and quite watery colors. I know Blake and I had a long discussion about how it was important for her to be in floaty sort of ethereal fabrics and nothing that felt too restrictive or tight. She was this sort of ethereal sort of mystical soft watery character and that needed to kind of carry through from when she was in the water to when she was on land and vice versa. I think we managed that. I think hopefully that thread was carried throughout the film because the costume team was amazing!

Q) We’ve seen you take on a lot of dark and diverse roles that showcase your amazing and incredible range. You have this brilliant balance of vulnerability and complexity. How does that extend through your performance in The Little Mermaid and how does that draw you in and connect you to the characters you play?

A) As soon as I read the script I fell in love with the character. I thought Blake wrote her with such a beautiful sensibility and I thought she had such an air of mystery about her too, which I really loved. She just seemed like a really unusual, unique creature. When you do movies that aren’t obviously in the fantasy world you don’t often necessarily get to play with that so much. But when you are in fantasy and in a mystical world you can push that a bit further. It was just so exciting to get to play that. It was just a joy playing her and I actually learned a lot in the course of playing her. At least I tried to incorporate a real gentleness and a real calmness and a real kind of in tune-ness with nature and the world and the sea and ocean. Because she is part of nature, if you like! She’s half fish in a way so she’s really an animal, too. I suppose we all are…[laughs] I really wanted to play with that, so I also looked a lot at the movement of fish and the movement of dolphins through the water. And I watched episodes of “Blue Planet,” which kept me busy for a very long time. [laughs] I really tried to immerse myself in the aquatic world, which was really fun. Again, when you do something modern day or even a period piece it’s not really a world you get to investigate as deeply as I did with this part. It was really fun. I even went to my local pet store…I probably shouldn’t say this…[laughs] I went to my local pet store and would stand in front of the aquarium where all the fish were, and I’d start talking to them really quietly. [laughs] I’d be like having a chat and pretending I could really speak with them. I got like embarrassingly into it. [laughs]

Q) We get this beautiful scene where you sing, and the lyrics give us such a hopefulness. Talk about what it was like for you to film this scene and have a stand-alone song.

A) Well, singing is my least favorite thing. It’s always terrified me since I was really young, so I was really nervous to do that scene. And I had a lot of chats with Blake about it. He was trying his best to reassure me, but I was still inwardly really worried about it. That morning, actually, I was in my trailer and I got a Skype call from my dad to say that my grandmother had passed on. It was really rotten news to start the day with, but weirdly I sort of ended up dedicating the day to her and all my nerves and my worry and my anxiety over feeling vulnerable and being so exposed singing and all my petty little insecurities sort of fell away and I just felt whatever I felt. And it needed to sort of be an emotional song anyways, so I just really didn’t have to do much that day. It all just sort of flowed and it actually ended up, strangely, being one of my favorite days on the job because I just felt at one with the scene and at one with my granny, which was really nice.

Q) Talk about filming in this fantastical circus environment and maybe what was the most surreal moment for you.

A) There was a really special moment when we shot the last scene in the movie where Cam (William Moseley) takes me and brings me down to the water and brings Elle down to the water. Then, we save Elle (Loreto Peralta) and then we save me. That scene was obviously really important as it was sort of the emotional climax of the movie. We were kind of running out of light. We were on this beach, which was beautiful, and the sun was setting. We didn’t have a lot of time and everyone was sort of scrambling around just trying to get in place, so we could shoot this quickly. We kind of decided it needed to be done in one shot so we were just grabbing what we could. We were freezing. Will was just shaking with cold. I had sort of blue lips that were getting bluer and bluer by the second. Paula was freezing, too. Blake, our amazing director, was right alongside of us and refused to get in to the boat as he wanted to stay right by our side in the water with us. We ended up catching that last scene before the sun went down and we ended up capturing that last scene just before the sun went down at this wonderful magical hour where the sun is setting and, luckily, we got it. And the feeling at the end of that when we knew Blake was happy and that he got the shots that he needed, it had a certain magical quality to it. It was just a really, really special moment.

Q) With roles from The Little Mermaid and, of course, “The Shannara Chronicles” and then “Unhallowed Ground” we see your characters really pushing boundaries and turning their pain into power. What is it about these fierce females that are people you relate to and the audience relate to? Also, talk about why we need to see more of these types of characters.

A) I think it’s so important for us to see characters like this on film and on TV because it sort of encourages you to find your own strength. I mean, people find that at different times in their lives. Sometimes people see themselves as quite powerful and that they have a lot of strength in them, but then they lose that or develop insecurity. I think no matter what time or what age you are or what time of life that you’re in you can always sort of dig deep and find the strength you have inside. Because we all have it within us! It’s not a case of some of us being strong and some of us being weak. Everyone is a mixture of all these different emotions and everyone has the ability to tap into any emotion or feeling that they want to. So, I think it encourages people to find their strength really and however that really manifests for them. I’m definitely drawn to characters that are seemingly quite vulnerable and actually prove themselves to be very strong. I’ve always sort of been like that as a person. I’ve always liked to surprise people. I think especially as women we often get sort of marginalized and maybe not appreciated for our strengths. We can seem quite small or unassuming and pretty pathetic or whatever, but actually we are so strong, and every single woman is so strong. And every single man is strong. There is not a gender thing at all, but I think because we are often put down that it is all the more important for us to show that actually we are strong, and we can be as strong as we wish to be when we wish to be. I think it’s a call to women on that one.

Q) What do you hope viewers take away from watching the film?

A) I really hope, because I know it’s a movie (obviously) designed for children