Shooting scenes under the Moroccan sun helped “The Forgiven” stars Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes add a little heat to their twist-filled film.
The actors portray a vacationing couple who must face Moroccan customs and their own guilt after accidentally killing a local boy with their car.
“In certain areas that we were filming in, sometimes on a day off I would go to some markets or whatnot, and I would really feel like people were staring at me,” Chastain told the Daily News. “Having red hair in these not-very-populated areas of Morocco makes you feel like people are complimentary of it, but you definitely feel like you can’t go undercover.”
“In a story like this that really explores gender and this idea of being watched ... I found that really added to filming in that culture.”
“The Forgiven,” which hit theaters Friday, depicts a whirlwind chain of events after Fiennes’ David hits the boy while driving with Chastain’s Jo to a lavish party in the Sahara Desert.
The tragedy introduces a clash of cultures, as David is skeptical when the boy’s father demands he travel to their hometown to lay the child to rest.
“The attraction of the part was the journey to confronting what he has done, having a coldness about it,” Fiennes, 59, told The News. “He does pretty uncool, wrong things, initially, dealing with the death of the boy.”
The release of “The Forgiven” comes three months after Chastain, 45, won her first Oscar for her portrayal of the title televangelist in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” She is also known for the space thriller “Interstellar” and for “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the U.S. pursuit of Osama Bin Laden.
“I’m excited to tell stories that portray women as human,” Chastain said.
Chastain enjoyed playing another complex character in “The Forgiven,” as Jo goes on a journey of self-discovery after the accident interrupts her life of routine.
“She is welcoming her needs and her wants and her desires, and she’s feeling herself in her body in a new way,” Chastain said.
“She’s really earthy and grounded. Yes, she becomes incredibly selfish. I have found a lot of people, when they’ve approached a traumatic event or the end of a relationship or whatnot, become very self-oriented and selfish because for them it becomes a means of survival.”
Production for “The Forgiven” began in Morocco in February 2020, but was paused a month later due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chastain had already wrapped up her part, but others, including Fiennes, returned that November to finish the shoot.
Making the movie in Morocco was also a thrill for Fiennes, who starred in the World War II drama “Schindler’s List” and played the villainous Voldemort in the “Harry Potter” films.
“You’re in that heat,” Fiennes said. “You’re in that light. You’ve got the grit of the sand in your eye. You just behave differently. You behave as you would in that place. ... We went to the local town, and that is Morocco. That’s the place. God knows we could have gone to Spain or southern Italy or somewhere, but it wasn’t. It was the real f—ing desert.”
Chastain and Fiennes previously starred together in the 2011 film “Coriolanus,” adapted from a William Shakespeare tragedy.
“The Forgiven” is adapted from a 2012 novel by Lawrence Osborne. Chastain was a fan of the book before joining the movie, but says the chance to work again with Fiennes was what really hooked her.
Fiennes, too, said there was “immediate excitement” about reuniting, and is eager for people to experience the film.
“I love the idea that audiences are challenged by who a human being is, that they can start off the film one way and become something else, and that people are capable of change, either for good or for bad,” Fiennes said.
“I’m a great believer in the complexity of the human being, and films that honor that are interesting, as opposed to ones that tend to reduce protagonists to heroes or villains.”
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