Daisy Ridley was terrified of the open sea before Young Woman and the Sea

“When I spoke with Daisy Ridley very early on, before we started… way before we started filming, I said, ‘Look, I’m just going to warn you, like, I really want to do this in the ocean ‘, ” he said.

“I don’t want to do it in a heated tank on a blue screen. I want to do it in the ocean with boats and stuff. And she was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it. I think the story… This is what we should do, she deserves it.'”

He continued: “Later I found out that she was actually afraid of the ocean – really. And so she had to overcome that, and then she also trained for months and months to swim in open water to be as prepared as possible when we were there.

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“And we stood outside for weeks, you know, 15/16 degrees Celsius, his lips blue.

“We’re exposed to weather and currents and that’s a challenge. Any business that involves a lot of people is always going to be a challenge, but when you put it in the water it adds to the complexity and safety issues and everything . that.

“But I feel so lucky to have her as a partner on this film, because I doubt anyone else could have done it the way she did.”

Veteran producer Jerry Bruckheimer also praised Ridley and explained why she was the perfect person for the role – revealing that she had turned down other roles during the lengthy pre-production process because she was so determined to tell the story. the story of Ederle.

“She’s a great actress. We have to start there, that’s the most important thing,” he said. “She’s beautiful, she’s physical, she’s broad-shouldered, she’s tall. You can just see she could cross water… it’s not like you have a soft spot in there that doesn’t doesn’t look like a swimmer playing the role. She was made for this movie.

He added: “And she waited for this film. She gave up on the other films. So did Joachim. There were so many people reading the script, working as technicians on the film and waiting for this film to be made.

“They wanted to be a part of it. They thought it was such a special and inspiring story for their own children and their own families that they wanted to see this and come out and play a big part in making it happen.”

It seems like the decision to wait might have been the right one. Although the film was originally planned for release on Disney Plus, it tested so well that it was released theatrically in its entirety – with Bruckheimer explaining that audiences responded overwhelmingly positively to the story. Ederle.

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“It’s the most grueling film I’ve ever made – and I had great success,” he said. “And so for them, when they see the film, and they watch it with an audience, it’s explosive. People laugh, they cry, they applaud. They are really in this film.

“It’s reminiscent of all the great films they made years and years ago, and the films we made in Hollywood years and years ago. So it’s a return to great emotional drama with humor, and it has everything we go to the movies for: there’s a big expansive canvas in the ocean and the things that happened to this girl.

“And it’s this underdog story. It’s inspiring. She’s a girl who… she’s an immigrant, she’s partially deaf. Everyone is against her, including her own father, to even get in in the water. And yet she perseveres, and we want to inspire people. That’s why we make films, to make their days a little better.”

Likewise, Rønning was delighted when he discovered that the film would be released theatrically rather than as originally planned on streaming only, explaining that: “On a scale of one to 10, I would say 10.”

He continued: “In this cinematic climate, it’s so hard and it can be brutal. And it’s something that we’ve really fought for and, you know, I feel so grateful to be able to be here and show the film on the big screen.

“And that’s why I make films – not to be pretentious, but I think my art form is cinema. That’s what inspired me when I grew up to become a filmmaker. I so excited – it’s an epic story It’s epic in many ways, it’s an epic and emotional story and I think movies should be a physical experience.

Young Woman and the Sea is now showing in UK cinemas.

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