I had a chance to catch up with Eileen Walsh, who plays
EW: I think it’s a real test. You’re trying to acknowledge the character through the tiniest ways possible, but it kind of frees you at the same time. It is difficult, but it frees you up eventually and I think by paring back on the writing so much, you get to actually see how little the main characters actually talk until the very end, until they finally face their demons and have some form of communication. Until then, their day to day lives are just so quiet and not connected to one another.
Collider: That’s true. For the first half of the movie, I realized as I watched it, they say barely two sentences to each other with the way their schedules are lined up. How hard was it for you to work with Aiden Kelly (Billy) without actually interacting with him?
EW: I think it’s very telling with any relationship after a certain length of time, that you do take it for granted. I’m with my husband now for 11 years and I know that we certainly go through periods of taking the other for granted and that will show itself in moments of quietness and you become that dreaded older couple who are eating in restaurants and they say nothing at all. You have to allow those moments to happen though, and to get through them. Unlike Billy and
EW: Well, for me, I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare because of the play. I played a young girl who was desperate to fall in love and ends up falling off a crane in the middle of Dublin and gets taken up in the arms of a demon and ends up falling in love and making love to this demon on her way to her death and it was fantastic. Then the difference of going into someone like Breda was huge, but through Eugene’s writing, I had seen the play when it was in Dublin, and my sister actually played the part originally, so I knew the writing very well and just some of the lines, like when she discusses her fantasy with her friend and it is a huge way to get into a character. All she wants is to be chosen. To be picked out of a lineup and told, whether or not the person believes it, but to be told that she is the most beautiful, she is valued, she is worth it. We all know that, especially as women, we all know and want to be valued and be strong sexual beings and to be honest and let that come out, it’s a real honest way to get into her.
Collider: Being familiar with the play, how different was the play to the on screen adaptation?
EW: The play was just two actors and monologues so it was very wordy, which is incredibly different from the film itself. And I think people who go to see the play tend to have more of an ownership from it because you’re described all the characters and you end up putting yourself into a lot of those places and seeing the girl you fancied or the boy you fell in love with so it’s a very personal experience when you go to a play and the main difference is the movie provides all that for you. The difference is also that the film can be so intimate and I know from the feedback at the
Collider: One thing I wanted to bring up was the children and how much of a role they played in the relationship. For a portion, it almost seems like they’re the go between for Billy and
EW: Well, I think that, first of all, divorce is very hard to come by. It’s very difficult to get out of a marriage. It’s possible, but it’s very lengthy and problematic so a large amount of people will stay together, especially with children involved. I think Billy and
Collider: You mention a low divorce rate in
Collider: In the end, of course, by circumstance, she goes a little farther than he does. You mention though how the character of
EW: For me,
Collider: In the end, when she goes with Owen, she just realizes what she has done and she soaks in the tub and there is a lot of remorse and it comes to the head of the movie where Billy and Breda finally confront each other. How emotional was that scene? I know personally I felt the power of the scene so when doing that scene, how do you feel it as an actor?
EW: I think because the movie has such little dialogue that as soon as it came to a scene with dialogue, you really grasp onto it because you realize this is Last Chance Saloon kind of stuff. And I think we had three takes of it to get that scene, one on Billy, one on me, and one master shot. That was it. Because we were running out of time and that was great in a way, that pressure. Just got the heart racing and brought everything to the forefront. And we did a lot of improv around that. Discussed it a fair bit because we knew how important it was and the boys were able to film it a bit later on so by then we were more comfortable with knowing who our characters were so I think it’s a point where both characters are to blame and Billy tended to put her up on a pedestal and see her as the housewife and he needs to realize that the chances were there for the both of them and that they need to move on from that.
Eden is a drama that speaks to basic human emotion. Fear, wanting, denial, and the movie will play with your heart strings till the very end. You’ll go from hating Billy one instant, to rooting for him the next, and you’ll have your roller coaster of emotions with Breda as well as both actors did fantastic jobs . Eden comes out today in New York and L.A.