Karen Gillian’s career has taken her from the action world of Doctor Who to the world of superheroes in Guardians of the Galaxy, and while the Scottish actress and director has enjoyed both jobs, there’s one type of acting she loves best: acting.
Gillan loves physical comedy – she has a natural talent for falling, and has joked that she was able to just be herself when performing in the genre.
Those skills were put to the test in her latest film, “Late Bloomers,” which is now available on video-on-demand digital platforms.
Gillan plays Louise, a 28-year-old Brooklynite who spends more time running from life than running towards it. A reckless, drunken fall changes her life, leaving her with a broken hip (an uncommon injury for someone so young) and hospitalized in a physical therapy ward. There, she meets Antonina (Margaret Sophie Stein), a cranky older Polish woman who doesn’t speak English. Louise ends up taking on the role of Antonina’s carer, a situation neither of them welcomes.
For Gillan, the role was interesting for another reason, along with the physical comedy: Throughout the film, her character must deal with people who don’t speak English, or don’t speak any English at all. She found her role to be the perfect balance.
“My character talks a lot throughout the movie,” Gillan says, “and it was really fun to fill in all the gaps and silences with just a flow of dialogue. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do.”
“When I first read the script, I thought, this is something I can speak fluently and it’s going to be a lot of fun. But I think a lot of communication is verbal, and we were able to communicate with each other through emotion and subtext in the scenes.”
Gillan’s ability to communicate, whether verbally or by implication, comes from years of work in television and film. Though she’s best known to TV audiences as Amy Pond, the 11th Doctor’s traveling companion in Doctor Who, her resume also includes Outcast, Selfie, No More Happy Endings and Inadmissible Evidence.
Gillan’s career has included a wide variety of acting work, but that’s by design: She’s just as happy to work in deeply intimate and personal projects as she is in those featuring big-scale special effects and explosive action.
“I think at the end of the day, my job is the same,” Gillan said. “I need to tell this truth and get people to believe it.”
She points out that while acting is at the core of each film, the rest of the job can vary dramatically, with big action movies like “Avengers: Endgame” requiring more physical performances, like punching and kicking all day.
Big budget movies also require long shooting schedules to fit in all the action scenes. Gillan said she has actually enjoyed working on smaller films like “Late Bloomers,” where more scenes had to be shot because there wasn’t a budget for extra days.
“You can really get into the rhythm and get the groove going, and that’s really great for me because it makes me feel like I’m in a great position to do this and not die or fail,” Gillan says.
She laughed and added that it’s always good not to die or fail.
Gillan had a little help preparing for her role in “Late Bloomers”: The accident that establishes the connection between the two women at the beginning of the film also forces Gillan’s character to use crutches.
After being advised by her medical team not to hang from crutches by the oxter (Scottish for underarm) as it would numb the area, Gillan used the crutches as accents in various scenes (one scene involves a fight with a bus door, creating both aural and physical humour). As Gillan says, she fully embraces physical comedy.
“I was going to learn how to use it properly, but I also wanted to have fun with physical comedy,” Gillan says. “Waving it around, using it for gestures.”
“It was really good to use.”
Gillan used her crutches for comedy, but also took the opportunity to poke fun at how sexy disposable diapers can be, another way to engage with the physical comedy she loves.
“Late Bloomers” is directed by Lisa Steen from a screenplay by Anna Greenfield.
