Fresh off the back of becoming the first Irish-born winner of the best actor award at the Oscars, Cillian Murphy is busier than ever.
“It’s my third film I’ve done since then so that was clearly my coping mechanism”, he tells Sky News at the UK premiere of Small Things Like These.
Set in 1985 Wexford, the film is based on Claire Keegan’s Orwell prize-winning fictional novel of the same name that follows coalman Bill Furlong as he uncovers the treatment of the unmarried mothers sent to a Magdalene laundry in his town.
Murphy, 48, first pitched the idea to Matt Damon, who produced the film under his production company Artist’s Equity, on the set of Oppenheimer, calling it “a little bit Manchester By The Sea meets Doubt”.
“Claire’s story was so perfect and magnificent in its brevity and what it captured, and it moved people and I felt for us, it was our challenge to kind of make a film that did justice to the novel.
“I never would like to be prescriptive about what people take from film. I just hope that they enjoy it and that maybe, maybe it gets them talking.”
Poignantly, the movie is dedicated to the more than 56,000 young women who were sent to Magdalene institutions “for penance and rehabilitation” between 1922 and 1998 and “the children who were taken from them”.
In 2013, the then Irish prime minister Enda Kenny issued a public apology on behalf of the state to the thousands of women who were forced to work unpaid and take part in prayer at Catholic-run workhouses.
Calling it “the nation’s shame”, the apology came after a report revealed the state was responsible for 24% of all admissions to the laundries where girls were incarcerated for numerous reasons, from poverty to getting pregnant outside of marriage.
The last laundry closed in 1996 in Dublin.
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Pic: Lionsgate/Enda Bowe
Murphy on becoming a producer
Small Things Like These marks the first film from his independent production company Big Things.
The 28 Days Later actor says he wants to continue putting storytelling at the forefront of his projects.
“I like to make films that have a kind of human dimension above all, you know, they’re entertaining, but they’re about people.
“The next film we did is also an adaptation of a novel, so we’ll see [what direction we go in] but we’re very happy that this is the first one out of the traps.”
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Peaky Blinders and 28 Days
Speaking of his recent Oscar win for his leading performance in Oppenheimer, Murphy says he still finds it surreal.
“Maybe at Christmas time I may sit down and have a think about it, but nothing has changed for me. It was an amazing dreamlike time and wonderful and humbling but I haven’t really figured it all out.”
He has already filmed the sequel to his 2002 cult movie 28 Days Later – aptly called 28 Years Later – which is out in summer 2025 and he is currently halfway through production of the Peaky Blinders film.
“It’s great, it’s very familiar, but also a difference in a good way”.
Small Things Like These is in cinemas on 1 November.