Cillian Murphy on why the character Small Things Like These is not a hero

Throughout the film – in which Bill also reflects on his own childhood – the character comes across as a fundamentally decent man, but he only speaks against RadioTimes.comMurphy explained why it wasn’t right to see him as a hero.

“I think it’s a curious take,” he said of the film’s perspective. “Because it has been covered in films before, this time in Irish history. So it’s a book written by a woman about a man – it’s a male protagonist – but it’s really a story about women. So it’s a very interesting take that way.”

He added that he heard Keegan on a podcast explaining her own reasons for not seeing Bill’s character as a hero.

“She sees him as someone who is a little… unraveling,” he explained. “Who’s going through some kind of deep, deep, emotional reckoning, and he comes across this girl, and that precipitates this action and this gesture and this… but it’s kind of a whole other engine going on, which is primarily, I think, about grief and loss.”

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He continued: “And a lot of it is about his love for his daughters and his wife and so it’s very, very complex. It’s not just about the church, even though that is something that colors everything and informs everything at that time. village.

“We filmed in New Ross (and) if you go there there are spiers everywhere. It feels like a garrison town. It’s just drenched in there.”

Murphy’s co-star Emily Watson had previously explained this RadioTimes.com How Murphy’s passion for the project – where he is also a producer – met on the set.

“When I met him on set, he was completely immersed in Bill Furlong,” she said. “So he was very, very quiet, like a simmering, you know, unexploded bomb, in a way — he didn’t really say much, he was all in it.”

Small Things Like These is now in UK cinemas.

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