Talking 'God's Own Country' with No Topic Taboo

Francis Lee's feature film debut, "God's Own Country" is a beguiling visual poem to gay emotional and sexual awakening.

Set on the sheep farming hills of Yorkshire, the film revolves around young, repressed Johnny Saxby (Josh O'Connor in a career-making performance), who tends to the family farm by day and binge drinks and fucks random dudes at night (as well as whenever and wherever he can).

When a brooding Romanian, Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu), is hired to help out on the farm, cultures clash but animal attraction turns into a journey of discovery for Johnny.

Writer-director Lee, who began his career as an actor, is uncompromising in his depiction of the complex, combustible, yet tender love story. And his two lead actors are simply fearless in their immersion. And you won't find a no-nudity clause in these actor's contracts.

"God's Own Country," now playing in New York and Los Angeles, has been compared to Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," probably because both films have rural settings and feature two very different gay male characters falling in love with each other.

EDGE sat down with Lee, O'Connor and Secareanu and no topic was taboo.

Josh O'Connor & Alec Secareanu

EDGE: Doing tons of press for this film, are there one question you guys are tired of being asked and/or one you were surprised by?

Alec Secareanu: I think the most surprising question I am asked is, 'Am I really a Romanian?' So the answer is yes, I am really Romanian.

Francis Lee: The question people ask the most...

Josh O'Connor: Is it autobiographical...?

Francis Lee: Yeah. Which it isn't. It's just personal. And the strangest question I had was in New Zealand, from an audience member who asked me who was top and who was bottom. (Laughter)

Josh O'Connor: I don't think I mind any question... People respond to every film in different ways, and I think it's our job to answer those questions.

EDGE: Francis, you started out as an actor. When and how did you decide to journey into writing and directing?

Francis Lee: I always wanted to write and direct. But I was never confident enough to write anything. And I also was a very obsessive stills photographer, so I felt like I viewed the world through a lens... and I wasn't really a participant in life, more an observer. So I always played out stories in my head and always saw them visually... Then I got to a certain age and thought, fuck it, you're going to have to do it or shut up. So I gave up acting about six or seven years ago and took a job in a scrap yard and started to write and made two short films that I self-financed. Then I wrote this, and then I made another short film, and then I made this.

Francis Lee

EDGE: Was 'God's Own Country' a story that just came to you?

Francis Lee: The starting point was I wanted to investigate the landscape where I grew up and where my dad is a farmer, and where I now live. And the idea that on the one hand it was incredibly freeing and creative and open and expansive and on the other hand it was incredibly difficult, problematic, brutal, cold, wet, inaccessible.

Then, at the time, I was figuring out the whole falling in love thing and how difficult that can be. And so those two things collided. I love characters that are survivors, loners, battling everything including themselves. And that's where Johnny came from. So I thought about it for six months and then I wrote it.

EDGE: Can you speak to casting these two gentlemen?

Francis Lee: (referring to Josh) ...He did a self-tape... and I got these scenes and, first of all, I was convinced he was from the North of England because his accent was so good. And then he delivered this incredibly natural, emotionally repressed reading of these scenes. I was mesmerized because he totally internalized what this character meant. And I was very attracted to his ears. And I could see he had massive hands, like somebody who worked the land... He was able to come and meet me in London, and I was super shocked because he was the total antithesis of the character. Josh is just the sweetest, loveliest, most open, funny, generous, smiley boy you'd ever wish to meet. And he's from quite a posh town in the south of England. And very quickly, when I started to work with him in the room and I saw he was a very transformative actor, that he's a rare actor that can literally shape shift. And that really turned me on.

(Referring to Alec) And this one. I was sent a lot of self-tapes from Romania and Alec totally pinged out of the pile because this character on the page could be very two-dimensional. Gheorghe is very nuanced, very subtle, in this inner, maternal care that he has -- but he's not a pushover. And Alec just totally delivered that... Alec is a very focused, intelligent actor who totally understood who this person was, and also understood the subtly of it.

I always knew this film would live or die by the relationship, so I'd cast Josh; and Alec was my favorite actor from Romania, but just to be on the safe side we did chemistry tests, and fantastically Josh and Alec worked incredibly well together straightaway and pushed each other...

Alec Secareanu & Josh O'Connor

EDGE: Josh, Francis mentioned you being transformative, could you speak to that how you inhabited Johnny?

Josh O'Connor: ...A lot of that character is on the page. Francis, as a writer, translates what we hopefully are going to see onto paper really well and clearly and concisely.

Then there was the process we went through, which was about three months of prep. Francis and I talking every day on the phone. Alec went through the same thing. We'd go from the beginning of his life, when he was born, what his relationship with his mother was like... His relationship to the land, what his ambitions were... When was his first sexual experience? Is there a moment we can pinpoint where he became emotionally isolated, or is that just inherent in his family? Literally every single detail you can think of we'd written down and thought through and embodied.

So that when I came up to Yorkshire and we started working on the farm for two weeks, we knew those characters inside and out. So then it was living the characters.

EDGE: Alec, what drew you to want to play Gheorghe?

Alec Secareanu: When I first read the script I really loved the story and the character, and I loved the fact that he's a Romanian because there's not a lot of stories about Romanians. And it was a different story than I've read before.

Of course I was bit afraid at the beginning because of the explicitness of scenes. Not only the sex scenes, but the farming scenes. And as soon as met Francis in Bucharest I realized he really knows what he wants with the film and the story, and he totally gained my trust in that meeting.

Alec Secareanu

EDGE: Francis, let's rip the nudity/intimate situations Band-Aid right off since this is America. There are currently some wonderful gay-themed films that are explicit, and one or two that avoid it. Obviously, you made the film you wanted to make. Did anyone try and dissuade you, and did you have any doubts about going that route?

Francis Lee: (Long pause) I'm investigating a character who isn't middle class. He isn't privileged. He's not educated. He comes from a family that doesn't sit around and talk about how they feel... There was no way to show an emotional arc within him through any kind of dialogue. So the way in which I chose to show where he starts, goes and ends is through what he does physically. Now that is the farming, but also in those intimate scenes. So, straightaway, the first interaction we see him have in the back of that cattle trailer with the young auctioneer, I totally understand where he's at because he fucks. He doesn't give. There's no intimacy. It feels like he's just doing it to get it out of his system... So when we see the two characters together there's intimacy, where they kiss, where he discovers touch, I can see the progression, and nobody's said a word. I love that about visual storytelling. So it felt very important for the truth, for the authenticity of the character, the place and the world.

In terms of the nudity, there's only one scene really with nudity, and that was very important because it's the first and only time that Johnny emotionally is raw and he speaks about his mum and about what happened to her. He's totally open with Gheorghe and totally vulnerable. And to mirror that, I wanted to see that he was bare physically... There is no emotional guard. There is no clothing. Nothing. So that felt incredibly truthful and told the viewer where this character was at.

I don't think that the intimate scenes, the nudity is particularly shocking. I love 'Game of Thrones,' and I've seen more tits and fannies and cocks on 'Game of Thrones' than I see in 'God's Own Country.' But I also see people totally mutilated, which we don't do. (Laughter)

Was I dissuaded against it? There was a little bit of talk, before we'd actually made the film when it was at script stage, about marketing, cross-over appeal to which I went, 'Fuck off, I'm making my film my way!'

And that convinced people. And I think that's the right thing to do. I am still surprised that people think it's explicit and have issue with it. In the U.K., not so much. In Australia, not at all. They use it as a selling point in Australia.

It's a really interesting debate. Looking at a year with some exceptional films that highlight same-sex relationships or trans relationships -- these are not niche films; these are films that are fucking good and have done business. 'God's Own Country' is possibly the most financially successful British indie film in the cinema in the UK. It's still at cinemas nine weeks later... It's outsold 'Dunkirk' in a couple of cinemas.

Josh O'Connor

EDGE: Josh, did you have any apprehension about the intimate scenes?

Josh O'Connor: I don't think I did. I was more nervous about working with cows... I honestly don't see how anyone could read that screenplay and have any doubts about those scenes. They're so important in punctuating where Johnny is. In a weird way, they're the most enjoyable to film.

EDGE: Alec, I read you were in a play in Romania with gay themes.

Alec Secareanu: Romania is a very traditional country... the film is going to be screened in Romania... it might get very political because nowadays there is an NGO (non-government organization) called Coalition for Family, which is supported by the Christian Church. They're trying to change the constitution to make a referendum. Now the constitution in Romania says that marriage is the union between two persons. They're trying to make it more specifically say it's between a man and a woman. They're trying to get us to go backwards.

Six years ago when I played a gay character in a play we got a lot of threatening letters from extreme right organizations, so we were afraid and had to call the police, and they came and made sure the actors were safe and also the audience. So it's going to be very interesting when the film is out in the cinemas in November. I don't know what to expect, to be honest. I'm optimistic about it.

EDGE: Francis, what was the shoot like?

Francis Lee: We shot chronologically because I felt each scene was like a building block onto the next scene. We were really well prepared... We'd do a bit of a quick rehearsal and then we'd shoot it. And generally we'd move on. It was a very collaborative process. I let the actors feel they owned their characters... but I am quite controlling, so there was no improvising. And they had to stick exactly to the dialogue.

Josh O'Connor: My relationship to the film is with Francis and Alec, so it's really is about having someone there who's supporting us and knew exactly what he wanted and trusted us to deliver... I knew Johnny better than I know myself... We had this unbelievable support from Francis. He was there every step of the way and came on that journey with us.

"God's Own Country" is in limited release now playing in New York City. It rolls out to other cities over the month of November. .

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