Aimee Lou Wood had one coping mechanism when the world locked down in 2020: to watch as many films as physically possible, so she could experience something bigger than the confines of her small flat. As weeks turned into months, the White Lotus and Sex Education star hunkered down and inhaled classics from Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Soon, she landed on the idea for Film Club, a six-part BBC romcom about an agoraphobic twentysomething called Evie (Wood), who hosts elaborate fancy-dress movie nights in her mum’s garage. Evie’s ulterior motive? To spend time with the boy she has feelings for, but is scared to confess her love to.
“TV during that time was the only way you could access the world,” Wood said of the long isolation period, while speaking at the series’ launch last month. “We needed plot. We needed to be taken away. We needed escape.”
Film Club, co-written by Wood’s theatre school friend, former housemate and House of the Dragon star Ralph Davis, is sort of like being let in on all of a friendship’s private jokes at once. The smart, pacy dialogue was inspired by old-school romcoms like Norah Ephron and Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally and James L Brooks’s Broadcast News, as well as Wood and Davis’s own bouncy vernacular, exchanged over endless hours typing at their kitchen table. “We just laughed and laughed,” said Davis, who explained that they “narcistically” built a world around their unique friendship and sense of humour, to see shyness and silliness on screen at a time when televised love is often much more smouldering.
The pandemic popularised a moody kind of romance drama – one filled with long gazes and periods of silence à la Normal People. “It was quite sparse dialogue. Just people staring at each other in quite a sexy way,” reflected Wood. “So, we wanted nerds to fall in love. We wanted to see neurotic, messy people falling in love instead of really cool, silent people.”
Consequently, Wood had concerns about casting Nabhaan Rizwan – best known for his roles in the raunchy finance drama Industry and glossy Greek mythology show Kaos – as Film Club’s leading man and love interest, Noa. “I was like, ‘I think he’s too cool,’ and then he walked in, and he’s a massive nerd!” Wood laughed. “He’s on the front row of all these fashion week shows, but he loves board games.”
Later, on the phone, Rizwan tells me that it wasn’t just the “sweet” Film Club script that made him jump to accept the role, but his immediate chemistry with Wood that had him sold. “We were cracking jokes from the first meeting,” he says. “I kind of forgot it was an audition.” He and Wood “very quickly established a nuanced sense of humour between the two of us”, just like Noa and Evie. “They have that rock-solid foundation, but also, they’re just two complete weirdos who’ve found each other,” he adds. “So, it felt right to see it through.”
Evie does have other friends aside from Noa: her sweet-but-useless boyfriend Josh (Adam Long); her sister Izzie (Liv Hill); and uni friends Dominic (played by Davis), Samantha (Fola Evans-Akingbola), and Kamran (Arian Nik). They love Evie – but none of them quite understand her mind, and all its quirks and anxieties, like Noa does. As the audience, we’re invited to climb inside it with him.
Each episode of Film Club serves as a microcosm of Evie’s mentality. When Noa drops the bomb that he’s got a job in Bristol and will be leaving their home city of Manchester for good, while she’s still scared to leave the house, they watch Alien – a beckoning but terrifying depiction of a world unknown. For the episode, Wood is decked out in a jumpsuit to match that of Alien’s Ellen Ripley, and Evie’s bog-standard garage is turned into a rough-and-ready spaceship, with the help of Manchester University art students. “I really wanted to get a peek into Aimee’s world,” reflects Rizwan. “It was nice to delve into someone else’s imagination.”
During Wizard of Oz week, Evie sits in a full Dorothy outfit, clicking her red heels together, saying “there’s no place like home”, while Noa races back from Bristol, despite train cancellations and a dead phone, to make sure he gets back for her before the credits roll. “It made it easier once we located exactly what she was going through,” Wood reflected. “It was always led by that.”
We wanted to capture that moment where everyone starts splitting off, everyone’s at different stages of their life
Both Film Club’s lead characters are a little lost as the series starts. Noa can’t seem to socialise or flirt with people his age without feeling baffled or out of place. Meanwhile, Evie has been dubbed Miss Havisham by a local BMX-riding teenager (played by Adolescence star Owen Cooper) because she’s too afraid to even walk to the nearby high street for groceries. Coming-of-age narratives might usually chronicle a character’s teen years, but Wood thinks basing a story in the final lurch towards 30 makes more sense. “We wanted to capture that moment where everyone starts splitting off, everyone’s at different stages of their life, comparing and despairing, and not really knowing where they should be,” she said.
This feeling lingers later in life for Evie’s glamorous, theatrical, and deeply anxious single mother, Suz. She’s played by powerhouse Suranne Jones, who seems to relish a move away from her usual taut thrillers to have a little fun here, clutching her pearls at her daughter’s behaviour with an air of Gavin & Stacey’s Pam Shipman. “Suz doesn’t even know she’s being funny,” said Wood. “This is a high-stakes drama for her. Every day. She’s just trying to fight for her daughters.”
As the episodes go on, it’s clear that Suz’s eccentricities may have contributed to Evie’s fear of going beyond the threshold of her garden gate. “Suz doesn’t really know how to do life, but who does? Everyone’s just struggling day to day,” Jones said. With a wobble in her voice, Wood echoed: “Mums are just trying their best. They’re growing up with their kids at the same time… I think the whole point that we wanted to make is that, for some people, a huge triumph and success is just getting to the corner shop. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Sometimes, it’s just about doing another day.”
Wood is undoubtedly one of Britain’s best and brightest rising stars. In the five years beyond the pandemic, she’s done the opposite of hibernating. In 2021, she won a Bafta for Best Female Comedy Performance for Sex Education. The following year, she starred alongside Bill Nighy in mortality drama Living. This year, she was nominated for an Emmy for her role as Chelsea in The White Lotus. But Film Club, with its technicolour costumes, wild sets and witty dialogue, is the first project of them all that has truly come from Aimee Lou Wood’s heart, and it’s warm, smart, funny and full of love. “I just really want Aimee to get her flowers,” Rizwan says. “It can’t be overstated how brilliant she is.”
‘Film Club’ premieres on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer on Tuesday 7 October
