Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan have spoken about the fear they felt for singing on camera in their new film Military Wives.
The duo play the organisers of a choir for the wives of soldiers serving in Afghanistan, inspired by the three-part BBC documentary that brought together wives from five UK barracks under the guidance of choirmaster Gareth Malone.
Discussing where singing ranks on the scale of scary things to do on film, Horgan said: “Pretty high. Dancing would be the highest right? Please no, never ever, ever.
“Don’t even ask me to walk in time to something or click my fingers.”
Scott Thomas added: “Or talking and dancing, have you ever had to do that? It’s impossible. Singing? Next. It was pretty frightening.”
However, Horgan said her fears were abated when the group first sang together, saying: “Until we realised that we were all scared and all in it together – and when we put all the voices together it sounded fine, it sounded quite good.
“Initially we had a tiny bit of singing practice all together and I remember listening out for the really great voices and hearing where they were and it was good, because you thought it’s going to sound fine, we’ve got her.”
Scott Thomas said she was drawn to the film because it focused on people who do not usually get big screen treatment.
She said: “I love telling the story about people we don’t usually hear about, about families, about people who have to go through such anxiety and tension and waiting.
“I just thought there was a really interesting group of people that I hadn’t actually seen a film about before.”
Discussing why that is the case, she said: “Because it’s a film about women, for women, all of the above. Hopefully if this film is a success people will start to make more films with women’s stories that don’t have a man in the middle.”
Horgan continued: “I think it’s quite a brave thing to do because if you’ve got a war story there is instant drama, there’s guns and there’s bombs and there’s bravery and there’s all those things whereas this is a quieter story,
“There’s lots of bravery in it and an amazing story but the dramatisation of that might not seem immediately ‘let’s do it!’ but it works.”
Military Wives is out now in UK cinemas.