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<\/a><\/p>\nMary Magdalene<\/a><\/i> is finally coming to North American theatres this week.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll be seeing any new interviews with the cast and crew of that film, but I did keep track of some of the interviews that they did last<\/i> year for the film\u2019s foreign release \u2014 so I figured now would be a good time to link to all those articles and videos.<\/p>\n This post will focus on the interviews with director Garth Davis (who is sometimes joined in the interviews by members of his cast, particularly lead actress Rooney Mara).<\/p>\n I previously linked to interviews with Davis about this film in 2016<\/a>, 2017<\/a> and 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since then, Davis spoke to Broadsheet<\/a><\/i> in Australia:<\/p>\n For Davis, the story of Malala Yousafzai \u2013 the Pakistani women\u2019s-education activist who became the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate \u2013 was a significant influence. In 2012 a Taliban gunman shot her in the head, but she survived and offered forgiveness to her assailant.<\/p>\n \u201cThis story is similarly celebrating forgiveness and love. Malala\u2019s a hero of mine,\u201d says Davis. \u201cShe has this light in her. When I first encountered her I thought, this woman\u2019s going to change the world. In Mary, I saw a lot of similarities. Rooney saw the same.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2009 a Magdala synagogue \u2013 buried for millennia \u2013 was discovered during an excavation in northern Israel. Davis visited the site while developing his film. \u201cI had the characters in my heart and soul, and then I was there,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a beautiful space. The mosaics and the frescos were still there.\u201d The story felt real to him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Side note: I have visited that synagogue in Magdala<\/a> too!)<\/p>\n Davis spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald<\/a><\/i> about his research:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I re-read the gospel of Mary and the gospel of Mark and started getting into the research, I realised that she was actually a really significant spiritual figure and obviously a very courageous woman to have left her family to follow her spiritual calling \u2013 just a remarkable human being.<\/p>\n \u201cBut when people think of Mary, they think of her as a lover. They\u2019re always sexualising her. I don\u2019t know where all those inventions come from and I don\u2019t know why women are always put into those contexts. But when you really go back and look at the gospels and look at the history, she was present in all the major elements of [Jesus\u2019] story and had a very close relationship with him. We\u2019re just acknowledging that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Davis spoke to QNews<\/a> in Australia about his reasons for making the film:<\/p>\n The subject matter came to me, and I think the reason they gave it to me was because they wanted that spiritual, human telling of it. And that\u2019s what really excited me about it too, I mean I love biblical, religious movies. I always have had a secret fascination for them, so I got a little bit excited about going down this path. To be able to reveal Mary\u2019s story in a way that hasn\u2019t been told in 2000 years\u2026 I love her story, she\u2019s an exemplary spiritual figure, an amazing apostle\u2026 she reminded me of Malala, in that Malala forgave the Taliban.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Davis spoke to Stuff<\/a><\/i> in New Zealand about how he cast Rooney Mara as Mary Magdalene:<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, Mary was someone who had this otherworldliness within her family structure. You could tell she had this spiritual calling, a spirituality that set her apart from everyone else. To do that in a way that\u2019s believable and kind of intriguing, needed qualities that I thought only a few actresses had. But having worked with Rooney [Mara) on Lion<\/i>, I realised that she\u2019s a very unique actress who has this ability even in silence just to open up these worlds for the viewer. I felt she had all the qualities to bring a humanity to spirituality.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Davis spoke to the Radio Times<\/a><\/i> about the charge that his film \u201cwhitewashes\u201d Mary:<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, the most critical, important thing was that I made the most emotionally compelling Mary,\u201d Davis says, \u201cand Rooney just has such a unique quality. She has an otherworldliness, and in her silences \u2013 there\u2019s no other actress like her \u2013 she just creates these universes. And all of that was just so critical in bringing to life Mary\u2019s character, so I felt that I had to choose that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Davis also spoke to The Times of London<\/a><\/i> in an interview that is behind a paywall.<\/p>\n Davis is also featured with Mara in some articles:<\/p>\n They talked to the BBC<\/a> about the non-biblical tradition that Mary was a prostitute:<\/p>\n \u201cTo learn it was an invention of Pope Gregory was astonishing, and to learn that Mary\u2019s story had never been told in a popular way was tragic,\u201d says Davis.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt that her story absolutely had to be told, and I felt even more impassioned to tell it once I knew it had been hidden for so long.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They spoke to the Eastern Daily Press<\/a><\/i> in the UK:<\/p>\n \u201cI am not a religious expert, and I\u2019m not necessarily religious either, but the thing that we connected to is the spiritual message,\u201d says Garth Davis on why he chose to risk potentially controversial subject matter. \u201cIn some ways that is the message that has been lost today. The whole point is that we are taking people back to the core message of Jesus that we all have it in us. I just had to trust that. I loved the inclusiveness of Mary and telling the story through her point of view.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They also spoke to The Australian<\/a><\/i> in an article that is currently behind a paywall.<\/p>\n There is also a video interview with Davis and Mara at The Telegraph<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n Davis spoke to podcaster Edith Bowman<\/a> about working with Icelandic composer J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson, who died shortly after finishing his work on this film:<\/p>\n