Tsunami, The Aftermath
Sophie Okonedo plays Susie
Sophie Okonedo plays Susie, a young mother whose life is turned upside down by the tsunami that strikes the Thai holiday resort she is staying at with her family on Boxing Day 2004.
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The actress, who won a richly deserved Oscar nomination for her stunning performance in Hotel Rwanda, takes up the story.
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"Susie has come on holiday for Christmas in Thailand with her husband, Ian (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), and her daughter, Martha. Susie goes out diving while they're back at the hotel on Boxing Day, and when she resurfaces, everything's gone.
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"Susie spends the first half of the film looking for her partner, Ian, and the second half looking for her daughter, whom he couldn't hold on to when the wave hit. That's her story."
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The actress is a longstanding friend of Chiwetel's, indeed they have co-starred in Dirty Pretty Things, she thinks that helped when it came to developing their roles as wife and husband - they already possessed a shorthand.
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"Susie and Ian have this wonderful thing where they've been together since they were sixteen and they're the only partner the other has had. They're almost part of each other.
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"The worst thing that can ever happen in their lives happens to them; they can't find their child and they don't know if she is dead or alive.
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"This obviously brings up huge emotions: anger, fear, blame, loss. Whether their relationship can withstand this is the big question mark that hangs over both episodes.
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"I think it really helped that Chiwetel and I knew each other so well because we've got a kind of unspoken language.
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"He's like a brother to me; we had a great, easy relationship already and I'm hoping that will translate onto screen because we haven't got much time to show our relationship before disaster happens.
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"We've only got the first few scenes, and then we're just in trauma the whole time."
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Susie coheres with the sort of characters to which Sophie has always been attracted. "I'm drawn to stories about ordinary people who get tangled up in an extraordinary event, idea or emotion.
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"I'm not saying I don't love films about super-people or super-doctors, but my preference is for stories about how we get through this life and what it is to be human, because I'm always struggling with it myself."
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Sophie, who has also had roles in films such as Scenes of a Sexual Nature, Stormbreaker, The Jackal and This Year's Love comments that making Tsunami, The Aftermath has been a truly educational experience for her.
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"I was amazed time and time again how resourceful the human spirit is, how our instincts for survival are paramount, and how kind and compassionate people can be despite the enormity and stress of their situation.
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"The film looks at how different cultures deal with trauma and death, the Thai culture is so different to ours, very spiritual, extraordinary. I was lucky to be filming there and I got to know some really wonderful people."
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"I've been doing some work with UNICEF, and while I was in Thailand they took me around and we talked to lots of people. At one school I went to over fifty people were wiped out, you have to try to imagine what that must have been like. Given everything, the children are really recovering incredibly well."
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The actress, who also starred in cutting edge television dramas such as Born With Two Mothers, Spooks, Clocking Off, Whose Baby?, Alibi and Never Never, hopes that viewers will find watching the drama equally illuminating.
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"Tsunami, The Aftermath is not a disaster film; I would never have been involved in something like that. This very much puts the human face on what happened, and in the same way as Hotel Rwanda it then becomes about something which could have happened to you, me or someone we know.
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"When people identify with what they see, they begin to feel that they could be part of that experience and so it becomes hard to disengage yourself from things that are happening around the world........"
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Sophie, who has just completed two projects, a film called The Martian Child opposite John Cusack, and Celebration, written by Harold Pinter, a drama for More4 alongside Colin Firth, Stephen Rea and Michael Gambon, really enjoyed collaborating with the director of Tsunami, The Aftermath, "it's been really great working with Bharat because he gave me a lot of freedom.
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"The best directors I have worked with always offer you that freedom to explore. Bharat was very relaxed and just seemed to trust that I could do the job.
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"A lot of filming is about trust, and that was the atmosphere on set which made me feel more able to experiment. I'm not very good when things are very rigid. The performance was always more important than anything else for Bharat."
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