Isabella Eklöf on Condemning the Ones We Love in Her Adaptation of Nick Cave’s ‘The Death of Bunny Munro’

As you read this, take a moment to reflect on how complex you are as an individual. What sways your behaviour from one action to the next, how countless variables can get you to that place, and how you then likewise become a variable in someone else’s life as a consequence. It’s easy to see the complexity in ourselves but often bafflingly difficult to appreciate that very same complexity in other people. To think about why they do what they do and not simply focus on the thing they have done. Isabella Eklöf’s adaptation of Nick Cave’s 2009 novel The Death of Bunny Munro is an exploration of exactly that. It looks at generational trauma, the cyclical impact of one generation on the next, and how someone acting in such a ghastly way can still be worthy of love, forgiveness and understanding. It shows the lengths that some people – adults and children – will go to convince themselves that continuous lack of care from a parent is given a pass because of the ‘hero’ they misguidedly perceive them to be. Bunny Munro, a despicable character who actor Matt Smith imbues with such a magnetic charm that you can’t help but be drawn into his selfish escapades, is a man caught between these two states of being: the hero and the hero worshipper. After a tragic childhood with a poor role model, he’s a man whose identity is built like a house of cards, and it’s about to come tumbling down. With Eklöf being a filmmaker we’ve kept a keen eye on since we spoke to her back in 2018 about her unflinching feature debut Holiday and The Death of Bunny Munro launching this Thursday (20 November) on Sky and streaming service NOW, we jumped at the opportunity to sit down her again to discover how she brought Cave’s compellingly toxic yet tragic titular character to screen.

[The full interview is available to watch at the end of this article.]

I’ve watched the whole series, absolutely loved it, but went in completely cold. I wasn’t even aware there was a novel it was based on. So, as well as the fantastic adaptation done by Pete Jackson, how useful was it for you to have Nick Cave’s novel as an additional resource in telling this story?

Well, that’s hard for me to say because I read the novel years ago and the reason I wanted to do this was because of the novel. It’s probably one of my top ten novels I’ve read ever. So, I can’t really abstract from it; it’s at the core of why this series is good, the novel and the depth. You should read it because it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s just a manic monologue descending into hell by iterations and it’s powerful in a different way to the series. As a work of literature, it’s absolutely astonishing. So, the depth of that, the earnestness and the fun of that is what underlies the power of the series.

There are obviously limits to where he can go without us just turning off in disgust.

The titular Bunny Munro is a poster boy for toxic masculinity, misogyny, and parental abandonment, with very few redeeming features. It has to be said.

Well, he’s good-looking.

He’s very good-looking and a charming chap, absolutely. I just wondered what interested you in this particular character when you first read the novel, but then also diving in deeper with the series?

It’s really important that we talk about the fact that there are so many abusers in everybody’s life and we need to address it openly and frankly. I think a big issue is that so much is being constantly swept under the rug because it’s uncomfortable to talk about, we don’t know what to do about it, and also, we kind of love them and what we’re going to do with them, you know? That love is at the core of all my work. Loving the narcissist and what do you do about it? That’s the exploration.

What are some of the challenges in telling the story of a character like that but making the audience come back each week to see this quite nasty person?

There are obviously limits to where he can go without us just turning off in disgust. But we wanted to go as far as we possibly could because we want the conflict to be real and the abuse to be real and the ending to be meaningful. We can’t skewer him the way we do without having just cause. Other than that, I think it’s fundamentally human to love these characters because they’re fun, irreverent, and they do all the stuff we wish we could, but we don’t let ourselves do. They are a release valve on society, so to speak, and so we love reading about them and watching them.

A lot of that comes down to the casting of the character to be able to pull that off. How important was the casting of Matt Smith in this role?

Yeah, Matt really shines, doesn’t he? I think it’s the best thing he’s ever done because he’s allowed to explore all the aspects of this guy and be everywhere. He’s really got a thousand faces. He looks different in every light, and he’s always surprising you with them. He’s so fun to work with as a director because every take is different—editors hate him—I love him because you get something new every time. It’s a constant exploration into psychology and relationships. It’s just exhilarating. He’s a very intelligent and emotionally intelligent actor who does his fucking homework as well. He comes with these long monologues and never misses a beat. It was time that he finally got to do something really meaty and complex like this.

He’s a very intelligent and emotionally intelligent actor who does his fucking homework as well.

I can imagine it was a character that you both must have had a lot of joy bringing to life together because he’s so nuanced and complex.

Oh yeah, totally. especially in the moments between, when he breaks down a little bit and the mask slips. There’s a moment in the party in episode one where he’s leaning on the wall, he’s drunk, and suddenly he’s so tired. You can see the weight of it all and it’s so touching. That’s all Matt, just being there, being with the character. I find that extremely beautiful.

Looking at some of the other characters, Sarah Greene as Libby brings so much depth to that character. There’s no doubt that Bunny puts her through hell, which ultimately leads to her circumstance, but she’s no shrinking violet at the same time, which is what we see when they’re first getting together.

I think Sarah saw her as a real rock and roll wife. That’s what she went with and that was the perfect choice. It’s a tricky character because she’s just a ghost, she’s ethereal, and the object of these two men’s love, and she doesn’t always say that much. So, being the mother, the wife, but also being her own person is very hard. Sarah was really good at giving her that edge while also being all these things that she is in the show.

Like you said, the rock and roll wife, which she would have had to have been to get with someone like Bunny in the first place.

Exactly, because they really did love each other. They really were soulmates, but he just couldn’t handle love. That’s the tragedy.

Many of her scenes, as well as Matt’s, are with Rafael Mathé, who is a heartbreaking revelation in this series. What was the casting process to find him and what was it like working with a child actor on such a long project?

We went through 400 kids. That was the bulk of the whole prep, going through all these kids, which was exhaustive, extensive and ultimately rewarding. The funny thing is that none of these children, although some of them were really fun and talented, were even close to Rafael. It was not a contest at all because he’s so uniquely perceptive, sensitive and emotionally intelligent, but he’s also really sheltered, so everything is new to him. Everything is like a dawn on the first day, and there’s just something about that which is so rewarding when you put a camera on his face and put him all through all of this.

I guess that’s the nature of unhappy love towards the parent, is the parent is always on their way, going somewhere, and you’re reaching out.

On being sheltered, how difficult was it to protect him from the very adult nature of the show and what his character is going through in this story?

Surprisingly easy because he didn’t get it! It just went straight over his head. He didn’t understand any of it. While some of the child actors around him did, he was just happy-go-lucky, so it was surprisingly easy. The biggest problem was all the poor producers trying to stop me from swearing, which was not very successful.

Oh dear, was there a swear tin?

There was a swear tin. It wasn’t just me, it was Matt as well. We had to put some money in there. There was a quota of “fucks” we could say each day.

There’s so much misplaced hero worship from Bunny to his father. He’s based his entire identity around this idea he’s created of his father, but in his memories, he sometimes can’t quite see his father clearly. Can you tell me about the narrative function and the choice to not have him quite clearly see his father in his memories?

That stems from this core memory that we have with him at the pool, and the pool being a metaphor of all that was horrible about his childhood. Being left in this cold pool for hours while his dad was sleazily picking up girls. I guess that’s the nature of unhappy love towards the parent, is that the parent is always on their way, going somewhere, and you’re reaching out, so they’re always sort of half turned away or somewhere in the distance, they’re not going to be cooing over you or being very close and present. That’s just the nature of that core scene that we were using to talk about that relationship.

The image that Bunny has created in his mind of his father is so well represented in how he presents himself, in the car he drives, the clothes he wears, and the embellished swagger he has. Could you tell me about these choices and how Bunny came to be physically represented on screen?

I’m not sure I gave that too much thought, but there’s definitely an aspect of being stuck with an overbearing, charismatic and larger the life parent, so that there’s a generational trauma in him looking up to his father the same way Junior looks up to him. Being stuck in a loop of trying to recreate something that was never really there in the first place. That’s very much the trope of the hustler or the salesman.

There’s a Roald Dahl story about a salesman in antiques [Parson’s Pleasure] that I used as a reference point to explain who the father was. It’s an absolutely brilliant short story. There’s something about that—like he says, “Taking the world by the balls and squeezing it dry,”—that’s super appealing to children in general, and if you combine that with a character who’s just always leaving, always on his way out, always gone, you get this superhuman, non-real persona you’ll be chasing your whole life.

There’s a Roald Dahl story about a salesman in antiques that I used as a reference point to explain who the father was.

Part of the story is that Junior is at risk of ending up that way, but he doesn’t, does he? So that’s why this tragedy, in a way, ends hopefully, which I’m sure is why Sky would make this in the first place because there is real hope here. There is a shift from Bunny to Junior, where he probably won’t end up like Bunny. He’ll be alright, and partly because of some of these women that he encounters along the way.

The story is all set in Brighton in 2003 when the West Pier suffered that catastrophic fire. It sounds strange to think of something set in 2003 as period. What work did you do with the production designer Alexandra Toomey and the costume department to create that time?

Yeah, but it’s not that far from the 90s, and when you think of the 90s, that feels period. It was a lot of trouble with cars because obviously we weren’t closing whole streets off in the middle of Brighton. A lot of trying to cover up cars with other cars, and painting some of them out and so on. Set design and costume-wise wise we went obviously vintage, sourcing a lot of oldish stuff. But more important than that was the overall look and feel, which had a sort of a dusty, pinkish sort of pastel kind of look, which creates a femininity to the whole thing, which I think is interesting and important because a guy like Bunny actually takes a lot of effort to understand women, paradoxically, because he’s a serial seducer, so he needs to get under the skin.

Also, we had a lot of fun with costume. For example, in the Wellesbourne Estate with the three single mothers that he’s chatting up, dressing them in the turn of the century style leggings, and the pinks, and the high hair, and the makeup. It was just an excuse to be a little bit heightened, to go all in with these different characters and give them very distinct looks.

A guy like Bunny actually takes a lot of effort to understand women, paradoxically, because he’s a serial seducer, so he needs to get under the skin.

It struck me how there was a lightness to the aesthetic of the series, which belies the darkness of the story. It sounds like that juxtaposition was very intentional from the beginning.

Yeah, again, I felt like he’s operating in a world of women. It’s a feminine world but it’s also a decadent world. It’s a Brighton that saw its heyday more than a hundred years ago, and it’s been sort of slowly crumbling ever since. There’s something really beautiful and poetic and horrible about that decay, which you see in other works. Dirty Weekend, for example, has the same feeling.

Yes, it’s about generational trauma, toxic masculinity, but it’s tied in with Britain as a whole and the decay of an empire and the estrangement of the classes. There’s very much about class in the story as well. It’s very obvious which class everyone belongs to. If you want to take it there, it’s about Western civilisation in general. How we’ve had this hero worship of ourselves in a way that’s breaking apart. What is our image of ourselves and where do we go from here?

Yes, it’s about generational trauma, toxic masculinity, but it’s tied in with Britain as a whole and the decay of an empire and the estrangement of the classes.

Can you tell me what the series was shot on?

I think we used Cooke lenses with an Alexa, and zoom lenses almost the whole time. Any time we didn’t use zoom lenses, it felt stiff and wrong and annoying, so we were just zooming all the time. It was really fun.

Bringing it back to Brighton itself. How long were you there for filming and how familiar were you with the city beforehand?

I have lived in England before. A year here, a year there, so I’ve been there probably for the first time in the 80s. So, I knew of it, but I hadn’t got under the skin of it really. But you don’t need to actually; it’s very much what you see is what you get. I did go there ahead of the pre-production to drive around and understand what the options were. And we had a really brilliant location manager called Lex, who’s lived there all his life and who knows all the places, so I think we got the most out of it. We weren’t just in Brighton, we were up and down the coast, finding the most interesting spots for Charlotte Parnovar, being Shoreham, the upper middle classes up in the estates in northern Brighton and the old cafes. A lot of lovely locations there.

With this being an adaptation of his original novel, how involved was Nick Cave in the crafting of the series?

He was kind of hands off actually. We had a couple of chats, and they were really nice, but they mostly just confirmed what I was already thinking. I know Pete has a really good story about Nick having written to him that he has a couple of notes. Pete comes in with his big notebook expecting to pull it all apart, but Nick’s thought was, “Why had he written pointy shoes? He would never want pointy shoes”. That was basically the extent of his notes on the first draft.

And what was the collaboration like on the score with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis? It’s not often the composer is the author of the book on which the series is based. I find that quite unique.

Yeah, it’s quite unique, isn’t it? They were just quietly working away in the background throughout the whole editing process, right from the very beginning, right to the very end, just chipping away and refining. I’m crazy—as most of us are—about Warren’s violin and wanting some of that in there. They had this weird obsession with some electric organ that they were putting in there. You know the hymn score for the toilet wank scene? That’s some artificial heavenly voices made by an electric organ. There were some really punky, cool, almost Grinderman kind of sounds coming in here and there, but mostly just going with whatever’s there, and they just went in and improvised over several sessions.

You know the hymn score for the toilet wank scene? That’s some artificial heavenly voices made by an electric organ.

I can’t think of another creative relationship like that, where the composer is the author.

It’s fun because Nick bookended the whole thing. He wrote the origins and then was kind of hands off, then he came in and shaped the final finesse touches. There’s something beautiful about that.

In terms of how the final episode plays out, I did not see it coming at all. It was a wonderful ending. What do you hope audiences will take away from the viewing experience of The Death of Bunny Munro series as a whole?

Oh, that’s a tricky one. I try to not meddle too much with that. If you ask a visual artist, a performance artist, “What is the audience supposed to take away?” they will not have any comments at all, and I don’t know that I should have either. But maybe on a general note, there are two things, I think.

Firstly, is that humans are complex, and you can definitely condemn someone for their actions while loving them. That’s at the core of a lot of problems we have today, with slut shaming and all that shit, where people are like, “No, he’s my best buddy, he could never do that”, but he can be your best buddy and also do that. People have to realise that. It’s so hard to get people away from that kind of single-mindedness.

Humans are complex and you can definitely condemn someone for their actions while loving them.

Second, there’s something in here that’s quite unique and not seen so much, which is actual divine punishment. Actual retribution. A judgment coming from God, which you don’t see that often in modern work. And part of that is that some things are beyond humans to judge, but there’s still a judgment. And I think there’s something cool about that and something very satisfying about that.

And just to wrap things up, we’re desperate to know what’s next for you.

Well, we did announce Dogma 25 at Cannes this year. We’re five directors in Denmark [May el-Toukhy, Milad Alami, Annika Berg, Isabella Eklöf, Jesper Just] who’ve written 10 new Dogma rules, which are quite severe. The original Dogme 95 rules were called “The Vow of Chastity” and this is very chaste. You can’t use the internet for any artistic purposes whatsoever. We have to write the script by hand, and we need to be done within a year of when you start writing the script.

Oh, okay. Have you started yet?

I have, so time is ticking!