The Last Kingdom director wants to dispel the “myth that women can’t do action”

Sarah O’Gorman is the first woman to direct an episode of Netflix’s The Last Kingdom, and she came out swinging with a huge battle scene. She talked to us about her experience.

Director Sarah O’Gorman has worked on three shows that we love: The Last Kingdom, Cursed, and The Witcher. Before heading back to set to film the further adventures of Geralt and company, O’Gorman sat down with us for an extensive chin wag about all things Last Kingdom, which just got renewed for a fifth season.

If Netflix is smart, they’ll bring O’Gorman on board for season 5, because she did some excellent work in season 4, the first time she was a part of the show. First up, she told us her views about just what the director’s job is on set:

"You have many, many, many different jobs on set, but in broad, metaphorical terms, you to speak different languages. The language you speak with the actors is different from the one you speak to the crew. I think your job is to make sure you can communicate with everybody, and to set the tone, to set the atmosphere. I like to work very calmly, and not have that sense of chaos around me, because that’s when I do my best work. I think that’s when a lot of people do their best work. So I think you set the tone. You make sure you communicate your ideas. As a director, it’s about bringing the best out of people. So all these people, these really skilled, talented people help me do my job, and what’s really important as a director, is to enable them to do their job really well. So you can do your job pretty well."

Spoken like a true leader.

Image: James Northcote

O’Gorman is a female director in a male-dominated business, and the first women to direct an episode of The Last Kingdom. Navigating those waters could be a challenge, but she found her way through. “Something someone told me when I was starting out, especially as a female in a male industry, it was a DP (Director of Photography) I worked with early on, and he just said to me, ‘just be yourself. Just be who you are. Every person, every director is different and bring their own style.’ That was a really good bit of advice, actually. And what I would say to other directors or aspiring directors, is there isn’t a cut out way of behaving as a director. You just have to be true to who you are.”

O’Gorman’s career has taken her from modern drama to medieval fantasy worlds. She’s directed big action set pieces and smaller emotional moments, and it’s hard to choose which she likes better. “The honest boring answer is, I want both. When I got episodes three and four of The Last Kingdom [season 4], they were such a gift. You have all that emotion of Beocca’s death, and those emotional journeys, but then the biggest battle they’ve ever done. So it’s both, they give you very different rewards as a director. The emotional scenes are very intimate, you’re right in there with the actors and there’s a lot of trust from them to you, you sort of hold them emotionally while they are going to those places. You’re there to catch them so they can be free. You give them roots, and you give them wings. You make them feel really grounded and safe and then they can fly and do their job.”

"With the battle stuff, it feels slightly less out of your control because there are lots and lots of people, it’s usually over a huge space and you’re shouting. For example, on the beach (in Cursed), it was pouring down, we were just soaked everyday. But there’s something, a different reward for that, it just feels like a huge achievement to corral something like that. To visualize that, and then to corral everyone to get those shots. So the answer is both, and both give you different things."

And of course, the massive battle scenes tend to be trickier to shoot. “I think without a doubt, the most difficult thing was the battle in episode four of The Last Kingdom,” O’Gorman said. “I did a battle in episode 10 of Cursed, and it was on the beach. And if I hadn’t done the battle in The Last Kingdom, that would have been quite an undertaking. But it felt really like, ‘Yeah, it’s no problem. It’s a battle on the beach, it’s fine.’ That’s because I had just come off the back of doing The Last Kingdom.”

Image: The Last Kingdom/Netflix

It’s hard to imagine a more impressive debut than the Battle of Tettenhall. “I’ve done action before, I’ve done like Army shows, lots of stunts and fights, but nothing on that scale with that many story beats,” she said. “I had to create a battle plan to shoot the battle. Like the army general I had to remember, one day we before we started, we had all the crew, without the actors, just all the crew in the field where we’re shooting it. I had my plan of what was happening where visually, so I had it printed out where each story beat happened, where the trench would be, and so on. It was just about being really, really planned. A lot of my job is in the planning.”

Of course, planning can’t change the weather, which presented its own risks…and rewards. “With that battle, it was really tricky because it was hot, and keeping everyone going, keeping everyone’s spirits up in that space, with that many people was hard. But the feeling of achievement when you’ve done that, it was incredible. It was great to do. I was just really focused on, although I wanted the actors to be amazing, real, raw, and very authentic, I wanted those emotional story points to be there. Every day,  that’s what I went in with. The action is the action, and the actors are superb with all the fighting stuff, but I just wanted to make sure that all those emotional beats came through. So it wasn’t just a load of people fighting for 20 minutes, because I don’t want to watch that.”

And all of this was on top of the pressure of joining a successful show deep into its run. “There’s always the generic pressure of a director,” O’Gorman said. “But I don’t know that it was pressure exactly, but I was aware that I was first woman to have directed on TLK.”

"There is always that myth, that women can’t do action. You look at the jobs women are offered, it’s changing now, but you sort of have to resist a bit if you want to do the broader section of work. You have to resist the cozy emotional dramas and hold out for that. So I think for me, I was just aware that I wanted those action bits in particular to be the best they’d ever done, to prove a point probably. There was one day where, I was quite explicit about that. I had the heads of department at my apartment in Budapest, and I just said ‘I’m the first woman to do this job, and I want to make it the best battle ever because I wanna get rid of that myth that women can’t do action. We spent a day, and I said,  “anything you wanted to do stunt wise or visual effects wise that you’ve never done, let’s just throw all the ideas in now.” I wanted it to be the best battle that’s ever been, and they were great."

It’d be hard to argue with her results, but action is only half the battle. It was important to O’Gorman that she get the emotional beats down as well. That included the death of Father Beocca (Ian Hart), long Uhtred’s rock.

"I think, sometimes you just have to be honest like that. That was just coming from the female director’s point of view, But there was also a responsibility of just coming in as a director to make sure I handled Beocca’s death right. It’s a huge emotional journey for Alexander’s character Uhtred. So I felt a huge responsibility, because it’s a great show. I love the show a lot, it has a lot of fans. So I wanted to be truthful, and hopefully make it better as well.  Which is probably my goal with most shows. The gift of going onto a show that’s been on before, is that you can look at all the other episodes and see what works best. Then you I think, ‘Okay, I’ll do more of this. Do less of that,  maybe it’s missing this, I can add that.’ That was my approach going into it."

Image: The Last Kingdom/Netflix

Once again, she succeeded, and this was with Beocca’s death being among the first scenes she shot. “When you start filming, you want your first couple of days to be easy, so the schedule will be something like two people in a tent or, you know, very small scenes so you get used to each other gently. But because I was picking up straight from the episode before, my first four or five night shoot was the opening of Episode 3. So it was like guns blazing, here we go, doing these huge scenes. Which was really, really great to do. I had everything planned out, we rehearsed, and I just wanted to do Beocca’s death done in a way that made sure that you see what that does to Uhtred in that moment, and then how it’s something different again when he’s on the ship, and then how it changes again when the ship wrecked. So that each moment you got to see Uhtred dealing with this, is a change for him. So it’s not just the same emotion he’s feeling. One, that’s not very interesting to watch, and people don’t work like that, you know?”

Some of season 4’s best scenes involved the aftermath of Beocca’s death, as Finan (Mark Rowley) helps Uhtred through his grief. “With those emotional scenes, we spent a lot of time before filming plotting through those emotional beats. So when we got to filming, we were on the same page with Alex, ‘This is your emotional state now, this it what changes, this is what the anger is masking.’ And we did the same with Mark, because Mark’s character Finan was a protector to him in those scenes. There’s that moment where he goes back to the others and says, ‘He’s fine, Uhtred’s fine,’ and sort of covers for him. Mark is also a counselor as well. They are two actors who aren’t scared to be vulnerable, and that is really a gift.”

"It’s my job to help them get to those places by setting the tone on set on the day of, you don’t want people mucking about and having a laugh when they have to get to that dark, emotional place. It was a lot talking though. We spent time separately; as a director and actor, and then together discussing what those emotions would feel like. What it does to every bit of your body really, what it does to every relationship around you."

Off set, Rowley told us his real-life friendship with Dreymon made it easy for these scenes to work, something O’Gorman picked up on as well. “They are this great little band of brothers, they are a really lovely company of actors. They have fun together, they are respectful of each other, and supportive. They’re really supportive, and that was a huge help. There is a real friendship between them, so they could both access that.”

Image: The Last Kingdom/Netflix

And did O’Gorman ever have to reign in the boys on set? “I honestly don’t think so,” she said. “Because they all very respectful, and professional. We had a laugh, I always wanted to have fun on set; it’s where we spend most of our day. I think the key to that is to be really calm, and planned. They are a lot of fun though, there’s a lot of jokes, and a lot of fun between them all, which is nice to be around. But they were always respectful, and some of the actors had really been wanting a female director so they were very supportive. It was great fun, I loved every minute of working on the show.”

OK, enough of the nice stuff, could O’Gorman remember any embarrassing stories from set?

Again, the answer seems to be no, but she did tell us about an on-set injury. “I think I blanked all that stuff out, but I’ll tell you that there was quite a dramatic moment on set when Ewan (Mitchell) broke his hand, which was why we then put him in a sling. Thankfully we were shooting those scenes, and it worked out perfectly.”

Baby monk broke his hand? We’re gonna have to get to the bottom of that one.

Image: The Last Kingdom/Netflix

We look forward to seeing more of O’Gorman’s work, on The Last Kingdom and elsewhere. Stay tuned for more from O’Gorman, as chat Cursed and The Witcher.

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