The one movie Aimee Lou Wood said she’d never watch: “I don’t want to see it”
Although she had a healthy career on British television with shows like Sex Education and Daddy Issues, Aimee Lou Wood exploded in popularity thanks to her Emmy-nominated role on The White Lotus.
While the latest season of Mike White’s HBO dark comedy has been highly controversial, with some reports pointing to a feud with co-star Walton Goggins, the series has certainly boosted Wood’s star power.
What’s interesting about her film work, even if it’s not as prominent as her TV roles, is that she has chosen projects related to preconceived notions about history, which has led her to co-star with Bill Nighy in the Oscar-nominated drama Living, a remake of the Akira Kurosawa classic Ikiru, and in the unusual biopic The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, a stylised portrayal of the famous British painter that starred Benedict Cumberbatch in the titular role and was directed by Will Sharpe, another actor who also got his start on The White Lotus.
It’s clear that Wood is interested in films of a historical bent that do something interesting with the parameters of the genre, particularly when it comes to representation, and although she described Armando Iannucci’s adaptation of The Personal History of David Copperfield, which starred Dev Patel in the titular role, as “how a period drama should be done, because it’s a novel so you can cast whoever you want”, she was less enthusiastic about Greta Gerwig’s version of Little Women.
Although there have been many adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s literary classic, including an acclaimed 1994 version starring Winona Ryder and Kirsten Dunst, Gerwig’s vision was more successful for fleshing out some underserved characters from previous films, as well as utilising a non-linear structure that explored the significant maturation that each of them undergoes.
“I don’t want to see it,” Wood declared, espousing her strong opinions on the recent trend of adapting classic works of literature, adding, “Everyone speaks of it as a female-led film. I think that’s great, but they’re all pretty white girls. That isn’t radical. Greta Gerwig, come on!”
In Gerwig’s defence, given that Little Women is set in Concord, Massachusetts, towards the end of the Civil War, it was historically accurate to hire white actors to play the March sisters Jo, Beth, Amy, and Meg, portrayed by Saoirse Ronan, Eliza Scanlen, Florence Pugh, and Emma Watson, respectively.
Considering that there aren’t any prominent characters of colour in the film, it’s unclear what type of representation Wood thought would feel authentic, but then, criticisms about Gerwig’s depiction of race, or lack thereof, abound. Her directorial debut, Lady Bird, which is ostensibly about class relationships in Los Angeles, doesn’t really acknowledge the link between social standing and ethnicity, and Barbie caught flak for its portrayal of idealised female bodies, which the filmmaker based almost entirely on white actors, thus Wood’s disdain makes sense.
Ultimately, the true test will be whether she is able to make a more inclusive film with her upcoming reboot of Narnia, especially after franchises like The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have strived to do the same, but either way, it seems as if Wood will approach it with a healthy degree of scepticism.
