Tara Fitzgerald enjoyed “lugging” a dead dog around for her role in new movie ‘Portraits of Dangerous Women’.
The 57-year-old actress plays Tina in Swiss filmmaker Pascal Bergamin’s comedy drama film about three women – school caretaker Tina, unhappy teacher Steph (Jeany Spark) and smart teenager Ashley (Yasmin Monet Prince) – who are thrown together when Steph and Tina both runover a dog in their separate cars.
Tara enjoyed shooting the comedy scenes with the prop pooch, assuring any viewers that “no animals were harmed at all in the making of this film”.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, she said: “I really enjoyed lugging this dead dog. No animals were harmed at all in the making of this film, or even used. But I loved that sequence and they’re comic inability to sort of deal with the situation.
“Tina, who has actually lived through some pretty heavy things, on this level can’t meet the demands. And the comedic aspect of that.
“There’s also a celebratory sequence towards the end, a party. I loved that! We all had such a massive dance. It came towards the end of the shoot, and so it was sort of an unravelling and an unabashed freeing of everything. It was a good groove.”
‘The Game of Thrones’ star was drawn to Pascal’s project because it cannot easily be put in any genre, as it’s the type of role she has always favoured during her career, which began at the start of the ’90s with roles in ‘Hear My Song’, ‘Sirens’ and ‘Galleria’.
She said: “It’s the kind of film I love being involved with – a small enterprise authorship.
“I realise I’m drawn to films that aren’t straight forward or are slightly indefinable or have something slightly foreign about them. That’s what I thought Pascal wrote and created.
“It’s something not quite definable – is it a comedy or is it a drama? These questions that always arise about a piece of work are interesting. I find that debate interesting.
“Also working with people who have wrote something themselves. The availability of that and the organic growth of … everybody’s mucking in and being involved in every core [of the project] in every way.
“And then working with the sort of actors that I got to work with too and enjoying them.”
Tara says Tina was intriguing to play because she is a “displaced character” who has “fallen through the cracks” and now finds herself in an unusual position.
She said: “Tina is such a displaced character. They all are to some degree.
“[They are] people who have slightly fallen through the cracks, and I think Tina is one of those who has lost her way a little. [She] had a very clear purpose or had a very clear understanding of where she was in life. And then that was challenged or taken away from her.
“It’s also like don’t judge a book by it’s cover. And I think that’s very much contained in this film.
“Everyone is normal until you get to know them. That gives [the film] a sort of richness and unexpectedness.”
‘Portraits of Dangerous Women’ – which also stars Annette Badland, Mark Lewis Jones, Abigail Cruttenden and Sheila Reid – is available in UK and Irish cinemas now.
