period of the country’s
history means rendering
the countless victims of the
colonial project, and the
film does this relentlessly. “You should feel something
if you see it,” Franciosi says. The Nightingale is a movie
about cyclical trauma, and Clare is the wheel that
rolls through it all, Franciosi’s virtuosic performance
hitting every emotional note: tenderness, terror, resolve,
resentment, and rage.
When Franciosi auditioned for the part, in 2016, her
biggest credits included a rebellious teenager obsessed with
a serial killer (played by Jamie Dornan) in the TV series
The Fall and a two-minute bit as Jon Snow’s dying mother
in Game of Thrones. In the audition tape she sent Kent,
Franciosi sang the Irish song “Siúil Á Run”—the very song,
incidentally, that Kent had slated for a climactic
History Girl
Aisling Franciosi stars
in Jennifer Kent’s
astonishing sophomore
feature, a period piece
with the immediacy of
a thriller.
Aisling Franciosi doesn’t look like the type to
keep a journal, an activity often associated
with introverted adolescents. But sitting across from me at
a downtown New York restaurant, sleek and composed in
a white T-shirt and black pants, the 28-year-old Irish-Italian
actor insists she is. Aisling (pronounced ASH-ling) keeps a
work journal, a chronicle of her roles and auditions. “If I’m
feeling anxious,” Franciosi tells me, “it’s good to look back
and realize that this is just one of the troughs.” She likes to
keep the journal unemotional, but there are exceptions.
The day Britain woke up to the news that Brexit had passed,
she got a call offering her the lead in Jennifer Kent’s The
Nightingale (the director’s follow-up to the highly acclaimed
Babadook). She granted that news an entire, exuberant page.
In The Nightingale, out this month, Franciosi plays
Clare, a 21-year-old Irish convict indentured to a British
lieutenant in Tasmania in the 1820s. Rendering this brutal
TALENT FRESH AS A DAISYFRANCIOSI WEARS AN HERMÈS
SWEATER. PHOTOGRAPHED BY
TINA TYRELL. FASHION EDITOR:
ANNA SCHIFFEL.
TALENT>72
VLIFE
68
HAIR, BRAYDON NELSON; M
AKEUP, COURTNEY PERKINS.
PRODUCED BY ARC PRODUCTIONS, PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE SUNVIEW
LUNCHEONETTE. DETAILS, SEE IN THIS ISSUE.
AUGUST 2019 VOGUE.COM
