The fifth film in our Shakespeare Lives series, Miranda’s Letter, is a tale about mother-daughter relationships, or more often the lack thereof in Shakespeare's work.
Inspired by 'The Tempest' and filmed on the beautiful South Devon coast, the film stars Raffey Cassidy as Miranda, and Anne-Marie Duff as the mother.
Director Theresa Griffiths shared the following about what inspire her to make 'Miranda's Letter';
There has been much written recently about the lack of women directors. I felt strongly that I wanted to bring something to Shakespeare Lives which, in a small way, tried to address this. A story about motherhood and a young girl’s experience is, of course, not exclusively one for a female director or audience, but it springs from my own experiences.
I started to think about Shakespeare’s work and the female characters in his plays and then, as a mother myself, I began to think about his portrayal of motherhood. It was then that it struck me – there are a lot of missing mums in Shakespeare’s plays. King Lear’s daughters have no mother within the play, neither does Ophelia and neither does Miranda in The Tempest, one of my favourite plays.
Not to be there for your child, not to see them grow, must be every parent’s worst nightmare. It is impossible to imagine the anguish it must cause. Of course, a simple Google search turns up pages of just such pain, there for all to witness in blogs and newspaper stories. I simply absorbed this story from what I read and the script just followed. This is where Miranda's Letter began.....