How Carey Mulligan overcame singing 'nerves' on folk music film The Ballad of Wallis Island

Yahoo

30-05-2025

In The Ballad of Wallis Island Carey Mulligan plays one half of fictional folk duo McGwyer Mortimer alongside Tom Basden, and the actor tells Yahoo UK of how being on set helped her face her nerves over singing on screen.
The actor plays Nell Mortimer opposite Basden's Herb McGwyer. The duo parted on bad terms years earlier but are brought back together when millionaire fan Charles (Tim Key) hires them for a gig on the remote island where he lives. The Ballad of Wallis Island is written by Basden and Key, the former also composed the soundtrack, and it explores the idea of music, creativity and lost love in surprisingly touching ways.
For Mulligan it was a role she jumped at the chance at, even if the prospect of singing was nerve-wracking: "I loved it, I loved all the songs, Tom would send me the songs and then send me exactly what I would sing in them because I can't pick a harmony on my own or anything like that. So Tom would be like 'this is what I sing and this is your bit.'
"I think every song that was in the film was already written into the script of what would be [in it] so we did a little rehearsal montage. But it was all very easy and I think because [James Griffiths, the director] made a set that was just so lovely, and we had such a gorgeous crew.
"I didn't really have the nerves that I probably would have had if I was in a different kind of set but Griff just made such a gorgeous set so it was kind of lovely. I loved it."
Basden's composition of McGwyer Mortimer's songs were a way for him to "lyrically illuminate their back story", and he wanted them to feel "hopeful and romantic".
"It was conveying emotions that the characters themselves wouldn't talk about," he explains. "So in that sense the music is doing a bit of story work for us, because it's helping the audience understand emotionally what's going on for these characters and why Herb ends up feeling the way that he does without having to kind of reveal it directly.
"I think music really has such a big part to play in all of our lives because it sort of gives us an emotional soundtrack to parts of our life that we were not able to provide ourselves."
While it might be easy to assume a movie starring Mulligan that has a folk soundtrack might have taken some inspiration from her real-life husband Marcus Mumford and his work in Mumford & Sons, Basden reveals there was no set inspiration for the fictional folk duo's music.
"I didn't want the music to feel like it was inspired by one particular artist or anything like that," he says. "There are some songs that I wanted to have a slightly timeless feel, like a '60s, '70s singer-songwriter feel, and others were a bit more modern. A bit more niche folky, in some ways."
He adds: "I guess maybe Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, or a bit of Ryan Adams and James Yorkston & the Athletes [were inspirations]. People like that, those kind of folk country acts that I've liked over the years."
Through Basden's character the film also deftly explores the notion of selling out and what it means to sacrifice ones creativeness for a taste of fame, something Herb battles with himself about over the course of the movie. It was an interesting idea to tackle, the actor says: "I think the thing with music specifically is it's really less so much about fame and more about relevance, someone trying to stay fashionable.
"And I think that's just so difficult, it's part of getting into your 40s that you gotta have to accept that you just can't appeal to 20-year-olds in the way that other 20-year-olds can — and that's fine, you know? But like I think that's a big part of the lesson that Herb in particular learns in this film, is that you have to grow old gracefully, no matter what you do."
Even with Mulligan and Basden playing the folk duo at the centre of the story it's Key's character Charles who steals the whole show, thanks to his dry humour and relatable awkwardness. And he was a character that Key particularly enjoyed creating from scratch.
"It felt very easy and natural when we did that when the character emerged in 2006, when we're writing the short film. He's one of many characters that we would be flinging backwards and forwards when we were in a sketch group and I think he's some kind of amalgam of all sorts of adults that your parents know who walks into a room [and acts awkwardly].
"So it's those people all sort of blended together, and then put a heart inside him and let him go. It was a very enjoyable thing to write, and a very enjoyable thing to perform once you're up and running.
"His journey through the film was very enjoyable because he sort of starts as just a bumbling agent of chaos and then ends as something slightly more than that."
Basden and Key first created the story back in 2006 for a short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island, they reworked the narrative for a feature-length story as they had a "great fondness" for both the short film they'd created and the characters.
Basden shares: "[We had a] feeling that we could do more with it, that the the story actually is bigger than the short film format can maybe afford to it, and that if we went back to it we could do something that really elevated it and kind of brought it to life for a full length film. So that was our hope."
What the creative team appreciate is the chance to share an indie film in cinemas, particularly at a time when blockbusters dominate the landscape. Basden explains: "I feel like cinema is dominated by sequels and superheroes and reboots, computer games and toys turned into films and I think it's really important that people have original independent cinema, that they have new stories that really speak to what's happening to them now.
"I just really hope that people value that, and come to the cinema to kind of be part of that because it's something that I think for people who make films, who love film, is just so important. It feels like originality is at at the heart of cinema still."
"It's a chance to connect, isn't it?" Griffiths adds. "Over laughter or emotion or crying together, you don't get that in your front room. I mean, you might do, but in a cinema there's something about coming together.
"Comedy, music, horror, some of those genres, they're really better experienced in a theatrical space." And The Ballad of Wallis Island is certainly best viewed in a cinema.
The Ballad of Wallis Island premieres in UK cinemas on Friday, 30 May.