'Severance' star Britt Lower leads Canadian film 'Darkest Miriam,' playing a Toronto librarian

Yahoo

28-03-2025

Between filming Season 1 and Season 2 of the Apple TV+ hit Severance as Helly R., Britt Lower shot the Canadian film Darkest Miriam (now in theatres), from filmmaker Naomi Jaye, executive produced by Oscar-winner Charlie Kaufman. An adaptation of the novel "The Incident Report" by Martha Baillie, librarian Miriam Gordon (Lower) is dealing with the grief of her father's death, working at a branch of the Toronto Public Library, and hides behind book in this "prison" she's created for herself.
While you may think that Jaye was a Severance fan who sought out Lower for the film, it's quite the opposite. In fact, the filmmaker hadn't watched Severance before the casting director brought it up. But after seeing Lower's first scene on the show, Jaye knew she was perfect for Miriam.
"She's so alive and fearless and feral, and her voice is so distinct and amazing," Jaye told Yahoo Canada. "She had just finished the first season of Severance and was going to go back right after our shoot to shoot the second season. ... Who knew it would explode in the way that it did?"
"But what I can say about Britt is that she is truly an incredibly talented actor. She really understands her process. She is an incredibly generous person and performer, and she understands low budget filmmaking and what that means, and what that requires. And every day she just brought everything to it."
Not unlike the quick reaction Jaye had to Lower's acting, the second the filmmaker picked up Baillie's book she knew she wanted to adapt it, calling the publisher after reading just the first page.
"It was love at first sight," Jaye said. "Then it was the voice of Miriam, just this character and what she went through, and the people that she met, and this meeting of tragedy and comedy in one novel."
"And it was just such an interesting format. I had never seen a book written in this way before, in these very short, discrete moments. It just felt like how I feel life and process life. It's like these tiny little moments that, when connected, make something momentous. So they can be these tiny little things that happen, or moments, ... interactions that end up having a profound effect on who you are and what your journey is going to be."
Part of the story of Darkest Miriam is the title character starting a relationship with Janko Priajtelj (Tom Mercier), a Slovenian artist who is a Toronto taxi driver. But as she starts opening herself up to love, Miriam receives threatening letters, left in books at the library, which prompts her to document her feelings in library incident report forms she stashes away.
But what's particularly interesting is that while many assume any love story in a film is the focus, that's not the case with Darkest Miriam. Rather, Miriam being confined and almost trapped in the library, and the feeling of breaking free, feels more central to the story.
"For me it's not a story about a woman who falls in love, it's a story about a woman who chooses to live her life, chooses to break herself out of this prison she's created, the circumstance of her father's death, in this library," Jaye said. "He killed himself surrounded by books. She literally surrounds herself by books every day. So I call her an emotional suicide, where she just can't deal and ... she doesn't recognize that she's recreating the circumstance of her father's life. She's so terrified to end up like him, but yet she's doing it."
Smartly, Jaye also makes room for the audience to dive into this love story, as much as they feel compelled to do so.
"Janko is a huge part of that story, but the central arc of this is Miriam breaking free. It's not Miriam falls in love," she said. "But people will choose to see what they choose, and if people choose to see it as a love story, then that's beautiful. It's a beautiful love story."