Why ‘Very British' ‘The Ballad Of Wallis Island' Is Charming Americans

Forbes

28-03-2025

Tom Basden, Tim Key and Carey Mulligan star in 'The Ballad of Wallis Island.'
"Audiences are not giving the responses that we thought they would, in that they are really enjoying it and get all the jokes," actor and co-writer Tom Basden explains with a laugh as we discuss the hilarious and quirky British comedy The Ballad of Wallis Island. The film, which co-stars co-writer Tim Key, has gone down a storm at film festivals before a limited theatrical release in Los Angeles and New York on Friday, March 28, 2025, ahead of a national rollout.
"Generally, it feels like people are on board, and they like the humor, which is a lovely surprise for us because it's very British. The tone is very British, and the characters feel very British in that they're quite guarded. My character is quite guarded, and Tim's is insufferably talkative, which are two types of people that you meet a lot in in the UK. We've been bowled over by how audiences have responded to the film. We're feeling very bullish about getting it out to the rest of the country. We have no idea how it will fare outside the festival circuit, but we're excited to find out."
Key interjects, "I've gone the other way now, where we've only seen it twice, both times have been in America, so you now think, 'Well, maybe the sting in the tail is when it goes back to the UK, no one gets it.'"
The comedy duo created the feature out of a short film they made almost twenty years ago. The Ballad of Wallis Island sees Key play Charles, an eccentric lottery winner who lives alone on a remote island and dreams of reuniting his favorite musicians, McGwyer Mortimer, a duo played by Basden and Promising Young Woman's Carey Mulligan, for a private show. When the estranged pair accept the offer, old tensions rise as Charles tries to salvage the gig.
Acclaimed comedians and writers in their native UK, are Basden and Key ready for the Hollywood spotlight that made household names out of the likes of Hugh Grant when Four Weddings and a Funeral dropped?
"Are you saying there can only be one Hugh Grant out of the two of us?" Basden jokes. "I will have to warn my wife about that if that's if that's down the pipe. I think we're allowed to do that, and I don't think we have to replicate every single one of Hugh Grant's moves, even if Americans like the film."
"I think that's the most frightening question we've had today," Key adds. "We just want to quietly show the film to people and then go home. Four Weddings is amazing, and Hugh is amazing. If people in America enjoy the film and our performances, we're not stifled by it being too British, that becomes quite a charming thing for them, and that would be a good thing because we might be able to make another movie."
(Left to right) Co-writer/actor Tom Basden, director James Griffiths and actor Carey Mulligan on the ... More set of 'The Ballad of Wallis Island.'
So why did it take almost two decades for the pair to turn their short into a long?
"At one point, there was a sort of one-page treatment because we got funding to develop it into a feature, but then decided to develop a different film instead," Key, also known for Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and recently seen in Mickey 17, recalls. "I think it was a sort of vague idea that instead of just having one person, my character arranged a festival, and he'd hoodwinked maybe more people. That was our base thing that we didn't believe in enough to make, basically. Tom and I are good friends, so we see each other a lot, and we loved making the short with our director, James Griffiths; we stayed in touch and worked with him on other stuff, but every three or four years, we'd be having a pint, thinking about other ideas, but maybe on the third pint we would go, 'We should make a feature of that short.'"
"It wasn't something we didn't realize could be a feature; it was nagging at the back of our minds, and it'd be great to return to it. We didn't know what the feature would be that we'd been sitting on for 17 years. It was more waiting for that one bit that would unlock it, which is probably in the character of Nell, which opens up a backstory for Herb and opens up this world that doesn't exist anymore, that I fell in love with, he inhabited, and that became the engine room of the feature that wasn't in the short."
(Left to right) Tim Key, Carey Mulligan, Tom Basden at the 'The Ballad of Wallis Island' Premiere ... More during the SXSW Conference & Festivals on March 8, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
In order for the fictional band to work, McGwyer Mortimer needed a back catalog of work, and, as with the first incarnation, that fell to Basden.
"I had some of the songs from the short, and then I had other songs I'd written over the years because I like writing songs," he explains. "I then cobbled all of that stuff together in the lead-up to the shoot, wrote a few new ones and sort of hoped that would be okay."
"The other thing to say is that in the short film, all of the songs come at the end. There's basically no music from my character until that point. In the feature, the songs are very important for the story and for unlocking something in the characters, particularly for Herb. It's only when he starts playing the music again that he begins to change, soften towards Charles, and fall back in love with Nell. Therefore, the music has to do quite a specific job, and its tone is informed by that. I felt I wasn't noodling at the guitar, hoping to find a melody. It was more like I knew I had to find the feel the songs had to have, and that was really useful when I was writing them."
(Left to right) Carey Mulligan as Nell Mortimer and Tom Basden as Herb McGwyer in director James ... More Griffiths' 'The Ballad of Wallis Island.'
Was there pressure on the pair to bring in a big-name recording artist to write additional material and maybe even sing it as a gimmick to help get butts in seats?
"The funny thing is that when Carey agreed to the film, Tim said, 'Okay, well, we've got a pretty good in with Marcus Mumford, now,'" Basden, also known for After Life and David Brent: Life on the Road recalls. "I think there was an understanding from everyone, especially Carey and Marcus, that this is the way that we've worked so far, and this is how we're going to do it. They were really supportive and understanding of that and trusted me with it, which I was very grateful for because I'm not sure I would have trusted me."
Key adds, "When we made the short, I was like, 'Can you do that?' Tom was going, 'Yeah, I can do that.' It seemed like such an enormous task that he did, but he was rock solid. In the original short, it was quite staggering. I don't think anyone else came in and said, 'Chris Martin would do a better job.'"
"When Marcus Mumford says it's good, you sort of go, 'Oh, I thought it was good, but it's good to have the seal of approval.' My seal of approval is not worth much with music."
(Left to right) Tom Basden as Herb McGwyer, Carey Mulligan as Nell Mortimer and Tim Key as Charles ... More in director James Griffiths' 'The Ballad of Wallis Island.'
Although The Ballad of Wallis Island takes place on an island, it was actually filmed along the South West Wales coast. The natural environment and the indie's limited budget created challenges, but the pair worked hard to make that work for them.
"The tide is terrible at continuity, so different takes were a nightmare," Basden laughs. "It's very cold. Even in the summer, the Welsh sea was not my friend so that we would get very cold. It's difficult, but it's not so difficult that you can't do it. It's not like we had written a car chase, and then we're like,' I guess we're just trying our best in this Fiat 500,' we were like, 'We'll be able to do this, but it's hard.'"
Key continues, "In the script, the film opens with Herb arriving on the jetty and me walking down the jetty to meet him. That was a big issue, logistically and with budget, and ultimately, we couldn't do it. We were looking for different jetties, looking to build one, doing all sorts of things. Tom was trying to crack it and saying, 'If we don't get a jetty, how do we do it?' Tom described that solution of me trying to help him off the boat and accidentally pulling him into the water with his bag over his shoulder about six days before we started filming. With a film that doesn't have an unlimited budget, you have to cut your cloth slightly, but the ocean was a nightmare. We went in a couple of times."
"I feel very philosophical about it. What we've ended up with does something different," Basden concludes. "You've got to have faith in the material in the first place. We believed in The Ballad of Wallis Island, but the execution is slightly out of your hands. You've still got to believe that the characters, the dialog, the story is going to work and it's going to come off the page."