Jessie Buckley: Playing a brassy, irreverent fun bag in Wild Rose has been a joy

As country music-obsessed Glaswegian Rose-Lynn Harlan in Wild Rose, actress Jessie Buckley is a “brassy, irreverent fun bag” dressed in cowboy boots and a big grin.

Sitting in a suite in a fancy London hotel to promote the film, the boots have been replaced by trainers, the red hair is shorter and a little less dishevelled, but the smile that crinkles her eyes is still very much in place.

She puts you instantly at ease.

We are talking about Wild Rose, the story of a young mum who dreams of ditching her life in Scotland for the heel-kicking stages of Nashville – but she’s fresh out of jail, with the baggage of two young kids to support.

Rose-Lynn is loud and brazen and beautifully flawed – and she’s about to make Buckley a household name.

You may already know the face, but if not yet then it won’t be long. Fresh from a BAFTA Rising Star nomination and a place in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for entertainment in Europe – alongside the likes of Daniel Radcliffe, Jodie Comer, George Ezra, Jess Glynne and Stefflon Don – she has already appeared opposite Tom Hardy in Taboo, and starred in the BAFTA-winning Beast.

In the pipeline, she has The Voyage Of Doctor Dolittle alongside Robert Downey Jr, and Judy Garland biopic Judy with Renee Zellweger, as well as new Sky Atlantic series Chernobyl. It’s an impressive CV.

In Wild Rose, she stars alongside Julie Walters, who plays her mother Marion, and Sophie Okenedo, who plays Susannah, a wealthy woman who employs her to clean and ends up becoming her friend and biggest champion.

It is a triumph for British film and has already had rave reviews, with critics heaping praise on Buckley’s barnstorming performance as its screw-up heroine.

It is funny, emotional and uplifting (and not in the way you might expect at first). It was an opportunity Buckley says she couldn’t turn down.

“She’s [Rose-Lynn] just like an explosive, tenacious, bold, brassy, irreverent fun bag… and in amongst that she’s got this vulnerability and heart to her,” she says.

“So it was just a complete and utter joy to read [the script] and Nicole Taylor is such an incredible writer. [Director] Tom Harper who I’d worked with… I mean, he could’ve told me to do anything and I’d be like, ‘yeah, sure, what are we doing?’ But yeah, I just loved the script the minute I read it.”

Buckley continues, hands gesticulating. “To get a chance to play a character like that, it just feels like it’s…” She searches for the right word… “Like there’s just so much possibility and it’s so human. And she’s rusty and complex and makes bad choices, and wants something for herself and has a dream, but also has responsibilities… and she just was really real.

“So my job was… I suppose I felt like I just wanted to make her as real and as… I didn’t want to clean her up,” Buckley laughs. “I wanted to get down and dirty with her as much as I could.”

Buckley, who grew up in Killarney, Ireland, is no stranger to singing, making it to the final and coming second in I’d Do Anything, the BBC and Andrew Lloyd Webber search for a lead to play Nancy in a West End stage revival of Oliver!, in 2008.

But country music – “just country, not country and western”, as Rose-Lynn is quick to correct anyone who gets it wrong – was new to her.

Buckley has fully embraced it, now a convert to the “three chords and the truth” mantra. She co-wrote much of the original songs on the film’s soundtrack, and has performed gigs as Rose-Lynn.

“My experience of country music before I started the film was kind of… slightly naff Daniel O’Donnell impersonations in my hometown in Killarney, so that was I think my experience of it,” she says.

“But when I started to kind of get drowned in the incredible music and the amazing storytelling… and the lyrics behind country music, I just was blown away and felt it kind of surprised me and moved me, and it still won’t get off my Discover Weekly on Spotify.

“There is no way I’m ever going to be able to be weaned off country music from now on.”

Buckley says she grew up without a TV at home until she was “about eight or nine”. Her first experience of wanting to act was a “Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland film when I was like nine, and it was like my mind had been exploded into kind of like magic”.

It is somewhat serendipitous then that she now gets to star in a film about Garland and her final shows.

“She was somebody who I listened to and watched again and again,” says Buckley. “I also remember watching Judi Dench sing Send In The Clowns live at… I think it was the Royal Variety Show or something. And again… she just was so exposed and honest and raw and vulnerable and powerful, and she blew me away.”

Buckley is now seeing her own star rise. “Phenomenal”, “pure fire” and “incredible” are just some of the critics’ descriptions of her performance.

She’s clearly not entirely comfortable discussing the praise, the awards and fame, though; it seems to be the one topic that leaves her a little lost for words.

“Generally I’ve just been going swimming a lot,” is her answer to how she feels about BAFTA Rising Star and her Forbes nod.

“I keep kind of going, oh well it is incredibly lovely and kind of overwhelming and… it’s the icing on the cake, because I feel like I’ve just been so fortunate to be part of it all, you know? And to have worked with amazing people, and it’s a nice, I suppose, affirmation that you’re doing something right.

“But yeah I don’t really know how to behave… I probably misbehave. That’s probably what I do when people are telling me those kind of things.”

:: Wild Rose is released in cinemas on 12 April.

(c) Sky News 2019: Jessie Buckley: Playing a brassy, irreverent fun bag in Wild Rose has been a joy