In Force of Nature: The Dry 2, when five women take part in a corporate hiking retreat and only four come out on the other side, Federal Agents Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) and Carmen Cooper head deep into the Victorian mountain ranges to investigate in the hopes of finding their whistle-blowing informant, Alice Russell (Anna Torv), alive.
Following up the immense success of The Dry, Force of Nature hits cinemas on February 8, courtesy of Roadshow Films. Leading up to it’s release, Nick L’Barrow spoke with one of the film’s stars, Sisi Stringer, about getting thrown in to the elements, creating her character of Beth, and developing friendships with her co-stars.
Nick: Sisi, it’s so good to see you again! How are you going today?
Sisi Stringer: I’m so good!
Nick: I can’t believe that it’s been almost three years since we last spoke for Mortal Kombat. Time has flown by!
Sisi Stringer: Wait! Hasn’t it been four years?
Nick: You know what? Who knows! Time has flown by!
Sisi Stringer: What is time!
Nick: What is time! I’m so excited to chat to you about Force of Nature today, which you are fantastic in! And part of the fun of the crime-mystery genre is that every character is a suspect until they’re not, right? So, I’m curious as to whether as an actor, do you consciously decide to play Beth as innocent or guilty?
Sisi Stringer: You can’t really play innocent, or you can’t really play guilty. There are emotions that come across to paint the picture, but all you can really do is look at the scene on the page. Where have I [the character] come from? Where am I going? And try to play the truth of it.
And then it’s basically up to the director and the editor to piece it together in way that maintains the mystery all the way to the end to keep you hanging on. So, yeah, you can’t really play any scene like ‘the bad guy’, and then change it up in the next one, you know what I mean?
Rob [Connolly, director] is amazing. He allows space for everything, and if you feel like you’re not really sure, he can steer you in a direction. And also if you have a problem, then I can just be like, “Can we stop for a second and talk about this?” if for some reasons it’s not sticking.
Trying to play the truth in it, without planning the performance ahead, is too much on the brain! You’ve got to focus on your character and play it best in the moment.
Nick: One of the things that really stood about with Beth is the relationship she has with Bree. There’s an unbreakable sisterhood there. What was the collaboration like with Lucy Ansell to bring that authentic sisterhood to life on screen?
Sisi Stringer: Well, it was pretty easy! We clicked. We went on a little date. I went to Melbourne, and she lives there. So, we went on a little date to get to know each other. We are of the same generation. We have similar experiences being like light skinned, mixed race, black girls living in Australia. You know, our queerness, and culture, and politics align and everything! It took us one day for us to be like, “Oh, I see you, and you see me!”
We spent so much time together and it was really nice to have someone like that as an ally in it all, as well. Everybody else is from a completely different generation, and completely different walks of life, just like the characters. So, it was nice to have someone that completely understood my brain and my language. Me and Lu… amazing! We actually had to work really have on building tension and aggression between us!
Nick: The location of Force of Nature is basically a character itself. How does a location like this help with immersing yourself into your performance and the story?
Sisi Stringer: Oh, you don’t have to act! It’s really just walking through the bush, dealing with rain, dealing with mud, slipping over! That happened a lot! And they keep it on camera because that’s the reality of it!
Like, the first day, we didn’t know what we’re getting into 100%. They dropped us in the middle of a rainforest, and all of our reactions were genuine. It takes a lot of the work out for the actors. But I’m so grateful for that! You have to take it all in. What an experience to be out there.
We were on Aboriginal land, and we have the welcome to country and smoking ceremony which made it even better. And I feel like that allowed us to connect with the land even more. You gotta treat her with respect!
The bush, the Australian outback, anything will try and kill you! So we were conscious of that as well. It was great because we were in a safe, controlled environment, but we still got to get into the dirt and nitty gritty of the sets.
Nick: I’m curious to know how you developed the characteristics of Beth. Were any elements of Beth inspired by Jane Harper’s book, or were the things that you wanted to highlight that were Sisi Stringer’s version of Beth?
Sisi Stringer: I didn’t read the book before my audition. I had a feeling that I wanted to go off the script more. A lot of the time, if there’s a book, I will study it. And I got excerpts, but I didn’t read it cover to cover because I wanted to deal with the script that was in front of me.
And we found a lot of comedy in it. That was one of the important things for me particularly, because it’s so dramatic. It’s harrowing. So, I feel like it was valuable to have a little bit of humour in there. And when I read it off the page, that was what I got from her [Beth] instantly. That was my instinct, and breathing comedy into it was my goal. And I think we did that!
Thank you so much to Sisi Stringer for her time, and to Roadshow, M4M Agency, and NixCo for organising the interview. Force of Nature: The Dry 2 is in Australian cinemas February 8. You can watch this interview with Sisi over on the Novastream YouTube channel:
