Filming on a grim council estate was hardly glamorous, but Huddersfield actress Jodie Whittaker was thrilled that she finally got to enjoy her long-awaited ‘Goonies’ moment. Lisa Williams reports
Jodie Whittaker is back-pedalling desperately.
She’s just revealed a little bit more than she should about her latest film Attack The Block and is now regretting it.
“I’m going to get into so much trouble. There’s so much we’re not allowed to say so please don’t write that. I’m not getting cut off the poster!” she pleads.
While many films pop their best gags and plot twists in the trailer, all we really know about Attack The Block is that it’s about the alien invasion of a south London council estate and Huddersfield-born Whittaker plays a nurse attempting to save her housing block.
With special effects to rival Hollywood and tons of action, Attack The Block was a dream come true, says Whittaker, 28, whose favourite film while growing up was kids’ action caper The Goonies.
“My sole reason for wanting to be an actress was seeing the kids in that film slide down a waterslide,” she giggles.
“I just thought, ‘They got paid for that. That’s their job’. And for me, Attack The Block is my Goonies moment. I’ve fulfilled that dream of being in a film, running around and being chased by an alien with a gang,” she says, gesticulating excitedly.
The film is written and directed by Joe Cornish, who’s also a writer on the forthcoming Tin Tin film, and up until now has been best known as one half of Channel 4’s The Adam And Joe Show.
As a fan of the late Nineties show, which featured spoof game shows and puppet re-enactment of films such as The English Patient and Showgirls, Whittaker was keen to work with Cornish and says she had no doubt he’d be able to transfer his skills from puppets to a real-life cast. “I had faith from day one!” she squeals.
With impossibly large doe eyes and a pin-up’s figure, Whittaker could easily be cast as a bikini-clad damsel in distress, but says Cornish’s vision was far more intelligent than that.
“Joe wrote a completely normal woman. I’m the only girl in it and I don’t wear a bikini or run around going, ‘Oh my God!’,” she says, raising her hand up to her forehead in a mock dramatic pose.
“We’re just a group of normal people running away from aliens. It’s not Lost, we’re not in Hawaii, we were in a grey block for the whole film but it still manages to be incredibly exciting.
