Nora Unkel's A Nightmare Wakes centers its Mary Shelley story on how a 19-year-old birthed the iconic sci-fi/horror novel, Frankenstein, amidst irreconcilable grief. During a love affair with Percy Shelley -- that ousted her from society -- and after several miscarriages, and living in poverty, Shelley created a work of art that was beyond the Romanticism of its time.

Actor Alix Wilton Regan talked with CBR about what it was like inhabiting the role of Mary Shelley in Unkel's gothic-drama and what she hopes fans will take away from Shelley's life.

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Alix Wilton Regan in A Nightmare Wakes

CBR:  The first thing I think about is how there's a lot of horror and body horror in this film as a way to discuss hard issues, like thinking about miscarriages or women's rights issues at the time. I feel like that's like the heart of it for me. But I am very curious, how other people see or don't see those themes?

Alix Wilton Regan: I think men have been in for a little bit of a shock. Like, men have been like, is that like, post? What do they call that? Postpartum depression? One guy was like, "So she wants a baby for ages and then she gets one and then she doesn't love the baby?" And I'm like, "Cuz she was literally raped." I was like, "Yeah, guys." It's just... Really interesting.

The scene that stands out the most to me is the opening miscarriage scene. It's so visceral and painful. What preparation did you do for that moment?

It was really hard. Definitely. And I was really hard on myself if I didn't feel that I had captured it. I think the first thing was the shock, you know? You'd be very shocked that this was happening. And then the disbelief, and then kind of the horror as it sets into your body, that you're losing your baby, which is obviously horrendous for any woman who very much wants that child. And then the thing that was really sad about that particular miscarriage scene, but I think you might be alluding to, that if you watch the film, you can see that Mary is very visibly pregnant. And at that point, she was for that particular miscarriage that Nora took from Mary's real life and put in the film. I think Mary was like, six months pregnant. That's really far gone, you know?

So she had to, certainly back then, she had to birth this child as she was miscarrying this child, which is why there's a line in the film where Mary turns to Percy and she said, "She's left me, Percy, she's gone." And it's because she would have known that she just lost the little girl. I think it's really important that people understand that the reason why you can see Mary's pregnant belly. It's not inaccurate. That's actually completely accurate about that particular miscarriage that Nora was referencing. She was pregnant. And she lost the child very late on, which is tragic and awful. I wanted to connect to the truth of that and the numbness that follows. Really, you know, it was hard. There were constraints on costumes and the number of takes we could do and so on. But, it felt good what we achieved.

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Do you think that was the hardest scene to play as Mary Shelley? Or does another stand out to you?

I think the rape scene was very tricky. I mean, they did a great job. Like, the crew around us did a great job of being very quiet, very respectful of myself and Julian, on the day that we were doing the rape scene. I think it was also the last scene of the week on that particular week so that we could all go home and decompress. I remember we did it three times. And they were very different. I remember being tuned to Nora and I was like, "Why did you do for that take?" She went for the second take. And she said, "Look at your hands throughout." And then when I went back, and I watched it, I was like, "Yeah, the hands. The hands tell a story of their own." And, you know, it was a majority female crew. So of course, there were survivors of sexual assault and rape on the crew because that's just the reality of being a woman, unfortunately. So the scene just had a lot of weight and atmosphere to it.

And then I also remember -- not necessarily hardest -- but a hard day was having the newborn baby onset, Mackenzie, who was super cute, but also super young, like she's three weeks old? It was like, "Nobody touch her!" It was very, hard but in a charming different kind of way.

Nora does a great job of alluding to things that actually happened to Mary, and then also being very careful with the details that are accurate. What kind of research did you do for Mary Shelley?

So, there's a fantastic book, written by a woman called Charlotte Gordon, and she wrote a book called Romantic Outlaws. Basically, it's one chapter of her mother's life, Mary Wollstonecraft, who was a pioneering feminist author in her own right, followed by a chapter about Mary Shelley's and goes back and forth. And the book, you know, it's a hefty book. And, I just delved really deep into that book, because it was so fascinating. First of all, it's a great book in its own right. Second of all, the content is fascinating. Thirdly, it was incredibly pertinent because I was playing Mary Shelley at the time, of course. So I drew really heavily on that, trying to understand where Mary was in her life and her experiences.

The other thing that I did was Nora had put these passages of poetry, the literal poetry written by Percy Shelley, or Mary Shelley, into the script. And I remember at the time what I did is I went and I found those poems in their entirety so that I could read them, so I could better understand, like, where was their headspace? When was he saying this? What was her headspace when she was saying this? Having the full breadth of the poetry, they're given a much wider context, I would say. And that was really helpful to draw on, their actual writing.

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What's one thing that you thought was really important for audiences to know about Mary Shelley and Percy's relationship that you learned through that research or just by portraying Mary?

It's a big question. She was infinitely more obsessed with him than he was with her, I would say, in quite a tragic way. She was completely devoted to him, you know, even after his death. She was still pushing his work forwards and getting it out to the publishers and keeping his name alive in the literary papers much more than hers. And I think, yes, she was completely obsessed with this man, but she was also genuinely a genius. Like she invented an entire genre of sci-fi, you know? So, she was a genius, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaking of her work, I was really curious about the use of ink in the film. I love that it kind of doubles as the blood of the film, which is just really beautiful. But, from an actor's perspective, what was that like? Was all that ink on set or was it edited in later?

It was ink everywhere. And I remember at points being like, "Someone, I need to pee. Help!" There was a lot of ink, definitely. And it did go everywhere. I learned to write with a real quill, which by the way, is hard [Laughs]. Okay, that is not easy! That was the hardest part of making the film. Anyone who asked me what the hardest part is, I've completely forgotten about that until now. That was hard learning to write with a quill. Thank God, the woman who taught me was also in the art department. Lovely, wonderful, Deidre [Catero]. She was my hands double. And thank God, she went over a lot of my writing to make it look elegant. But yeah, there was ink everywhere, and I loved it. And I have both the quills upstairs, which is really nice, in my box of tricks, and I am still hopeless at writing with a quill.

Last question! What is one thing that you want audiences to take away about Mary Shelley, either something new that you learned, or something that you want them to go research on their own?

I would say, watch the film. And then probably go and read something like a biography, such as the one I mentioned, Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon, because her life was fascinating, as was her mother's. And then you will realize how much of what is referenced in the film is actually true, to a greater or lesser extent. For example, the fact that Mary, you know, birthed four children, and out of those four children, only one survived. Well, isn't that interesting that she then ended up writing an incredibly famous novel about bringing something dead back to life, you know?

So, all of this stuff, you know, that's in the film, like I, for example, did not know before shooting that Mary Shelley started life as Percy Shelley's mistress. She was actually Mary Godwin at the beginning of the film. Just that, we call her Mary Shelley. That is so much her name. But actually, she was the mistress for a huge chunk of time at the beginning of their relationship. That's quite interesting what that does to someone's psyche, you know?

Yeah! Especially because we know her as Mary Shelley, for better or for worse. I forget her surname all the time...

Yeah, exactly. And things like, you know, there are things in the film that are completely true. For example, the film starts with a woman drowning herself in the lake. That is true. Percy Shelley's first wife, his wife at the time, drowned herself and their unborn child while she was pregnant. In The Serpentine, which is a lake here in London. Like, think about that, that is mind-blowingly horrifying and distressing and awful. And I didn't know that. But now that I know that, and I see it in the context of how Nora wrote the film, it just gives so much more meaning to the text, you know, as a whole.

Written and directed by Nora Unkel, A Nightmare Wakes stars Alix Wilton Regan, Giullian Gioiello, Claire Glassford, Philippe Bowgen and Lee Garrett. The film is currently available to stream exclusively on Shudder.

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