Claire Foy on ‘H Is for Hawk’: “I Couldn’t Half-Ass It”

For reasons that might surprise you, Claire Foy won’t be putting a falconer’s glove back on any time soon.

It’s a conversation the Briton still can’t quite believe she’s having. Foy, famed for her Emmy-winning performance as a young Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, was a far cry from the extremities of comfort and wealth attained only in the royal family’s opulent bubble while filming H Is for Hawk.

The Telluride-premiering biographical drama, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe and co-written by Emma Donoghue, required a crash course in falconry — the keeping and training of birds of prey — as Foy, who last appeared on the big screen in 2023’s All of Us Strangers opposite Andrew Scott, was tasked with wielding a goshawk for the majority of the shoot.

The Cambridge-set H Is for Hawk is based on Helen MacDonald’s 2014 memoir of the same name. MacDonald, now non-binary but who at the time used she/her pronouns, writes about re-discovering their love of falconry while teaching and studying at the University of Cambridge. Their abrupt adoption of a feisty goshawk named Mable is prompted by the sudden death of their father, respected photojournalist Alisdair MacDonald, played in the film by Brendan Gleeson.

“In a kind of naive way, I think I was more apprehensive about the emotional aspect of it,” confesses Foy to The Hollywood Reporter about Helen’s journey. “It’s a universal human experience, grief and loss, and you want people to feel that they’re recognizing something and not seeing someone pretend to do something.”

At the same time, Foy adds, sharing the screen with an actual goshawk mustered a kind of courage perhaps only made possible by the urgency of filmmaking. Bird specialists were hired as consultants on the project — using five of their own birds for the role of Mable — and its star grew so fond of them that her newfound appreciation for the creatures is completely intertwined with their quirks. “My experience is so tied to these specific hawks and it was such an emotional experience that I think I would struggle,” Foy says about the prospect of dabbling in falconry off-screen. “I would admire the other birds, but they’d never be my Mables.”

Below, Foy unpacks everything that went into the AFM-bound H Is for Hawk, also starring Denise Gough, Lindsay Duncan, Sam Spruell and Josh Dylan. She discusses needing a “respectful distance” from the real-life people she plays, how her and Gleeson achieved convincing father-daughter chemistry in just three days, and what to know about being on set with a bird of prey: “[I] had to be totally present in a way that I’ve never, ever had to be before, ever.”

I suppose the natural place to start is whether you’d read Helen’s book before this opportunity came up. Were you aware of it?

No, I wasn’t aware of it at all. One of my very best friends had read it and spoken about it, but I hadn’t realized it was that book. Dede Gardner, who produced it, I was working with her on something else and she said, “I’m going to make this. You should read this.” And she’s got such incredible taste that I knew it would be good anyway, but then I read it, and it’s just so incredibly vivid. Helen’s writing somehow manages to be incredibly poetic, but also really human at the same time. It doesn’t feel unapproachable. [For] someone who’s so intelligent, you’re not out of your depth when you’re reading it, which is a very hard thing to do. It was this incredibly visceral thing to read as well. It’s very overwhelming, and most people who I meet have an incredibly strong reaction to it.

When you were reading this then, how daunting was it to realize you’d be learning how to handle a hawk?

In a kind of naive way, I think I was more apprehensive about the emotional aspect of it. It’s a universal human experience, grief and loss, and you want people to feel that they’re recognizing something and not seeing someone pretend to do something. So I think that was probably the most nerve-racking thing, but that’s only because I’m naive — I think I was probably in denial and put the hawk training aspect out of my mind, until I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do that!’ But I suppose it’s so out of the ordinary and so nuts that I just felt, well… I don’t know. It’s kind of like that feeling before you get on a roller coaster like, ‘I can’t do anything about it now.’ All you have to do is kind of dive in and surrender to it and hope that you can muster some sort of courage.

God, and muster courage you did. It looks like you’re an absolute pro with Mabel, or the hawk who plays Mabel, by the end of the film. I suppose no one was expecting you to be an expert at falconry. Maybe there was less pressure because you were a student of this… I’m not sure what to call it — hobby?

Well, Helen’s a very expert falconer so I knew I had to get to a stage of falconry — which is a discipline I am in no way familiar with — that was not going to be easy. It’s such an intrinsic part of Helen’s character that they’re a falconer, which I think it is for a lot of people in that community, it’s part of your lifeblood, in a way. Obviously, when you meet Helen at the beginning of the film, they’ve never had a goshawk. And the idea of having a goshawk is such an extreme thing in falconry. But I knew I had to get to a level of proficiency, not just to kind of look [proficient] on screen, but also for myself to feel comfortable and safe, and for the birds to feel comfortable and safe. I couldn’t half-ass it, nor could I make it up as I go along. There was no kind of learning on the job. I had to be at a certain level before we started shooting.

So how many hours went into that training, and what form did it take? Were you working one-on-one with someone, and was it just with one goshawk?

Yeah, so [British bird specialists] Rose and Lloyd Buck, they’re their birds, these goshawks. We had five birds, and they had reared them all. They have only done natural history before — they did a lot of David Attenborough documentaries. They’d never done drama before in this capacity. And so they were just absolutely incredible. The film couldn’t be made without them, and I wouldn’t have been able to learn how to do falconry without them. Also, because they come from such a place of love for these beautiful creatures and admiration and service of them, I just was taught by the absolute best people.

In reality, I had just two weeks because obviously there’s not a lot of money. And Rose and Lloyd were so involved in every single aspect of the filming, because the hawks are the most crucial part of this whole thing. I think it says on the credits that Lloyd is a filming consultant because he was basically. He was like, “We can work the hawk from this hour to this hour.” You know, there was no crew on set. It was only me and the DP and the hawks. The way we shot, it was totally around them. And that’s how I approached the training. It’s so interesting, because so many people are like, “Weren’t you terrified?” And I think because it was so out of the ordinary, there wasn’t very much space for me to be terrified. But also, as soon as met them and I started training, I kind of realized the privilege of being with these animals, and also what’s needed of you as a human being, for them to allow you to be there. So much of it is about trying to get your internal rhythm the same as their internal rhythm, but also making sure that you’re like a very benign presence, that you’re not an aggressor. You’re totally trying to be in tune with them and what they’re feeling, as opposed to projecting or you having a problem or a bad day. You had to be totally present in a way that I’ve never, ever had to be before, ever.

You got to a point where you had this newfound appreciation for these creatures?

Yes, yeah. I love them. I wasn’t a bird of prey person, which I think you either are you aren’t. And I really wasn’t. Not in a bad way, it just wasn’t something that I was exposed to as a kid. It wasn’t something that had piqued my interest as an adult. It just wasn’t something that was in my life at all. And then I think [the hawks] had a very profound effect on everybody. I think it’s impossible for them not to though, you know? There was some funny moments in Cambridge where we were filming. I would be walking around with one of the Mables on my arm, and people would walk past me and they wouldn’t even notice that there was a woman there with a bird on her arm. It’s quite interesting. Whereas other people were like, “Oh my God,” and thought I was there as some sort of tourist attraction. But what an incredible thing to get to do. I mean, it’s a money can’t buy opportunity, even if it’s something that you’ve never thought you would be doing.

Do you think it’s something you’d ever do in future, not on a film set but just out of your own established interest in it?

I don’t know. I think there’s a difference between me as me, and me and falconry and an appreciation of these wild creatures. I am very attached to, specifically, two of the birds that we shot with, because I spent the most time with them. I trained with them the most and I would like to go and visit them, which I hope to do, but I’m not going to continue to do falconry outside of this film. It’s totally dependent on what your passion is and, and I’m not saying I’d never put a glove on again, but my experience is so tied to these specific hawks and it was such an emotional experience that I think I would struggle. I would admire the other birds, but they’d never be my Mables.

It’s interesting you say that that emotional side — the exploration of grief and loss, the beating heart of this film — was the more daunting prospect. Why is that? With All Of Us Strangers, you’ve been dabbling in grief quite a bit recently, in film at least.

[Laughs.] I have! I think because Helen’s book does something which is really, really special. It’s not patronizing, it’s very raw and vulnerable and and messy and a relatively unpleasant experience, which is the majority of being alive. But it’s like, how do you communicate the internal workings of grief when you have no dialog? The majority of those scenes are me and a wild creature. With the memoir, you’re able to really feel what Helen is feeling.

Often, when you’re acting, it’s all well and good when you’re feeling something, but it’s about communicating it in some way. It’s about sharing it. And I suppose that was the challenge or concern for me: how do you communicate that without being declamatory or without dialing up the despair in every single scene? You can’t do that. No one’s going to be able to watch that. Also, nor is it indicative of what Helen was describing in the book. So it’s like a tightrope thing — the trepidation. I always feel that. You want to represent something truthfully, because people are going to watch this and they will have experienced that. They wouldn’t have experienced training in goshawk necessarily, but they would have experienced the depths and motivations that grief gives you. Training your goshawk is like I can wake up in the morning and I can go and I can come back. But the emotional stuff is the meat of it.

It’s the entry point for us, the viewer. I understand. Was Helen a presence on set? Were you able to establish a relationship where you could go to them if you were unsure about a scene?

I mean, Helen was very involved. They were incredibly generous. The whole family was with the film in an absolutely remarkable way. I had a Zoom with Helen before we started shooting. I didn’t meet them in person. I feel like you see that person’s soul by reading their memoir. And that was written seven years after their father passed away and it’s another 10 years on now. It’s a long process, and Helen themselves says they’re a very different person from when they lost their father, as is what happens with grief — you have to adapt and turn into a new person.

I’m very cautious anyway, when I’m playing anyone who is alive and involved in the thing that I’m making, that I’m not mining them for information, nor am I an emotional leech. It’s my job as an actor to bridge the gap between myself and a character, and if that character is not a human being, that’s my work. That’s not their job. And nor should they have to make me feel okay about me feeling insecure about what I have to do. I mean, I hope people who I play don’t feel like I just don’t care. It’s not that. I [just] want to maintain a respectful distance. I think it helps in a way that they can then possibly watch the film and not know what I’m going to do expose. But Helen was incredibly generous. I feel like I could have asked them anything, but I just wanted to ask one question and spend time with them. They’re an incredibly impressive person as well, incredibly dynamic and funny and intelligent and soulful and all those things. I’ve had the fortune of spending time with them a lot after making it, which I’m so happy about. But before, I think [spending time with them] wouldn’t have done anything, apart from make me feel intimidated.

We often see that trope in film where someone experiences grief or loss, and they latch on to quite a niche hobby or craft and it revitalizes them. It injects life back into them. What struck me about H Is for Hawk is we saw with Helen that she retreats into herself looking after Mabel. We don’t see it allowing her to grapple with her grief. I wanted to ask about that and this mirror image between Helen and Mabel, and how you saw it.

I definitely don’t believe that there is a right way or wrong way of grieving. I have total compassion in the sense that I think that her response to grief in the film is entirely proportionate. It seems to me that the control of it, or the dismissal of it would be out of place. I know that sounds strange, but I feel like the bond that her and her father had was so intrinsic to who she was as a human being, and also so beautiful and meaningful that what else would there be but to go into a state of of deep, human hibernation? [She is] retreating from an outside world which no longer makes any sense. The outside world is foreign now without her father in it. How can it continue without him in it?

One of the things that I found really fascinating and quite indicative of the situation in the memoir is that Helen talks about the moment where she starts a romantic relationship and it all goes to shit, and that she cries buckets for that situation, and then someone comes round, and she’s anxious, but she goes, “Oh, they’ll just think I’m crying about my dad.” It’s that sort of ability that you have when you’re in extreme situations that are extreme, I feel like the most human thing to do is to carry on. And I think that’s the thing I was really keen to portray. Helen is retreating and Helen is, from the outside, doing something very concerning and contracting into herself and becoming very animalistic… But there is a sort of system that we’re all in where we behave quite well all the time. I think it’s a miracle that you walk down the street and people aren’t just in puddles on the floor or howling, and Helen was very much showing in her behavior what was internally happening to her. But she wasn’t even aware. I think that’s just so true of what we do when we’re in extreme scenarios. You can see it when you love something, when it’s one of your friends or your family, and you love them so much, and they can’t see what’s happening to them, but you can.

It’s like Christina [played by Irish actress Denise Gough] in the film. You’ve got to just be there to catch them or to support them when they maybe come out of it, but it’s not twee. That’s the thing. Helen’s book was unpatronizing, and I feel like the film is too. I don’t think it puts a bow on it and life continues… I just think that’s not what Helen was like, and that’s not what this film is. Hopefully it’s a truthful portrayal of it, which means that it’s messy and not very Hollywood. [Laughs.]

You had wonderful chemistry with Brendan. Had you worked together before?

No! I love him a lot, and I only spent three days with him. He’s a very, very, easy person to miss. He’s got a huge heart, and I think his warmth and his soulfulness just comes across on screen because he is like that in person. As actors, we’re so used to getting to a place very quickly with people, that’s sort of what you have to do. And he makes that really, really easy, but also [it was] just an absolute pleasure to spend time with him. It was a real highlight of my career to be able to sit in a car with him and laugh and have a good time and talk about life. It was, like, really, really amazing.

Just three days together! It sounds like this was quite an economically-made film.

I mean, you’d have to speak to Dede about that, and Philippa. But the hawk provided an opportunity for scarcity. Obviously the whole crew was there, it’s just that everyone had to hide. But it was a leveler, I think. When you’re making a film like this, there’s no waste: everything that you do is about what you put on screen. The only thing you ever want more of is time when you’re making something really and that comes with funds. But I never felt like we were lacking anything.

I really can’t wait for people to see it. It didn’t look like you were lacking anything — but films are hard to get made these days, so maybe this is a good example of a story that is more readily available to us.

Yeah. But I think it’s a testament, to be totally honest, to [those involved]. My experience working with Dede Gardner is of her having impeccable taste, but also having such a visceral connection to the material that she wants to make, and getting behind the things she wants to make. I mean Women Talking (2022), which is a hard sell in itself, and then this — she’s battling away in an industry about the films and the stories that should be told, the things we should be able to see and out there for people to watch. Without the tenacity of people like that, these films wouldn’t exist. And that would just be such a sad state of affairs.