Sundance Award-winning comedy, The Incomer, is a modern folk fairy tale set on a remote Scottish island, where two siblings (Gayle Rankin, GLOW, and Grant O'Rourke, Outlander) survive by hunting seabirds, retelling the stories of their ancestors, and defending the isle from dreaded Incomers.
Their world is upended with the arrival of an awkward council worker (Domhnall Gleeson, The Paper) who has come to uproot them from their homeland on behalf of the government.
Written and directed by Louis Paxton, the movie—which is a legitimate Film of the Year candidate with 94% on Rotten Tomatoes—also stars Emun Elliott, Michelle Gomez, and John Hannah.
The Incomer (which arrives in theaters on September 25) is a funny, surprisingly heartfelt story about outsiders, friendship, and opening yourself up to people and experiences you never expected. The film's unique sense of humour is matched by some genuinely breathtaking scenery, but bringing those moments to the screen was no easy feat, with the cast and crew working against the elements during a demanding 28-day shoot.
We spoke with Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin, and Grant O’Rourke about making the movie, from keeping a straight face during some of the film’s more absurd moments to the bond they formed while filming together.
They also discussed their characters' journeys, the challenges of shooting in such an unforgiving environment, and the experience of bringing this wonderfully unconventional story to life.
You can check out the full interview in the player below.
I love the absurdity of the humour, whether it’s the lines about milking a seal or seeing you all sitting around the table with the seagull served up for dinner. It must have been so hard for all three of you to get through some of those things with a straight face.
Gayle: I don’t find them very funny. No, it was—it’s not easy. I mean, you’ve seen the film. That seagull milking scene was tough.
Grant: The thing is as well, you kind of like every single time we were doing a funny scene it was always in some extremely hard landscape or somewhere like physically very arduous. So it’s just like we could laugh about this but we might die if we do.
Gayle: We also don’t have time, you know.
Grant: Yeah, and we only had 28 days and, you know, we did go over a few times so we had to really kind of get our professional heads on. But we had—how we laughed at the weekends together. Yes, dear friends in the pub.
Domhnall, you spent a lot of time in heightened worlds, whether it’s Star Wars, Harry Potter, or even the Taylor Swift music video, but there’s a surreal quality to all of those and also a surreal quality to what’s happening to your character in this film. So is that something you’re consciously drawn to as an actor?
Domhnall: I don’t know that I am really. I mean, I think with this it was all about—I just love the story, the shape of the story, the humor in the story. It made me feel good. It’s like a very heartwarming—it’s like a beautiful like home-cooked meal, you know. And I think it made me laugh so much and then by the end of it it really kind of got me in the heart. And so that was more the reason for it, you know. And also the opportunity—like I had so much fun working with these two and the rest of the cast. It was really surrounded by brilliant people. Kind of renewed my faith in making independent films again. It was brilliant.
Gayle, things obviously get physical between Isla and Sandy. You stepped into the ring for GLOW, of course. Did you feel that gave you a bit of an advantage over Grant in those scenes?
Gayle: I mean, you—you saw the work. Yeah, we talked a lot about wrestling. It was really fun. I seem to be tasked with extreme—I’m ready to just be put in a corset and walk around the field. That’s what I’m ready to do. Get me down at a table, you know?
Grant, Sandy’s childlike innocence is such a lovely part of the film, but how did you approach that and go about making him so earnest without allowing him to become a caricature and making sure he’s a character we could really fall in love with?
Grant: Do you know, I think Louis Paxton and I have a long-term working relationship. We’ve been working together for 20 years, making work together. And so he has a good sense of what I can do and what my strong suits are. Also, over the course of like 10 drafts of the screenplay, I got to feed in thoughts with Sandy, and we both kind of together really got to know the character Sandy and found a way to kind of ground him and make him a bit real. He was way wilder and weirder at the start and, like, all unhinged. And in the beginning, so it was like it was all about bringing him forward. There were some weird scenes. But that was like—well, because we were making each other laugh, but then obviously Louis had to bring it in and ground it all. And he kind of knows me well enough to know how to write those great scenes for me. So we kind of—you know, it was natural, I think, and organic.
You all get to unleash your inner seagulls screaming out into the sea. It's a very life-affirming moment for each of your characters, but do you feel that experience changed any of you personally as well? Because it looked phenomenal, the scenery, and just being where you must have been.
Grant: Because there’s very salty, briny air, and I start to lose my voice a little bit because of all the shouting and screaming. But the actual making of the film was, yeah, definitely a life-changing experience. And we had an amazing time doing it. Like the whole cast and crew, we all got on really well. We were all kind of spending our time off together. Like, so, you know, that’s always a good time, I think. So, yeah, definitely a kind of dream come true in a lot of respects, right across the board.
Domhnall: Yeah, and like there was also just amazing moments. There was like—we know when we were up on the clifftops, there was a day where there were whales going up and down in the distance. There was a day—the day that we were getting in the sea, which was a very uncomfortable day for us. We got visited by this little seal who would pop up and just keep his eye on us or her eye on us every now and again. And it just felt like we were—there were moments like that where you felt like, 'Oh, this is why you do it.'
Gayle: Yeah, exactly. It felt kind of like a secret—not to get too kind of boasting about it, but it did feel—and I think for me, coming back to Scotland because I don’t live in Scotland anymore and coming home, it felt really, really, really moving to me. And it kind of in many surprising ways, which is really cool.
Domhnall, Daniel arrives on the island as this ultimate outsider, but he then becomes part of Isla and Sandy’s world. So what did you find most interesting about playing someone who’s initially terrified of these people, but really then understands and bonds with them in some unexpected, very funny ways?
Domhnall: That’s what I liked about the film, you know, and the fact the same thing sort of happens to them—the notion of inviting someone in from the outside and learning to welcome who they truly are as opposed to your idea of who they are. That’s a great thing to put out there in the world at the moment, anyway. And then, I think in terms of entering into someone else’s world—it’s kind of mad. It’s kind of what we do every time we go on a job. You walk into some madness. You’re terrified going in, and then on the really good ones, you get to know people, you get to experience something that changes you, and yeah, and your life gets better if you’re open to it. So I think that’s probably what he learns to do.
There are some brilliantly bizarre things that all of your characters do to each other. Was there ever a scene for all of you where you read the script and thought, 'I can’t believe we’re actually going to be doing this today?'
Grant: It’s hard to talk about without too many spoilers. But yes, there were conversations that I had with Louis where some of the decisions that Sandy makes, I’m like, is this maybe becoming a bad person? Or—but, you know, we had to have each cultural conversation with not just Louis, but with the crew as well. And it was like, 'No, it’s fine. He’s just—you know, he’s just left on an island on his own. That’s probably what these people do.'
Gayle: Yeah, totally. It’s—but yeah. Yeah, there was something to kind of understand and relate to even about some of the more extreme stuff that occurs due to the environment and the circumstances. It’s kind of like illuminating and like—I don’t know, like I think what I don’t know, like to relate to what Domhnall was saying, like if you’re kind of open to being changed, there’s something to learn. There’s something to glean, like when you kind of open yourself up.
Domhnall, I’m sure everyone’s going to be talking about Daniel recapping The Lord of the Rings and, you know, the way he inserts himself into that story—very unique, very funny. But did that require a lot of preparation on your part, or were you just allowed to run free and just improvise and just put your own spin on that world?
Domhnall: No, most of that—I mean, I think basically all that was in the script. Weirdly, what happened was that we had to—it had to go through lawyers in terms of what you’re allowed to say and like, you know, like what’s parody and what’s not, all this lawyers stuff. So the first version was actually different to what we ended up doing. But I actually think we found a way—I that was one of the only bits that I went back and forth with Louis on was trying to find the right words for that and the right sense of freedom. And I just love that you get to see him play for a second. It’s the only time you really see his imagination—their imaginations to the fore all the time. They’re like living their insides out all the time. And I think Daniel’s keeping it all in here. It’s the opportunity to see him in his head was like—I loved it in the script, so it was fun to do.
What was it like for the three of you to discover these characters together? I know you said you had 28 days to film the movie, but the dynamic between the three of you developed during rehearsal time—was it very much as you made the film, or right there from the start?
Grant: A bit of both, I think. I remember when they—when you first turned up, Domhnall, I spent a lot of time slightly isolating myself. So Gayle and Louis got on like a house on fire at first, but I would always sort of isolate myself a little bit just to kind of get that feeling of being left out and see what that was. But then once you’d done like three or four weeks and then we were just having a laugh and, you know, it was impossible not to just, you know, enjoy yourself. Skip to work every morning. Yeah. And yeah, it was natural and it flowed.
Domhnall: You get to know people more and more the more time you spend with them. But I felt like there was a connection there pretty quickly. And everyone’s there for the same reason. We all believed in what we were making. So you’re all like—that just joins you together immediately, right?
Gayle: Yeah, totally. I think yeah, common goal. Yeah. And yeah. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s fun—it was really fun. And we could be silly and but it was—it felt meaningful.
Domhnall: We were all able to share with each other as well. Like there’s really—like they really connected at various moments and getting to go to those places together. You really—even if you’re acting—you get to know somebody in those moments.
Gayle: Yeah, and Indie filmmaking, too. It’s like I think the actors are very much more at the forefront of the filmmaking process. They can—or they can be—certainly like just how a day goes. Like we’re just kind of—we’re not as protected sometimes as potentially on some other productions as we would be. And I think that’s—I love that as a person who kind of comes from the theater. But it does—it bonds—it really bonds you I think as a department because we’re a department. We’re the acting department, you know what I mean? And there’s decisions to be made and there’s—you know, we’re figuring things out together. We’re like a little family.
The Incomer arrives in theaters on September 25.