A Wrinkle in Time tells the story of Meg Murray (Storm Reid), her brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) and their friend Calvin (Levi Miller) who, with the help of the peculiar Mrs. W’s (Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling), travel through space and time in order to find her missing father.
I recently caught up with the film’s Director, Ava DuVernay and star, Storm Reid (Meg Murray).
Ava has called this film her love letter to young people, between the ages of 7 – 14 because this age is the “really tender time in life where you are trying to figure out who you are and your place in the world – and, you know, we’re in a pretty messy world right now. So, to be able to talk to young people about the light inside them and try to plant a seed and try to cultivate that – how to be a good person, be kind to people, what matters … and giving them a little bit of beauty and spectacle while we tell those lessons was my goal”
Oprah Winfrey (Mrs Which) has said that “Storm will become to this generation what Judy Garland’s Dorothy was to previous generations.” That’s a massive statement but Storm takes it all in her stride. “It’s so heart warming to have somebody who is so loving, so admired and talented to say something like that about you is so cool. I’m glad I got this opportunity to be around Miss Ava, Miss Reece, Miss Mindy, Miss Oprah and get to learn from them and basically the opportunity to inspire a lot of young people to just be themselves and embrace the light from within themselves”.
This film is all about embracing your talents and being true to yourself. Ava was a successful movie publicist but at 32, she decided to walk away from that and pursue her dream of being a film maker. She says, “I think it’s a testament that you don’t have to stay where you are. You know I was happy in one job but I had a dream to do something else. I didn’t go to film school. I didn’t have the kind of opportunities that many of my counterparts had so I just created a way for myself and so I hope that people, whatever they are doing, can just see me as someone who pursued something that they loved at an older age and was still able to live her dream, and hopefully that will inspire people”.
What did Storm learn about her potential as a result of working on this film? “Coming off of the film I’d say that Meg and I grew up together, because I became more confident and I realised that I can abe the light, not only for myself but for the people around me, and I could use that light to save the world or at least make a change in the world. Of course I already knew that and that was already instilled in me by family and my mother but I just came off it more confident and more self sufficient.”
How do Storm and Ava follow this magical working experience, “(We)I just keep working and thank goodness that we get to do what we love, so yeah, how do you follow it? Just keep going.”
Keep going they wiil. Ava has just signed on to direct a feature films based on the DC Comic Book Series, The New God, and Storm is currently filming Only You, alongside David Oyelowo. I can not wait to see what they bring us next but for now we can all marvel in their latest collaboration, “A Wrinkle in Time” as it is in cinemas now!
