Threads (1984)

Simon Farquhar (0:02)

Hello, welcome to this audio commentary track for Threads by Barry Hines. I'm Simon Farquhar, I'm a writer and critic, and I'm delighted to be sitting here with...

Karen Meagher (0:12)

Karen Meagher.

Simon Farquhar (0:13)

who played Ruth. So Karen, how long is it since you've seen this film?

Karen Meagher (0:19)

Gosh, erm, a long time, erm, yeah, I think, probably... I saw it when it came out, and I think I've seen it once before, and that's about it.

Simon Farquhar (0:32)

Excellent. Well, over the next hour and three quarters, we'll be catching your memories of it, and I'll drop in a few other things which may be of interest to people. There's another commentary track by Mick Jackson, so we'll try not to duplicate what's said on there. Before we start and talk about how you got the part of Ruth, can you just tell me a bit about your connections with CND at the time?

Karen Meagher (0:52)

Yes. I was in my early 20s at the time. I'd just come down to London when massive CND marches were being organized, and I always went along to them, and they were incredible. I mean, there's so many people, different generations, different walks of life, all coming together, like-minded, wanting to stop the idea that a nuclear war is survivable, really.

Simon Farquhar (1:24)

At the time of this film, I mean, I think it's probably easy to forget now just how much nuclear attack was on everybody's radar at the time. Even in the charts that year, there were three songs about nuclear attack. It was Forever Young, Two Tribes, and 99 Red Balloons. And in the week that Thres was broadcast, there were two other programs about nuclear attack. CND was a huge organization at the time, the Greenham Commons thing and all that. I think it's easy to forget now that all of the talk about nuclear attack at the time, it wasn't a law of diminution in terms of the more it was talked about, the more frightening it became, the more really it actually became. So obviously, with all that, how did you come to play Ruth?

Karen Meagher (2:01)

Well, I was asked to go along for an interview. I wasn't quite aware of how important the interview was at the time, but I remember knowing that it was about nuclear war, and I went along, strangely enough, in combat trousers and my hair plaited across the top of my head, and I was looking really radical and political. And Mick always told me that I was the first one he saw for the part of Ruth.

And I went in, and being quite sort of radical, and he must have seen something in me that certainly I wasn't trying to project, which is obviously the vulnerability that Ruth has. And I always smile when I think of what I looked like when I went into that interview, and ended up getting a part that couldn't have been more different, really, than what I was trying to project at the time. But I do remember saying to Mick, and I've never done it before or since, that regardless of what part there was in this film for me, I wanted to be part of it.

Simon Farquhar (3:11)

Had you read a script at that point?

SPEAKER_3 (3:12)

No.

Karen Meagher (3:14)

In fact, the script was kept very tight. It was guarded preciously by Mick, and so no, not at all.

SPEAKER_4 (3:27)

This film, shot secretly by a West German television crew on Tuesday, shows one of the Soviet convoys on the move in Northern Iran. The convoys were first spotted by United States satellites on Monday, moving across three of the mountain passes.

Karen Meagher (3:42)

I just finished doing The Gathering Seed with Brenda Fricker, Dave Threlfall, Rita May.

Simon Farquhar (3:48)

Obviously, it's quite a nice state of film. There is a whole bunch of characters that you never meet on screen, the people in the bunker and so on. But presumably, there was a read-through for the whole cast before you started.

Karen Meagher (3:59)

I don't remember a read-through for the whole cast, to tell you the truth. I mean, it's quite some time ago, but I don't recall that.

Simon Farquhar (4:05)

Right.

SPEAKER_4 (4:07)

What do you think, Jimmy? Are you sure?

SPEAKER_5 (4:14)

Definitely.

SPEAKER_4 (4:16)

And he's an enormous regular.

Karen Meagher (4:17)

It's cock work.

We did have a little bit of rehearsal at the BBC in London. Right. And we talked mainly about the details of what would happen if you were caught up in a nuclear holocaust. Physically, what would happen to people. Psychologically, what would happen to people. What would happen to the globe, if you like. This idea of a nuclear winter.