Released originally at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021, the South African horror movie Good Madam looks to divert the way domestic servitute is perceived in South Africa. As a single mother moves in with her estranged mother, who works as a domestic servant for a wealthy white woman, an intergenerational clash occurs about the meaning of domestic labor and the legacy of Apartheid. The film will be released on July 14, 2022, on the streaming platform Shudder.
MovieWeb was joined by the film’s director and writer, Jenna Cato Bass, and co-writer Babalwa Baartman to discuss the movie ahead of its release.
A Horror Film Based on Society’s Nuances
MovieWeb: Where did the idea from this story come from? Did the plot evolve during the process of creating the movie?
Jenna Cato Bass: The idea process for me is wanting to make something that’s like this, then having another idea separate of that, then they’ll draw together and you realize this whole time you were working on one idea without realizing it. In this case, I wanted to make a horror film for a really long time, I was fascinated by the genre because it was one I couldn’t watch for most of my life up until my late twenties. So I really wanted to make a horror film, but [originally] I didn’t know what that was for me, but I realized if I were to make a horror film, instead of the things that you’d usually find in these films, it would be about the things I find horrifying on a daily basis. When you’re exposed to something bad again and again you’re used to it, and that in itself is horrifying or terrifying. I wanted to make a film about the problems in society we’ve become blind to in South Africa, generally, and use horror in a way of shocking people. Once we finished the development process, it didn’t change significantly.
MovieWeb: Sound and ambiance played a big role in setting up the tension in Good Madam. How were these decisions made during the development process?
Jenna Cato Bass: Sound is going to play a big part of it because it’s a horror film, and especially a low-budget horror film. Sound from the very beginning is something that we played a lot of attention to, and a lot of it is influenced by the house. We have a lot of very particular sounds that couldn’t be anywhere else. When the wind blew, it made this very unusual noise through the cracks in the doors, or there would be weird sounds with the light switches. We recorded everything in the house and used that to create a lot of the sound design. There were the sounds of cleaning quite in your face throughout the film, domestic work, and the visceral reality of that, to confront the reality of that.
Babalwa Baartman: To work hand-in-hand with that was the music aspect, which was intentionally created to represent the sound of the voices of the individuals who had worked in the house before. There’s this constant push-and-pull with that sound design Jenna talked about and the traditional music. There’s this one story of sound that says, “this is who you are,” and tries to contain you as a servant of the house, then there are the voices also acting as an inner voice and a protector.
Casting the Lead Actresses
Causeway Films
MovieWeb: The main characters of Tsidi and Mavis seem to be two sides of the same coin. Was this development first established when writing the script, or did it emerge elsewhere?
Jenna Cato Bass: That was always the heart of the film: this generational dialogue between mother and daughter. Then there’s the granddaughter and grandmother, so there are four generations, but the central relationship is between Tsidi and Mavis. The original version of the story was about Mavis. We gradually realized as we started talking through that story that, to be honest and genuine as filmmakers, we needed to have a younger person in the story.
Babalwa Baartman: To add to what Jenna said, workshopping was part of the development process and speaking to mothers who had worked in the position of domestic workers. That interaction between us and them really shaped the relationship between Tsidi and Mavis. The questions we were asking were not necessarily questions that they wanted to engage with, and we have our own take and understanding of what that is, but at the end of it all, they had made a certain level of peace with the cards they had been dealt. Our constant pushing to maybe open up wounds that they had already resolutions with, so that really shaped this specific dynamic. We couldn’t just put that to the side, we had to honor that because that was their experience, and that’s where they are now.
MovieWeb: The two lead actresses playing Tsidi and Mavis were incredible. What was the casting for this film like?
Jenna Cato Bass: From the beginning, we were quite clear that we needed an experienced actress to play Tsidi. It’s a demanding and physical role, as well as traumatizing. We needed someone in that position who could manage taking it on. So, after some auditions, we cast Chumisa Cosa. Her audition was amazing, and it was in the midst of COVID. It was so clear from the audition that she understood the character and took it in a direction we hadn’t planned but it was better than what we had in mind.
Then with Mavis, I really wanted to cast someone who had been, or was, a domestic worker rather than an actor. There’s so much of a very specific physicality that’s such a part of that performance, and the role of domestic workers in South African cinema of often very small, in the background. They’re still actors. We were lucky enough, through the workshops that we did, to find Nosipho Mtebe, who is someone Babalwa actually knew. She was like, “Why would you want me to be in a film?” She had never thought about acting, and we tried to convince her that this was something to try.
Babalwa Baartman: The thing with Mtebe, in particular, is that as an individual, she’s always open for adventure. She’s open-minded. The hesitancy for this particular film may be because it spoke to her directly, which is reasonable. To add to what Jenna said earlier about domestic workers being in the background, there’s also another extreme where they are at the forefront, it’s very happy together. A lot of togetherness and bonding with the Madam part of the family. It avoids having to discuss the implications of what that relationship of servitude is. If it does try to have a meaningful conversation, never does it push it further than acknowledgment. We wanted to go beyond just acknowledgment. Our society seems to think that just acknowledgment seems to be enough, but we need to push the conversation further and get into the intricacy of impacts and consequences of decisions made. In this case, it’s not one-sided, it focuses on both sides.
MovieWeb: What’s next for you both?
Jenna Cato Bass: Hopefully a few things. One is a detective mystery set in the rural Eastern Cape, which we’re busy developing. I’ve got a time travel one I just finished the script of. There’s another big one that might get some financing in the future. But also continuing a similar thing but in very different ways, using different genres, to get people to think differently about what stories are and what the world should be like.
