‘Bad Bridgets’ Firms Up Badass Cast
'Kneecap' director Rich Peppiatt will helm this crime saga about female Irish emigrants to America.
American history is set to get a little more violent thanks to Netflix’s forthcoming feature film Bad Bridgets. The period thriller, named after the familiar epithet for Irish domestic servants, aims to tell the real story of Irish emigrants to New York, Boston, and Toronto in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Among them were many, many young women who traveled to the U.S. on their own, hoping for a better life in the wake of the Great Famine. What they found instead was trouble, and often on a fairly significant scale. At one point, Irish women frequently outnumbered Irish men in prison, and they were nabbed for crimes ranging from sex work and robbery to murder.
Inspired by the book Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem, and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women by Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, as well as the podcast of the same name, the film stars Emilia Jones (Wolf Hall) and Alison Oliver (Wuthering Heights). Set against the backdrop of a famine-ravaged 19th-century Ireland, it follows the story of two sisters as they journey to America to escape both crushing poverty and an abusive father. Arriving in New York, they become involved with a notorious gang in the city, known as the “Bridgets,” who are wreaking havoc around town.
Here’s the film’s logline.
When a mysterious letter offering escape leads a young Irish woman to 19th-century New York, she’s pulled into the unruly world of the Bridgets, and mayhem follows in her wake.
Alongside Oliver and Jones, the film’s buzzy ensemble cast includes Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin), Steve Coogan (Legends), Charlie Heaton (Peaky Blinders), Domhnall Gleeson (Alice & Jack), Himesh Patel (The Franchise), Niamh Algar (Playing Nice), and Simone Kirby (Irish Blood).
Bad Bridgets is written and directed by Rich Peppiatt (Kneecap). Other members of the creative team include Ryan Kernaghan (Trespasses) as cinematographer, James Price (Poor Things) as production designer, and Kate Hawley (Frankenstein) as costume designer. Cáit Collins is the executive producer.
The film was developed with support from Queen’s University Belfast and is being produced with support from Northern Ireland Screen. LuckyChap and Coup d’Etat also produce.
Bad Bridgets is slated to film in Northern Ireland and Ireland this summer. It does not yet have a release date.
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