Peter Howell: Sarah Polley reflects on Oscars, teases new TV series on experience: ‘An embarrassing amount of fun’

Sarah Polley seemed relieved to have finally reached the Oscars finish line Sunday night, when she triumphantly held her golden statue for Best Adapted Screenplay for her movie “Women Talking” at the 95th Academy Awards.

She jokingly thanked the Academy for “not being mortally offended by the words ‘women’ and ‘talking’ put so close together like that.” It was a reference to the frustration she felt during long months of travelling to Oscar-related events when smartass male U.S. customs agents, hearing the title of her film, told her they already had enough females conversing in their lives.

Polley, 44, could be forgiven for wanting to put it all behind her and return to family life in Toronto with her husband, David Sandomierski, and their three young children, which she says she is indeed looking forward to.

But the Toronto writer/director isn’t done yet with the Oscars, not by a long shot. Polley says she’s already busy turning her trophy quest into a limited TV series, as she told the Star in an interview from Los Angeles Monday afternoon.

“It’s not a joke at all,” she said.

“It may be a limited series — it’s very, very early in its development — but it’s absolutely something that I want to unpack. I’ve been making notes religiously, after every day of this.”

Details of casting and structure aren’t available yet — Polley admitted she could get in trouble with her publicist for talking now because the press release isn’t ready yet — but she’s excited about getting right back to work.

“I first just need to get home and have some time, I think, with my kids. But I could see getting on beginning to write (the series) quite quickly. I don’t know about shooting but we’d get on writing quite quickly, I think.”

Although known primarily as a filmmaker in recent years — “Women Talking” is her fourth feature — Polley has experience with creating a limited TV series. She was involved with the short-form comedy series “Hey Lady!” that aired on CBC Gem in early 2020, starring Jayne Eastwood as a troublemaking septuagenarian.

And if it seems like Polley is a glutton for punishment, wanting to so soon revisit memories of an Oscars campaign that also included a Best Picture nomination, here’s another revelation: she actually really enjoyed it.

“It’s been a really positive experience. It’s been wonderful, actually. I really can’t find anything to complain about in terms of, you know, the experiences of rolling this film out into the world … I’ve had an embarrassing amount of fun.”

Polley’s sunny attitude sets her apart from many other Oscar seekers, who typically complain of the endless touring and glad-handing that is deemed necessary to woo the votes of a worldwide Academy membership that now totals nearly 10,000 people. Oscar campaigns typically begin in early September, just before the Toronto International Film Festival, and continue with military precision until right about now.

(I saw a look of horror and panic cross actor Joaquin Phoenix’s face during an interview at TIFF in 2019, when I mentioned the touring he’d soon be embarking upon for his Oscar-touted film “Joker.” He insisted there was no way he’d do much of that; he won the Oscar for Best Actor anyway.)

The campaign for “Women Talking,” a drama adapted from Miriam Toews’ fact-based novel about Mennonite women discussing how to address sexual assaults within their tightly knit community, yielded Polley her first Oscar. But it wasn’t her first rodeo, so to speak.

Polley had previously mined for Oscar gold in 2007-08 for her first feature as a writer/director, “Away From Her,” which received nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress (Julie Christie).

But the Academy was smaller and the world seemed less complicated back then. Her shift from acting in films to making them seemed relatively smooth and there were no concerns about such complications as streaming and social media back then. The process of seeking Academy love has since gotten at lot harder.

“I think it’s grown exponentially, like the number of events and awards and things people do,” Polley said. “And (“Away From Her”) was also a smaller film, probably with a smaller marketing budget. But I actually just can’t believe the sheer volume of things that one does between the time someone first sees your film at a film festival and the Oscars. It is really unbelievable, and I’ve enjoyed it all. It’s been really wonderful, but it is, you know, it’s wild.”

One of the things she most enjoyed about campaigning this time was getting to meet other filmmakers who were also on the road. She said it felt like a “fairy tale” to meet many of the directors whom she’d always admired.

“It was amazing to get to hang out with all these incredible filmmakers, and feel like part of this pack of people. We were all sort of in the same places with our movies over the last, like eight or nine months now. And so getting to forge those relationships is really meaningful. I learned a lot from them and it was just a complete joy.”

What was the biggest thing Polley learned on her Oscar odyssey? Perhaps surprisingly, it was realizing that there are advantages to not being the front-runner in an Oscars race. “Women Talking” was facing tough rivals in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the eventual Best Picture winner, and also from “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the war drama that many pundits wrongly assumed would snatch the Best Adapted Screenplay prize from Polley’s grasp.

“I learned that low expectations are a really good idea in general in life, because I had really low expectations, and I had the best time,” says Polley. “I think people who started with the highest expectations probably had the worst time and I think that’s probably a general rule, but it’s especially magnified during award season.”

Polley also learned that, notwithstanding those annoying customs agents, that many men also appreciated the essentially positive message of “Women Talking,” which features characters played by Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Frances McDormand and other discussing how best to deal with male members of their remote community who have been drugging and raping them.

“I think that people of different genders seem to connect with it equally and I’ve had absolutely as many men come up to me to respond to the film as anybody else,” says Polley. “I think that’s partially because this isn’t a film just about women’s issues. It’s also a fairly hopeful film that does believe in people’s capacity to change and to find a better way. It’s not a film that ends in grief and outrage; it’s a film that ends on a note of hope.”

As if wrapping up Oscar campaigning and rolling into a new TV series about it weren’t enough, Polley is also in the midst of finishing her first novel, which she describes as being “totally original” but declines to elaborate on at the moment.

“I think I don’t have the words for it yet. I mean, I’ve written it for years and years so I know a lot about it. But I haven’t figured out how to talk about it yet.”

Polley is also considering getting back into acting, which she began at the age of four in the 1980s film “One Magic Christmas” but hasn’t done since co-starring opposite Jared Leto in the dramatic fantasy “Mr. Nobody” in 2009.

“Weirdly, I have been getting calls about acting lately, which I find kind of hilarious. I’m not totally opposed to the idea, but it would just have to be the right thing. It’s not something I’m actively pursuing.”

Polley says she feels like she has a new lease on life, having fully recovered from a 2016 head injury that at the time had her fearing she might never work again. Getting a little older has also made her appreciate opportunities that she might have overlooked or scorned in her youth.

“I spent so much of my 20s and my teen years being kind of cynical and rigid and (having) some idea of what was a good thing to do and a bad thing to do, quote unquote, like there was some sense of it. I think it was important to go through that, in a weird way, to ground myself. But I think that it’s (also) been a relief to kind of open up and just be more curious about what I might be missing generally in life.”

One of the things she’s learned just this past week is that there are actually cooler things than winning an Oscar, especially if you’re Canadian and a hockey fan like Polley.

“I got to narrate the opening of ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ this Saturday. Wow! I can die now!”

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