Don’t try to outrun your pain: It will come back to haunt you, and it will most likely happen while you’re wearing a shirt adorned with your own face. That’s the moral of The Ballad of Wallis Island, a charming British dramedy in the same vein as Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Juno and John Carney films like Sing Street and Once. Based on co-writers Tom Basden and Tim Key’s own 2007 short, “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island,” the feature length version sticks to a modest scale. After Herb McGwyer (Basden) agrees to a small gig on a remote Welsh island, the folk singer arrives to discover that he is actually playing to one eccentric millionaire named Charles (Key).
“To be honest, I think the main thing was that Tim and I, and James Griffiths as director, had just wanted to work together on something big, and meaty, and so creatively our own for a long time,” Basden tells me about the decision to expand upon their early aughts property. The friends have popped up in each other’s projects over the years, but the allure of getting the band back together to build a story from the ground up again proved too appealing to resist. “We hadn’t really done something that was ours, as a big joint effort, for some time,” he continues, “And I think we just really missed that. We hankered for that creative freedom where we were really at the helm of something. Specifically, with this project, we both kept thinking about the characters of Charles and Herb, and just loved the tone of that original short film. We were always desperate to revisit it.”
Although the core story remains the same, the nearly two decade long gap between the short and the feature acted as a gestation period for writers Key and Basden, whose own personal growth fueled significant and necessary changes within the characters they portray onscreen.
“I think weirdly, the eighteen intervening years have meant that firstly, we got older, obviously, which is quite good on camera,” reflects Key. “It makes us feel the right age to play these characters. And secondly, maybe we’ve thought of a better story than we would have when we were in our twenties. We’re very pleased with the story that we’re telling, and unlocking the film by bringing in the third character of Nell, Herb’s former girlfriend and member of his folk duo.”
One of the most striking distinctions between the former and the current Wallis Island storyline is the addition of the character of Nell Mortimer. Played by the fiery Carey Mulligan, who lights up the screen as Herb’s prior partner, she also serves as the other half of their folk band “McGwyer Mortimer,” the massive, chart-topping act that used to sell out stadiums, back before Herb went solo. “We didn’t think of that fifteen years ago, and we might have just ploughed on, and come up with something that was maybe a little more slight, and a little less satisfying,” says Key. “So, although it is pretty disgraceful not to make a film for eighteen years after making the short, we’re trying to remain optimistic that we made it at the right time.”
Mulligan’s Nell lands on the island as a late addition to the gig, much to the chagrin of Herb, and brings along her new husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen). Herb learns that Charles’s dream was to have McGwyer Mortimer — Charles and his late wife’s favorite band — play one last private show together, meaning that both members of the band would need to be involved.
Carey Mulligan as Nell Mortimer and Tom Basden as Herb McGwyer. (Alistair Heap/Focus Features)
Naturally, this detail was kept hidden from the sour songwriter, who surely would not have agreed to this transaction if he had been made well aware of the parameters of such an agreement. Still, Herb’s new pop album needs backing, and Charles is willing to hand over a suitcase of money, so Herb stays. He’s not playing any of their back catalogue though – those songs are “off limits,” as he informs an unimpressed Nell the minute she steps foot on dry land. She’s perfectly willing to break out their old tunes, but then again, she’s given up the music industry and moved to Portland, where she happily sells homemade chutney at the local farmers market.
Herb might be able to fool everyone else in the world into believing that he’s happier than ever selling out and flying solo, but Nell can spot the creases folding around the edges of his facade. Still, the musician struggles to admit the truth, even to himself.
“When Nell comes in, Herb’s obviously very resistant to playing those old songs at first,” muses Basden about his character’s hardened exterior. “When you see Herb start to open up, and become a more positive, warmer person, at that point in the film, when they’re singing the old songs, he’s not thinking about it at all. He’s just getting swept away with the emotion of it, and he’s taking comfort from these old feelings, and the old sense of intimacy and positivity that he hasn’t had for a very long time. And I think that’s what music can do. It can just plunge you into emotional states without you really consciously knowing what’s happening.”
Mulligan herself is no stranger to musical performance. Aside from singing in director Steve McQueen’s powerful meditation on addiction Shame, and Joel and Ethan Coen’s profoundly melancholy Inside Llewyn Davis, the Promising Young Woman has also been married to Mumford & Sons frontman Marcus Mumford since 2012.
“She can do everything,” gushes Basden about his co-star. “We were obviously longtime fans of Carey, and loved her work and loved her performances, and everything that we’ve seen her in, but we’d never met her before offering her the role of Nell.” Adding a new component to a dynamic that’s been brewing for the better part of twenty years undoubtedly takes a lot of faith, even if that addition happens to be one of the most gifted artists currently working in the film industry. “To be honest, you just kind of trust that with someone like Carey, if she’s gonna say yes to it — because she’s being offered loads of stuff all the time — then it means that she’s responding to the material. It means that there’s something about it that she gets, that she wants to be part of. We were also very fortunate, because she was not only so wonderful in the film, she was so lovely to work with, and just very at home in this lower budget, more independent, freewheeling filmmaking environment. I think she’s very happy making films that way.”
Basden adds, “But what was very useful about about having the script in place — having Carey as Nell in place — it meant that when I was writing those last set of songs, I was really trying to use it as an opportunity to unpack the Herb and Nell backstory, and to create a certain tone and feel in the music that would not only work at certain points of the film, but also explain, emotionally, what was going on for Herb and Nell at that point in their lives, when they were a double act. There’s an innocence and a romance to the music, which is a counterpoint to this grumpy and cynical Herb McGwyer that we meet at the start of the film.”
Captured in only eighteen days, their tight shooting schedule allowed little room for rehearsal, but you wouldn’t know it. Full of heart and bravado, Basden and Mulligan sound like they really have been playing together for years. “Carey had a young baby, as well, on set,” Basden recalls. “And so, we had to be quite judicious about any kind of rehearsal time. We would play songs in the makeup truck a little bit, and meet up, and try stuff out and just practice. But what you’re hearing in the film is what was recorded live on the day. We didn’t change anything afterwards, and I think there’s a really nice authenticity to it, and a feeling of people who are excited to be playing together, which is how it felt at the time.”
Revisiting long shelved tracks with his old flame stirs up confusing feelings for Herb. The familiarity of the past provides an overwhelming sense of comfortability, creating an overlap for the musician who can’t separate his feelings for Nell from his fondness for their shared work. Despite his unwelcome advances, Nell is gentle with her dismissal. Her husband, Michael, isn’t quite so subtle. At one point in the film, he tells Herb how he sees straight through him, even going so far as to call his collaborations with up-and-coming bubblegum pop queens “embarrassing,” and telling the singer to his face that he’s become nothing but a joke.
Tom Basden as Herb McGwyer, Carey Mulligan as Nell Mortimer and Tim Key as Charles. (Courtesy of Focus Features)
“I think [Michael] sees that Herb is someone who’s desperately trying to stay relevant and stay cool,” explains Basden, “And he’s a guy who’s not really acknowledging that he’s in his forties now, and getting older, and his head is full of conflicting emotions about himself and the world, but he’s still trying to make music that’s really simplistic in some way, and just hoping that it’ll be popular.” It’s never expressed verbatim, but it’s glaringly clear that Herb has been looking for Nell in all of his other musical partners, but always fails to find the same light she once shone. “Specifically, Michael is talking about Herb’s attachment to Nell, and the fact that Herb’s been trying to play it down, but that Herb still loves Nell, and wouldn’t hesitate to get back together with Nell, no matter what it meant for Michael.”
Despite the bond that still lingers between Herb and Nell, surprisingly, the real relationship at the heart of The Ballad of Wallis Island is the one between Herb and his number one fan, Charles. Nell tries to get Herb to come to terms with the impact that she had on those many years of his life, but it’s quirky, boundary-pushing, yet wholly loveable Charles who pulls the musician out of his pretentious funk and back into the world of joy.
Comedians and lifelong friends Key and Basden have spent several years perfecting their camaraderie, successfully utilizing their latest property to prove that they know how to use their finely tuned situational comedy to balance laughter and sorrow in a way that warms the heart.
“I think we’re very lucky that we’ve always worked and written together from when we were younger,” says Key. “In our twenties, we were writing together, and because we were writing a lot for live, sketch stuff, it meant we developed a shared tone. Fifteen years later, the dialogue came quite easy to us. Hopefully, if it’s quite funny, and then when those moments do come that are a bit more poignant, they come more surprisingly, and out of nowhere, and then can float away again, back into this burbling humour, and these misunderstandings.”
Inspired by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Nick Drake, Basden’s enigmatic music is what really elevates this familiar screwball comedy about a stubborn pretender and his blissfully ignorant new friend to a higher level of filmmaking. Lyrically poetic and deeply heartfelt, anyone with a soul will undoubtedly be moved by this evocative soundtrack.
“A couple of the songs are from the short film that I’m very attached to,” says Basden. “I have such positive memories, that it was lovely to keep those songs, and to play them again. Much like Herb McGwyer, I feel like it puts me in a very, very good place when I play and listen to those songs. It drops me back into 2006.” Basden, who credits bands like The Smiths and Jeff Buckley for getting him through the darker days of his youth, hopes to elicit similar feelings for fans of the film: “Depressing music saved me,” he jokes.
Some might question why they felt like 2025 was the right year to reconceptualize the project that won them a BAFTA back in their twenties, but the filmmakers, much like the roles they depict, have come to understand the merits of revisiting the past with the wisdom that time has afforded them. “Something that I feel like I’ve learned by making this film is trusting ourselves, trusting our taste, and not worrying too much about the questions of, ‘Why now? What’s relevant about this film now?’ and trusting that there’s universality in the humor and the characters,” reflects Basden. “If you put a good story together, and give your characters a real emotional journey, the audiences will respond to that, and be excited by it. You don’t always need to chase relevance. It can be really refreshing to give people something quite unexpected.”
“The Ballad of Wallis Island” premiered in select theaters March 28 and had a nationwide release on April 18.
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