‘The Wasp’ thriller welcome change for Natalie Dormer

Natalie Dormer is best known for two indelible dark fantasies, “Hunger Games” and “Game of Thrones,” but now she mines real life horror for the very contemporary “The Wasp.”

“It’s definitely a departure from what audiences would expect from me,” Dormer, 42, said in a phone interview. “So to be able to flex those muscles of my craft was highly rewarding. Absolutely.”

This London-set psychological thriller is virtually a two-character vehicle where who’s the mouse and who’s the cat is ever-evolving.

Long estranged childhood friends, Naomie Harris’s Heather and Dormer’s Carla, reunite years later in Heather’s immaculately upscale house. Heather has summoned Carla to offer a strange and definitely illegal proposal that the financially strapped Carla, a mother of three with another on the way, could hardly ignore.

“At heart, it’s a psychological thriller and hopefully a ride for the audience in that thrilleresque way. But obviously it’s got very profound themes as well. And drama! And an exploration that you know would be a conversation starter, hopefully by when the credits are rolling.”

Screenwriter Morgan Lloyd Malcom adapted her 2015 play. With both characters, Dormer, 42, noted, “Morgan’s intention was to have fleshed out, three-dimensional women who are anti-heroic.

“There’s some unsavory elements to both of them — they’re both suffering from childhood trauma. So they’re both at that moral ethics question of: You’ve had something horrific happen to you in your childhood. What do you do with that? And that’s their choice.

“Fundamentally good drama is about characters making choices. If Naomi and I did our jobs right, the audience is going to sympathize with a different one at any given moment as the power shifts and the sympathy shifts.

“Dramatically, ‘The Wasp’ is really quite unique and special.” That’s why filming was, “More or less exactly in chronological order. Because truly, with something like this, the only way you can do it, to get the pitch perfect, to get the development of the relationship as it evolves and unwinds and spirals, is to shoot chronologically.

“Because fundamentally, what you’re looking at here is a young female that’s gone sour and both of these characters feel betrayed on a fundamental level, betrayed by each other.

“They’re both carrying trauma from their childhood, but they also both feel like they’ve been betrayed by the other one. Because young female friendships can be as intense as love affairs, getting that backstory right with Naomi was absolutely invaluable.

“It’s an intense experience — and that’s the beauty of an independent film like this. You’re a really close team.

“I’m very lucky,” she knows, “when you get to do that full range.”

“The Wasp” is in theaters Aug. 30

 

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