What did you learn in your research for “Radium Girls”?Īs we developed the screenplay, the whole role that early women’s political movement came forward. She spoke to Variety about the subjects that inspire her as a producer and how the pandemic may change Hollywood. Ripley” and the Reese Witherspoon-led adaptation of “Vanity Fair.” She also recently directed “A Call to Spy,” a World War II thrilled based on the true story of women spies in Churchill’s Secret Army, which debuted earlier this month, and is currently producing the Netflix mini-series “A Suitable Boy” with her frequent collaborator Mira Nair. Pilcher’s producing credits include “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” starring Oprah Winfrey, the Oscar-nominated documentary “Cutie and the Boxer,” “The Talented Mr. It spoke to every bone in my body about how to tell the story through the eyes of these teenage girls.” When I read the screenplay, it was everything that I wanted. “I’m an environmental activist, and I asked myself: “How can I marry my passions with my storytelling career?” recalled Pilcher, who co-directed the film with Ginny Mohler. The lasting precedent that the case, based on true events, set for workplace safety is what inspired Pilcher to dramatize the story on screen and direct for the first time. But after the self-luminous paint began to poison factory workers (causing them to glow, literally!) the young activists attempt to expose the corporate scandal. Those working on the assembly line to paint dials were instructed to lick the tip of their paintbrushes to increase their precision, ingesting lethal amounts of radium (an element they were told wasn’t harmful) in the process. The movie, set in New Jersey in the late ’20s, follows two teenage sisters (portrayed by Joey King and Abby Quinn) employed at a nearby American Radium plant. Her directorial debut, the historical drama “ Radium Girls,” is opening in theaters and on demand on Friday. And yet, as narrative text at the end of the movie reminds us, radium paint continued to be used well into the 1960s, putting countless lives at risk.Producer Lydia Dean Pilcher, after decades of collaborating with filmmakers like Katheryn Bigelow, Wes Anderson and Gina Prince Bythewood, is stepping behind the camera for the first time as a feature director. The case forced a reckoning within American industry, as workers realised they could sue their employers for unsafe working conditions, forcing the latter to better regulate potential dangers. Still, the women prevailed, and a jury awarded damages of $10,000 to each (£7,657) (roughly worth £114,855 in 2020), along with a $600 (about £6,891 now) a year payment for medical expenses. Indeed, by 1928, when the suit finally went to court, two were confined to their beds. The reason? They knew many of the women wouldn’t live out the decade. For several years, the “radium girls,” as they were dubbed in the press, battled a company determined to let the proceedings drag on for as long as possible. In the 1920s, a group of five women led by plant worker Grace Fryer decided to sue American Radium. There were three main factories in the United States dedicated to this work, but the most famous is the one in Orange, NJ, where Radium Girls is set. Radium dial painting started gaining traction around 1917 in the United States, to provide watches that soldiers heading off to the trenches of Europe could read in the dark. Though Bessie and Jo are based on composites of real people, the story itself is rooted in truth.
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