The casting is particularly effective because Ramsey, now 18, was an actual teenager while filming the movie in early 2021. It just required someone who had Bella’s deep empathy and humanity.

And I knew that the film lived and died by Birdy because she is in every frame, even when we’re not looking at her, we’re looking out through her eyes. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s who it is.’ Before Bella came in and read, there had always been a blurry spot where Birdy’s face was and now I could see the face. “Nina Gold, our casting director, said: ‘I think I know who this is,’ and pulled out a picture of Bella,” Dunham recalls. Dunham met with only one person: Bella Ramsey, best known for playing Lyanna Mormont on “Game of Thrones.” The success of the adaptation, however, hinged on finding the right actor to play Birdy, a spunky teen who is not only messy, chaotic and emotional but but also empathetic and intelligent. The intention was to shoot in spring 2020 - that plan was obviously delayed - and Joe Alwyn, who plays Birdy’s beloved Uncle George, was the first actor cast (Dunham wrote the role specifically for him).

Then when someone asked me, around ‘Girls,’ ‘Is there a piece of - to use a very Hollywood word - IP you would want to adapt?’ I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I think I know what it is.’”ĭunham walked us through the process of bringing the book to the screen, from casting its unique heroine to putting her own spin on the ending. When I was in college, I started reading a lot about women who rebelled against medieval culture like Christine de Pizan - I got really into her poetry - and started thinking about that time period. It was like my comfort book, my cozy book. “It was the first time I’d read a character maybe since Eloise who I felt really reflected both who I was and who I wanted to be,” Dunham says, speaking in London ahead of the movie’s release. One of those readers, who discovered the novel when she was 10, is the picture’s writer-director, Lena Dunham. The book, about a rebellious teen girl living in the English feudal system of 1290, has been beloved by readers for nearly three decades. That’s the sensibility of “Catherine Called Birdy,” a new film adapted from Karen Cushman’s 1994 young adult novel of the same name. Throughout history, there has been one universal truth: A teenager is a teenager, no matter the era.

Catherine called birdy the book