The British have come to Montgomery County, and this time they’ve brought their cameras.
British Broadcasting Corp. film crews were on hand in Poolesville and Potomac this week filming “Philomena,” directed by Stephen Frears and starring British actors Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.
The movie, based on a true story, tells the tale of an unmarried Irish woman who gives birth to a son, Anthony, in 1952. According to Martin Sixsmith, who wrote the book the movie is based on, Catholic nuns “whisked away” the baby and sold it to an American couple. Philomena spent decades trying to find the son, who was renamed Michael Hess and served as chief legal counsel to former president George H.W. Bush.
The BBC spent two days filming scenes in St. Paul’s Community Church on Sugarland Road in Poolesville.
Caroline Taylor, a consultant who helped the church coordinate with the film producers, said, “I thought it might be Cable Montgomery,” when she first heard a film company wanted to use the site in a movie. She said she thought that perhaps the church, which has a rich history as the center of a freed slave community whose descendants still live nearby, would be part of a documentary.
Then she heard it was the BBC, and thought, “Holy cow, they’re making a full motion picture,” she said.
For the filming in Poolesville, the crew had to transform the historically Protestant St. Paul’s church into Catholic St. Anthony’s.
Gaithersburg resident Gwen Hebron Reese, trustee of St. Paul’s and an extra in the movie, said that she didn’t realize how big a production the whole thing would be at first.
“I’d heard of [Judi Dench], but I’m not a movie person. … I’m more of a book person,” said Reese, who grew up in Poolesville and now lives in Gaithersburg.
READ MORE:http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/montgomery-sees-judi-denchs-star-turn-in-philomena/2012/11/12/f1a523bc-2cf0-11e2-a99d-5c4203af7b7a_story.html
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