Hope to see more films about women who are good at their job: Sarah Megan Thomas on 'A Call to Spy'

There arent many spy films that include women in the story with a non-romantic arc and that was one of the facets actor-writer Sarah Megan Thomas wanted to explore in A Call to Spy, an untold true story of three World War II heroines Vera Atkins, Virginia Hall and Noor Inayat Khan.

There aren't many spy films that include women in the story with a non-romantic arc and that was one of the facets actor-writer Sarah Megan Thomas wanted to explore in ''A Call to Spy'', an untold true story of three World War II heroines Vera Atkins, Virginia Hall and Noor Inayat Khan. The period drama chronicles the story of the trio -- played by Stana Katic, Thomas and Radhika Apte in her international debut -- who worked as spies in UK PM Winston Churchill's 'Secret Army' called Special Operations Executive (SOE), charged with defending the country in the event of a Nazi German invasion. ''In essence, when a woman is involved (in spy films) more often that not it is a romance. I was interested in looking at the World War II spy genre from a realistic lens that what it must be to be a female soldier,'' Thomas, who pulled triple duty as writer, actor and producer for the film, told PTI in an interview over Zoom from New York.

As an independent filmmaker, best known for the 2016 financial thriller ''Equity'', Thomas said she always starts with the genre that can sell. ''Then I look at it with a female lens, an independent filmmaker's lens (to ascertain) what stories have not been told in that genre,'' she said, adding ''Equity'' was the first female-driven Wall Street movie, in which she starred, co-wrote and produced. During her research for ''A Call to Spy'', the writer-producer said she found out there was no film on Atkins, Hall or Khan - who were firsts in their field. An athlete and drama major from Williams College, Massachusetts, Thomas said as someone who studied World War II extensively, Churchill's Secret Army became her starting point. ''When I uncovered Vera Atkins, Noor Inayat Khan and Virginia Hall were the first and only spy recruiter, first female wireless operator and first female field agent, respectively, I learnt there was no film about them. That was the 'aha' moment that this has to be done right now,'' the multihyphenate, who is a self-confessed James Bond fan, said.

Thomas, 41, said women are great at their jobs but their portrayal on screen needs to be ''more complex'' than being a nurse or wife. ''I hope we have many more books, films and television shows about women who are good at their job and they just happen to be women. The characters I create technically could have been played by men, but they are played by women.'' Thomas said raising funds was the most challenging aspect about ''A Call to Spy''.

''I'm lucky my last film made a profit so my last investors came back. This one had a bigger budget and raising funds was difficult. But once I was able to secure funding and get an incredible team, it was such a joy.'' Thomas said she would ask director Lydia Dean Pilcher for ''five minutes of quiet'' before she came on set as an actor. ''As an actress, you have to breathe and let it all go, be in the moment, which you cannot do as a producer. I would listen to Churchill's war speeches and it would just immediately get me from 2018s into the 1940s.'' Thomas, who plays Hall, an American spy with an artificial leg, said she met the agent's family to get a sense of her personality as she granted no interviews in her lifetime.

''She didn't talk about her wooden leg at all but conversations with her family gave me her spirit. She was always in pain with her leg. She was serious and cantankerous. That infiltrated my performance. ''You have to bring yourself to the role because that's really what audiences sign up for. I responded to her quiet courage. She just wanted to be useful and do her job.'' Apte, who plays Khan, the Indian Muslim pacifist, was Thomas' first choice after she saw the actor in ''Parched''. Leena Yadav, director of the 2015 film, was also in talks to helm ''A Call to Spy'' but opted out due to prior commitments.

''When I watched 'Parched', I fell in love with Radhika. She was my first choice for the role. As an independent filmmaker, you can never get your first choice. The day Radhika said yes, Lydia and I were off to the races.'' Katic, internationally known for playing the driven homicide detective Kate Beckett on the popular ABC series ''Castle'', stars as Atkins, an intelligence officer in the France Section of the SOE. ''Stana and I share the same entertainment lawyer Peter Nelson and he kept pushing her to me. That was a tough role to cast because Vera is Romanian-Jewish and she's pretending to be British, so you don't want to necessarily cast a British actress because the accent shouldn't be perfect. But Stana is so good with languages, she was perfect for this.'' Dramatising true events and maintaining authenticity of historical facts is an ''agonising'' process, Thomas said, adding she has stayed ''90 per cent accurate'' to what happened to these women in real life. ''The writer in you knows you have to take liberties but the human in you feels very guilty about it. You really want to stay loyal to these real people. I didn't make up anything they didn't do that's big.'' Citing the example of the 1941 jailbreak at the Mauzac prison near Bergerac in southwestern France, where Hall helped 12 agents escape back to England, Thomas said the incident features as a nod to her character in the movie as she didn't have the funds to recreate the full sequence.

''This (prison break) alone could be a whole big-budget movie. I didn't have the money or real estate for that. I have put a prison break in the film (but) it's not the way in there she did it historically. At least, it's there,'' Thomas said. The film starts streaming on Amazon Prime Video from Friday.